Yesterday afternoon news programs announced the startling event, breaking into regular radio and television coverage: an armed individual who was supposedly carrying a bomb had entered the lobby of the Discovery Channel Building in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland. Both HWMBO and I, who have frequently driven past this building on our way to visit our precious Prince Tyger and his family, stopped what we were doing to find out what was happening, literally holding our breaths and dreading the worst.
There was a tense four-hour stand-off during which three hostages - a security guard and two other Discovery employees - were forced to lie face-down on the floor while a deranged individual stood over them with a handgun. The stand-off ended comparatively well for the hostages, fortunately, whose traumatizing ordeal ended only when the individual, one James J. Lee, was shot and killed by police. The stand-off likely did not meet Mr. Lee's expectations, although it is difficult to know what those expectations were. According to an article in today's Washington Post, the Montgomery County Police Chief described Mr. Lee as having a live bomb strapped to his body. Exactly what DID he expect to accomplish?
Excellent photos of the area during the standoff can be found here.
Mr. Lee was identified and described by some as an "environmental militant," whose world consisted of "good" and "bad." Human beings were "bad;" civilization was "filth." War, global warming and pollution were "bad." Worst of all in this manifestly disturbed person's ideology, however, were babies - "parasitic" to him.
Mr. Lee, like all those who resort to violence or terrorism in an effort to attract attention or make their points, was exactly the kind of "friend" that his self-styled causes do not need. Many of us feel frustrated that nothing or too little is meaningfully being done at the highest levels about global warming and pollution. We also detest war - and especially those who lie in order to provide justification for it! We are genuinely concerned about overpopulation and its corresponding carbon imprints on this Earth that we all must share. But we work with others and try to bring people together to solve our common problems. We do not use weapons or violence. Finally, we certainly do not consider any of our fellow human beings, least of all babies, "parasites."
Mr. Lee's "creed" is available to read on the Internet. There are some aspects with which I can agree, such as the airing of inane, if not outright insane, TV shows such as "[Jon and] Kate Plus 8" and "19 Kids and Counting," that promote the litter-like production of human children rather than feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating to their highest potential and improving the quality of life for the children who are already here. I certainly support the right of responsible couples to have children. After all, I have even had them myself and thoroughly enjoy my grandchildren as well. I also taught children and adolescents for several years and look forward to doing so again. However, neither of those TV shows demonstrates responsible parenting, in my opinion, and neither should be presented as any example of such. "Nothing in excess" is one of the admonitions that greet visitors to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. That is a wise adage. But such sage advice is all too easily forgotten by those who blindly follow or who seek obscene profits, either for themselves or for the corporate masters they serve.
But most of Lee's manifesto-like authoritarian ranting is patently nonsense. He was an Internet despot who was also hypocritical, at least in part, because his targeting of the Discovery Channel likely had much less to do with his purported causes than with the fact that Discovery apparently dismissed his ideas for a TV series.
Let us neither demonize nor glorify this sad, demented man, who is currently beyond anything this world can do to him now. Let him simply be buried in peace. While his acts can in no way be justified, my heart goes out to any family or friends who knew and loved him. My heart also goes out to the policeman who had the very sad duty to shoot to kill in order to preserve the lives of others. Sadder still is that somehow our contemporary society continues to form more alienated individuals like Lee. How that happens and why should concern us all.
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