The Young Turks

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRI ME/06/30/burglary.shooting. ap/index.html

In November of last year, Joe Horn, 61, retired computer programmer and firearms enthusiast, shot two Mexican men dead, Antonio DeJesus and Diego Ortiz, both attempting to flee after burglarizing the home of Mr. Horn's next door neighbor.  Autopsies revealed that the two men had their backs turned to Mr. Horn when he had decided to pull the trigger.

And as of yesterday, a Harris Country grand jury ruled in favor of Mr. Horn, acquitting him of any potential criminal prosecution.  The grand jury cited a recently passed Texas law that allows for the use of deadly force in the defense of one's property.

His motivations were made clear the moment the conversation began, each one of his words rife with a murderous intent.  Mr. Horn was steadfast in his resolve long before he had ever dialed those three digits into his cellphone.  Yes, the authorities may have been on their way, but Mr. Horn was just too damn eager to dispense with his own distinct brand of justice, under the pretext of self-defense, thereby arguably superseding the propriety of the court system and the rule of law.  

But for Mr. Horn, the operator's urgent pleas to his most basic humanity did not merit a response; any appeal for a more prudent course of action could not, would not, deter the sheer hatred that Mr. Horn felt as he saw those two silhouettes that, under shadow of night, barely resembled the human form.  No man's words could have changed the fate of those two men crouched outside on Mr. Horn's front lawn.   

What prompted Joe Horn to kill?  The explicit reasoning is that Mr. Horn was acting in self-defense, with the intent to protect his neighbor's property, and that Texas law affords him this right.

When I see Mr. Horn, I see a man who, retreats back to the safety of his property, watches Lou Dobbs, hiding behind his inadequacies while having all his worst fears confirmed, in which illegal immigrants fill his rogue's gallery as plague carriers and felons; opportunistic pests out to make a quick buck at America's expense.

I see a man who, with his truck stopped behind a red light, would look out past the windshield, to the migrant workers huddled out to the side of the road, triggering a base repulsion, as he viewed them with the contempt and disgust that is all too prevalent among those who live in states which share a border with Mexico.  

And none of this is intended disparagingly.  It would be irrational to believe that we, white, black, brown, or otherwise, would never resort to a reactionary racial rhetoric imbued from within us by our respective cultures, such is the structure and framework of the human mind.  But the political power in this country is oriented in such a manner that it lends more credence, and more authority, to the biases that are perpetuated by the preexisting white hierarchy.  

This is what we have come to.  Our fear of God has been replaced by our love of money, brought together to excuse away even our most reprehensible of behaviors, willing to forgive almost anything for the pursuit of profit and the protection of property.  

We recoil at the notion that Islamic fundamentalists would dare use religion as a pretext for terrorism, aghast at how their dogmatic interpretation of Islam take precedence over more secular considerations, namely, human life. Yet we wholeheartedly embrace the insidious idea of placing the dollar over the value of one's spirit and one's soul.  

The law in Texas, the one that has allowed for Mr. Horn to get away with murder, crystallizes this very notion, taking what otherwise would be an ineffectual intellectual diatribe and placing it firmly in a new, terrifying reality.

We have committed ourselves to a cult of greed, and we have indoctrinated the rest of the world into a blind worship of money.  Our refusal to prosecute Mr. Horn is an indictment of our core values and of society at large; it is, in no uncertain terms, a testament to how far we have deviated from any path of presumed righteousness that we have, for so long, prided ourselves on.  We have ignored the sanctity of human life, forgotten what those words truly mean.  The well-being of others is no longer even a passing consideration.

NOTE:

I'm revising history like John McCain.

REVISION ONE:  It wasn't at night, it was in broad daylight, which in my opinion, makes it more egregious.  Those lines were too good to edit out.


REVISION TWO: They weren't Mexican; they were from Columbia.  The major difference here being they probably got better cocaine, and God bless them for it.