ENVIRONMENTALIST WACKO

If you have ever listened to talk radio, you no doubt have heard the term “environmentalist wacko”. For a long time I thought that could be just about anybody who involved themselves in the green at any cost movement. Today we have learned what a true environmentalist wacko is. He is/was James Lee.

This idiot apparently strapped bombs to his body and armed himself with what appeared to be pistols and attacked the Discovery Channel in Silver Springs, MD. His gripe? He didn’t like their programming. Say, James, don’t you think your action was a little extreme? Now that I think about it, it really doesn’t matter what James thinks because James is dead. James received the only result his idiocy could receive, a bullet to the head; and for that I am grateful to the police in Silver Springs.

So now we, the Monday morning quarterbacks of the world, are left to sort out the events and offer our comments. These are mine.

First, I believe there are a lot of nut jobs running loose in our society. Most are probably not dangerous, but for sure some are. Who knows what sets them off? In Lee’s case he appears to have been disturbed by Al Gore’s ridiculous writings and movies about the end of the world. He also seems to have been upset by a talking gorilla who complained about his captivity in a work of fiction. Whatever. If one is crazy enough, it doesn’t take very much. This particular clown was well known to the police and to the Discovery Channel people, but he was thought to be harmless. Well I guess he wasn’t.

Whom do we blame for these types of incidents? Is Al Gore guilty of inciting a madman? Is Daniel Quinn, the author of the fictional piece about the gorilla entitled Ishmael, to be held accountable for this wing nut’s act? Is the Judge who let him walk the last time he displayed his insanity responsible for James Lee? The answer to all the questions above is no.

If it wasn’t for An Inconvenient Truth or Ishmael, something else would have come along anyway. Al Gore is just guilty of being stupid but that is not against the law. As John Wayne once said, “Life is tough, it is even tougher when you’re stupid.” Daniel Quinn is free in our society to write anything his fertile mind allows him. Nut jobs like James Lee are going to do what nut jobs do. All you can do is hope you are not nearby when these morons go off.

To those groups of organized wackos who seem to believe that the environment should take precedence over humans, don’t think for a moment that individuals like James Lee will be their martyrs. James Lee and his ilk will be relegated to the dung heap of loser history and will probably never even make it on any foot note in actual history. In just a matter of days his name, and for that matter the entire event, will be forgotten. Fortunately, stupidity has a life expectancy measured in seconds and moments not years.

Ron Scarbro September 3, 2010