Thursday, October 15, 2009

Where is my country?


Michael Brewer, 15, of Deerfield Beach, Fla., was intentionally set on fire and is hospitalized with burns over 65 percent of his body. Three juveniles have been arrested. (WFOR)


Five Charged With Setting Teen on Fire

Shared via AddThis

Where is my country?

As I look around? I find myself asking that question more and more. Where is my country? What happened to my country? Who are these people that inhabit my country today? Where did they come from? What happened to the America that I grew up in? What happened to being American and all that being an American once represented? What happened to humanity and common decency?

I am so angered by seeing and reading the story of a young man set on fire by teen aged thugs in Miami that I am absolutely incredulous. This is a story of insidious viciousness and murderous intent IMO. And against a defenseless young man and for what purpose? Shits and giggles? Revenge? Pay back? Or Machismo?

Is that what this is about? Is that what inspired such a wanton and soul less act?

Was this attack inspired by the present generation's lack of morality and their "Jackass" mentality? I tend to think so. The youth of America seems engrossed in the macabre and the idiocy of moronic stunts for laughs and for anything that inflicts injury. That and their need to prove that they are some how more of a man than the next guy.

How else can we as a society explain the actions of today's youth? Except to say that we have allowed it to happen and that in doing so by default, we condone it by our failure to put an end to it and punish these criminals as they should be punished.

America has a zero tolerance for a little six year old boy that took his camping utensils to school for show and tell. America has a zero tolerance for an eagle scout that had the audacity to have a pen knife in his survival kit locked in his car at high school. But where is the outrage and the zero tolerance over an act of wanton violence like this?

A fifteen year old young man is fighting for his life and he will be horribly scarred for the rest of his life. And for what? Because five other kids thought that setting him on fire would be funny? Is that how things are done in our video game world of today?

These thugs were apparently being led by a ring leader. A boy who was angered because this young man supposedly owed him money for a video game. So the first resolution was to steal the bicycle of the boy's father. Then, having been arrested for that crime and released to his parents? He organizes his crew and goes and finds this kid and sets him on fire.

Where is the outrage America? Where is the zero tolerance now. I hope this ring leader gets life in prison. Prison is where he belongs. He is non-redeemable IMO and deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Why? Because that is the sentence he has imposed on this other young man's life. He will be imprisoned in a horribly scarred body for the rest of his life as a result of his burns. Shouldn't his attacker share a similar fate?

I certainly thinks so. After all.....it's only fair. Right?

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