Troll - Well, I said it wasn't gonna be easy, didn't I?

I think the best thing we can do at the moment is arrest them, try them, imprison them, and keep them imprisoned as long as they are still dangerous. I am not in favour of treating them in any deliberately sadistic way while they're there...just keep them of of reach of doing any more harm, that's all. And give them something to do while they're there, and then they can make some kind of contribution in repaying society. I don't care if it costs some money to keep them. Everything costs money. And I will never agree with all of it, nor will you or anyone else. I accept that.

On a longer term sense...I think that if everyone had access to a decent job, a decent place to live, and didn't start life with several strikes against them (which many people do), then the incidence of crime would drop drastically. There are huge reforms needed in modern society around these issues.

If there wasn't so much bullying in schools, then you wouldn't have these incidents of kids shooting other kids. If there wasn't so much dehumanization in family life (due to many factors...mostly driven by money and materialism), then not so many kids would become bullies...or assassins of bullies. There's a lot of alienation out there. I see far less of it in simpler societies that I have visited, where money and consumer goods are not so dominant over people's lives.

The necessary reforms are not happening because people in general are serving money rather than serving life (human and otherwise). People are guilty of that at both the top and the bottom of society, but it's those at the top who must show leadership if real change is to occur.

If there were more equality in a material sense, you would have far less crime and hatred in society. I don't mean exact equality...I just mean a smaller gap between rich and poor...and eliminating desperate poverty through social programs such as housing projects and JOB creation and educational assistance. I'm proposing a genuine "war on poverty" (remember that phrase?). Poverty should be seen as simply unacceptable in a modern society...as it is unacceptable in a family that one child should be overfed while 2 or 3 others are virtually starved by the same parents.

These are enormous issues. One could write a number of 1,000 page books about them, and only make a beginning.

You can call it socialism if you want. I just call it sanity.

I fear I will have to reincarnate once or twice more before I see much done about it, however. Today's people are the hapless slaves of money for money's sake alone. And from there stems the crime, the insanity, the material excess, and the hopelessness.

Timothy McVeigh is a tiny individual symptom of a society that has gone functionally insane.

- LH