After all, it’s not like a madman blowing away a half In spite of the best efforts of both the government The number of murders and violent crimes is lower than The government knows that if we are in fear for our The fact is, we live in one of the least violent corners Sudden, deadly violence is the norm in many, perhaps most places In the deepest heart of the Amazon River Basin in western The story is the same all over the world. In our And so it has been since the dawn to mankind, including during the entire When the Mongol hordes swept Even here in the United States, little over a hundred Face it, people killing other people is the norm. It’s So, with all due respect to the families of the dead hunters, lets not It seems to the Dowbrigade a much more noble and practical At the same time, the only worthwhile goal in life that we can see is How can suffering be the key to life and its great nemesis at the same HAYWARD, Wis.Nov 23, 2004 – A Hmong immigrant suspected from the AP<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The strange case of the Hmong hunter in Wisconsin who gunned down six fellow hunters in a turf battle for a deer blind continues to fascinate and horrify America. Frankly, we can’t see why. If you go into the woods … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/crosnatch.jpg\")
The strange case of the Hmong
\n hunter<\/a> in Wisconsin who
\n gunned down six fellow hunters in a turf battle for a deer blind continues
\n to fascinate and horrify America. Frankly, we can’t see why. If you go
\n into the woods with a loaded gun, and know there are dozens of other
\n armed maniacs in the vicinity, you should be prepared to be shot at.<\/p>\n
\n dozen innocent children in some Compton schoolyard. Hell, the victims
\n were armed, or
\n should have
\n been, wandering in the woods during hunting season. Playing with guns
\n has long been America’s real<\/em> national
\n pastime, and when stressed-out civilians tramp around in an unnatural
\n environment like a forest, armed to the teeth and with itchy trigger
\n fingers, well, accidents are going to happen.<\/p>\n
\n and the news media (yes, my innocents, despite appearances these two
\n often
\n act
\n in
\n concert
\n when
\n a higher cause is on the line, like keeping the game going, the game
\n on which they both depend) to scare the bejeezus out of ordinary
\n citizens, in reality we are not at great risk of violent attack, relatively
\n speaking.<\/p>\n
\n it has been in decades, and is continuing to decline. What
\n is going UP is the amount of sensationalized media coverage of violence, for some very
\n simple reasons.<\/p>\n
\n safety we will be more tolerant of infringement of our rights. The
\n media, basically, have discovered that fear sells, that alarm captures
\n eyeballs, and that
\n violent crime is edgy. It’s like the roller-coaster effect. People
\n love to be scared, especially if they think on some level that they aren’t
\n really in danger. Stories of violent crime being perpetrated on other
\n people also please in another way: People like to feel lucky, and
\n when bad things happen to people they don’t know, they do.<\/p>\n
\n of the globe during one of the least violent periods of its long and
\n gory
\n history.
\n Even the
\n reality that six people being killed in a wilderness turf war was major
\n national news speaks to the exceptional pacificity of our society. As
\n the season of Peace on Earth approaches, we should count our blessings.
\n Peace is not the norm, now or ever.<\/p>\n
\n on earth. As close to our shores as Haiti we can find an infernal empire
\n of terror, torture and death. More than six civilians probably disappear
\n there EVERY DAY, and it doesn’t make the news. Nobody even wants to talk
\n about it. They’re scared shitless.<\/p>\n
\n Brazil, along inaccessible and inhospitable tributaries and forests,
\n live some of the few remaining indigenous tribes of humans who have
\n avoided all contact with modern culture. Anthropologists are fascinated
\n with these isolated groups, because they represent what we all once were
\n – natural, pristine, unsullied tribes, in harmony with their forest and
\n their place in the Universe. Well, guess what. They spend most of their
\n free
\n time figuring out how to kill members of neighboring tribes, competing
\n for women, status and hunting rights, engaged in mythic wars with deadly
\n results.<\/p>\n
\n Wisconsin protagonist’s Hmong homeland, the Communist government of Laos
\n continues the indiscriminate
\n slaughter<\/a> of Hmong women and children. In Somalia, the central government
\n collapsed almost 20 years ago, and since then the country has existed
\n in lawless terror and anarchy. People disappear there all the time,
\n and there isn’t even anybody to report it to. In response to the horrors
\n going on as we write in Dafur, concerned musicians are putting a BandAid<\/a> on wholesale genocide. A handful
\n of missing hunters
\n would never be noticed amidst the ethnic cleansing going on in that part
\n of Africa.<\/p>\n
\n brief run of that sophisticated cultural extravaganza we call "Civilization". Most
\n of human history is a long and bloody litany of war, rape and savage
\n sacking of cities;
\n invasions, fights to the death, plagues and vendettas; crusades, campaigns,
\n enslavements, occupations and exiles. <\/p>\n
\n in from the steppes of Asia sowing death and destruction across a swath
\n of Europe, entire cities and town were erased from the map. During
\n the plagues of the middle ages, 15, 25, 30 % of the population could
\n die in a single year. Within the lifetimes of many of us, the Nazis managed
\n to kill 20 million human beings in the 5 years their thousand-year Reich
\n lasted. Life is cheap, in the grand scheme of things. It
\n always has been, and in most places it still is.<\/p>\n
\n years ago the entire western half of the nation was a lawless wilderness
\n where most
\n men went armed and shoot-outs in the streets and lonely canyons were
\n normal, regular occurances.<\/p>\n
\n what we are – the baddest-assed, most bloodthirsty predators on the planet.
\n We’ve held the title for at least a half a million years, and a few centuries
\n of lace doilies and literature aren’t going to alter our essential nature.
\n We have murder in our genes, bloodlust in our veins and terrible crimes
\n in our collective past.<\/p>\n
\n make a major national issue out of a measly hunting accident. We
\n will never get rid of violence completely, nor should we. We live
\n in a violent and cruel universe, and if we couldn’t fight back, we would
\n have disappeared long ago, like the Hobbits
\n of Flores Island<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n goal is to get rid of human suffering, or at least to keep it to a minimum.
\n Of course, any esoteric or serious Eastern philosophy worth its salt
\n will
\n tell you that All Existence is Suffering, and without suffering Life
\n has no value. Suffering needs to exist, if only to be transcended.<\/p>\n
\n to minimize suffering, our own and that of our fellow travelers. In
\n fact, it seems to us that the only reasonable justification for this
\n whole existence thing is to minimize suffering.<\/p>\n
\n time? This is the Great Contradiction – the Existential Oxymoron. It’s
\n not logical, yet we know it to be true. Logic cannot come close to unlocking
\n all of nature’s enigmas.<\/p>\n\n
\n of killing six fellow deer hunters in the Wisconsin woods told investigators
\n that
\n he opened fire after they took a shot at him first and hurled racial
\n slurs at him, according to court papers filed Tuesday.A judge set bail
\n at $2.5 million for Chai Vang, 36, of St. Paul, Minn., who was jailed
\n on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n