Yes indeed. I think this is one of the rare occasions when saying “oh good” at the news someone has died/is about to die is appropriate.
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I’m wouldn’t celebrate this until a significant portion of time passes and remnants of the kek cult (or some similar ilk) doesn’t attempt to mimetically cannonize and sigilize this one.
The insane dead have very special appeal to the living insane.
stay at the bottom of the slide
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Good & good riddance.
I kinda feel sorry for Manson. Don’t get me wrong, I have much greater empathy for his victims and the bereaved.
Not long ago I saw a documentary about his childhood and adolescence, if half that stuff was true then it is not so difficult to understand that he could become the monster he did. I know that it is controversial information, as he is the source of much it, and that over the years he has made differing claims about his past. Even if none of it is true, I would still feel that it is a great tragedy that someone becomes able to do what he did. Again, much more so for his victims and the bereaved, but for him as well.
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I saw the same documentary. Yes a very tough start. But he had advantages too. Main thing is he killed a lot of people for personal gratification. That’s unforgivable.
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I’d say if anyone is evil it’s Manson, but I also get no satisfaction out of his death.
Manson has been turned into an icon or caricature, the TV news trots him out every few years for entertainment but never really delves into how he came to exist; he should be a lesson on how poorly run our prisons and mental health systems are, instead he’s a cartoon we shrug off and go back to our daily lives. There’s probably another Manson out there now, waiting to take his place.
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The dead are unable to forgive, but having seen holocaust survivors forgive their captors, parents forgive the killer of their children and victims of rape forgive their attacker, I wouldn’t say it is impossibe to forgive Manson.
It is not for me to forgive at any rate, and I don’t expect the bereaved to do so. If they never do, I would never hold that against them in any way.
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I’d be surprised to learn that there were not several thousands (at least) more people who had as bad or worse a start in life as Manson, yet did not follow his career path.
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Yes a very fair point and a position I can see the merits of. Its just one of those things where I am turning into my father. I am sure that forgiving him is the right thing to do but I am increasingly at peace with not being a terribly nice person. My own personal position is that he deserves every day in jail and I dont feel sorry for him.
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Consider all of those crimson handed politicians and the breaks they have had in life…
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Like Solzhenitsyn I do not believe in good and evil as some external force, nor as an inate imutable personal trait.
When I try to rationalize what it is that allows someone to became a monster, I usually arrive at an incredible complex combination of humans inate fallability, culture, environment and personal thoughts and choices.
As @lolipop_jones points out many have suffered greater than Manson and still manage to not become monsters, but no two lives are the same, no two persons have the same tools to deal with the circumstances of their lives and no two persons make the same choices in the face of a chain of events in the longer run. So it is complex far beyond my ability to understand, but some studies do point to a possible causation between early trauma and later abuse.
As much as I try, I find it very difficult to empathize with that particular class of monsters.
But I strongly believe that this phenomena can be understood as well, and the sooner we figure it out the better.
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Is “crimson handed” a necessary adjective here??
Carne Ross compared his actions while working for the British Foreign Office to the Milgram experiment, except he said he did actual harm.
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- felt uneasy
- hesitated
- remembered the horror of it all
- screw him, click
tl;dr: What you said.
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I remember Manson for inspiring the underground comic THE LEGION OF CHARLIES.
The comic opens with Rusty Kali getting a medal for leading a slaughter of Vietnamese villagers, while Manson is executed in the electric chair. Kali drops acid & joins the cult of Charlies with other Vietnam vets. They hypnotized middle class daughters into joining them & kidnap & eat alive Spiro Agnew. Horror & satire from the early 70s. Produced by Tom Veitch & Greg Irons, published By Last Gasp.
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Malicious thoughts and imprecatory prayers…
The last time Manson inspired anyone people died. Like @some_guy said earlier up thread Manson has become a cartoon. All one has to do is Google Tate LaBianca crime scene photos to dispel that notion. People like Manson should never be caricatured to make our little brains more receptive to the evil.
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Right? He’s lived a long full live, achieved all of his dreams, and has had his elder years in as much comfort as some one who’d talk your daughter into shooting whoever he wants dead so that he could start civil war could ever dream of getting in this society. Even if I try to turn up my Emotional Intelligence Simulator to sympathy for the individual lives of mass murderers levels I can only feel a little relief, much in the way I feel about distant relatives who were cruel or abusive to me but then became elderly and frail long before death: Sort of a “well, that’s over then.” I guess you could call it… a very subtle relief though I faced no threat from the person it’s somehow comforting to think that well… at least that’s over. Even though the other part of me is like “You know he’s not the only person like that around, right??? And you know he didn’t get like that for no reason…”
God I hate the other part of me on occasions like this… just give me this moment, please?
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That may be an explanation, but how many other people have had the same traumas and not become facilitators of mass murder, even if they don’t have the most “respectable” of lives.
So I get what you’re trying to say, but he’s not the only one who had a terrible childhood.
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