It looks like being one anyway, the malevolent twerp Breivik's day in court. Norway is to spend millions defending a liberal multicultural society and refuting a completely demented so-called 'right-wing ideology'. Breivik's sanity will also be judged by the court. A girl present at the shootings on the island, asked by hacks whether it frightened her to see Breivik in court, said it didn't, because he was going to be locked up for the rest of his life anyway, whatever happened. But however traumatized it may be by this one-lone-nut atrocity, Norway means to do the civilized, rule-of-law thing, as it should of course. It regards the death penalty as barbaric.
For myself, born at the ultimate paroxysm of twentieth century barbarity and raised through it, it wouldn't bother me to see the twerp executed and I wouldn't blame anyone for doing it. But Norway is right really. Although of course it wasn't always like that.
It may seem fanciful and offensive to Scandinavia to suggest that Breivik is a sort of sick, nerdish descendant of the Norse berserker, maddened to bloody acts not by huge doses of mead and fly agaric but by the dead hand of ideology - any ideology - which, taken to heart by nasty twerps, can be blamed for so much of that barbarity still vibrating in people's minds and poisoning their souls.
As we know, there are other ideologies creating other kinds of berserker in the world now.
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 19 Apr 12 at 12:55
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Perhaps the Norse tradition of the blood eagle could be usefully resurrected in this case, as it were.
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The ole woman shouted down to me in the kitchen from her boudoir this morning:
"What do you think of this Breivik case then"?
I said I can understand his actions.
All hell broke loose then of course (she was in the kitchen by then)
I said "all I said was I can understand his actions (I had to repeat it 3 times in all, raising my voice each time)
I then said that trying him in a court of law wont bring back any of his victims, and he is a victim of his own actions.
It would have been better for all if he'd taken a bullet to the head.
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There are many losses in summary justice. The trial allows some chance of working out what went wrong, then at least some notions of how to prevent it happening again. It might also help establish the extent of fascism in the country: it seems to be on the rise in western Europe and this is very dangerous. Researchers of criminal psychology will have more material during what might be the permanent sojourn in jail of this criminal. There are numerous more ramifications, such as loss of respect , at home and abroad, for governments which administer summary justice.
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I like how the people in high places decide what we can and what we cant be privvy too, will the madmans speech turn us all into screaming jack booted natzis?
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>> The trial allows some chance of working out what went wrong, then at least some notions of how to prevent it happening again.
All boys, encouraged and stimulated by movies and TV, and in my day by the second world war, fantasize about committing acts of mass murder, against suitably bad victims, in an omnipotent way. Most people of course start quite early to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and keep such fantasies for where they belong: during the uncritical absorption of violent TV and movie schlock.
Every now and then a narcissistic psychopath like Breivik or Moat or even that vigilante twit in Florida works out, to his own satisfaction, a nerdish rationalization identifying some group as bad enough to deserve a massacre. Nothing to do with stupidity in Breivik's case: he was competent and persistent. A bit like, one is tempted to say, a jihadi suicide bomber or backer of such, a person who has absorbed post-enlightenment technical skills but retains the emotional centre of a contemptibly backward and ignorant savage.
Nothing 'went wrong', unless we count no one noticing in good time just what sort of dangerous twits Breivik (and these other people) were. The event was an extreme example of today's normality.
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>> Nothing 'went wrong', unless we count no one noticing in good time just what sort
>> of dangerous twits Breivik (and these other people) were.
Perhaps they feel the situation might have been handled better eg. the way in which the police (or whoever) responded? That would be quite important to get right if it's almost impossible to prevent it happening again.
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He is insane and he did a insane act.I was surprised that the prosecution had to shake hands with him I couldn't.He is going on about the nights templars.He has no emotions or regret except for his own video.
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>> Perhaps they feel the situation might have been handled better eg. the way in which the police (or whoever) responded?
Yes, the police response was slow and a bit Keystone Kops here and there by the look of it. Hardly unique, that.
A bit surprising in a way that there was no competent security on the island. Such a venue or facility in the US might well have been bristling with hunting rifles and pump-action shotguns, so he couldn't have tried it there.
These events are quite rare, but there are several in most years. Quite a few in the US over time. I don't approve of gun control myself - where there's a will there's a way, so if you can't get a machine gun you can improvise with explosives, dangerously-driven vehicles and so on - but I can see why many do. Firearms do give a person an unfair advantage over the unarmed.
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>> I don't approve of gun control myself - where there's a will there's a way
30-odd thousand gun deaths in the US per annum (half of which are suicides I believe)
Gun control is good.
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The man is a socio-path, no question.
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A narcissistic sociopath, apparently.
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>> 30-odd thousand gun deaths in the US per annum (half of which are suicides I believe)
Never mind the suicides, it's the innocent callers on gibbering heavily-armed paranoiacs I'd worry about.
>> Gun control is good.
For gibbering paranoiacs, drunks and psychopaths it's good. For me it's not good.
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>> Such a venue or facility in the US might well have been bristling with hunting
>> rifles and pump-action shotguns, so he couldn't have tried it there.
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I think the number of mass shootings in the USA disprove that theory.
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Norse saga - Crankcase
