"Would you hit it?"

I have something in common with Terri Schiavo.

Here's a photo I took of myself about a week after my surgery and cancer diagnosis:



That was a pretty rough time and I was doing my best to hang on and keep a positive attitude.

A member of The Vestibule was quite taken (in one way or another) with that photo, because he amused himself by asking, Would you hit it?, with a hammer? (I have changed the name of the file on the server, so it won't show up on the board anymore. Enough is enough!)

I suppose I should be relieved that is the question. For Terri, the question instead was, How hard would you hit it?

People are sick. I've known that for-seeming-ever. This is the first time that such mindless cruelty and depravity has ever been directed towards me. I've had run of the mill mean stuff happen to me, but nothing like this. Of course it's not personal, because these people don't know me (nor did they know Terri.) But this kind of casual disregard for the humanity of a stranger is quite disturbing. We could speculate these people would never really hit someone with a hammer, a chainsaw, or a bus -- but why is it amusing to them to talk about it? The normal reaction to a question like that should be revulsion.

On the Terri thread, there were some replies objecting to the topic. Apparently it's not OK to want to hit brain-damaged people, but it is OK to hit people who aren't pretty enough, or fail to meet some other criteria you dream up. You want to talk about slippery slopes? This kind of attitude, unchecked, leads to bullying and then to Columbines. Get enough sociopaths like this together and you've got an Islamo-fascist movement. Parents, do you know what your kids are saying in those forums and chat rooms?