Pressure Cookers, Ricin and JP Murders
By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
We have become a nation of extremes. Moderation is viewed with contempt. Every group with a cause, and every individual with a delusional grievance against society, has increasingly adopted the perceived notion that violence is a legitimate socio-political response to get their point of view across to the rest of us. Religious zealots, political fanatics, lawless gangs, and murderous individuals firmly believe they have a violent right to pursue their extreme agendas, regardless of the social consequences.
This past December twenty beautiful Connecticut school children and six dedicated school personnel were gunned down by a deranged lunatic. Today the nation, once again, mourns the loss of two more precious school children, a lovely graduate student, and more than 140 injured (some critically and dozen others with amputated limbs) because some political fanatics wanted to either exact deranged revenge for some perceived wrong or express their unholy beliefs through crude homemade bombs.
What we are now seeing in this country—mass shootings, terror plots, gang warfare, racial animosity, and paranoia that has become a prominent component in almost every public debate—are the social costs encumbered by political institutions crippled by the paralysis of extremes, social-religious institutions teetering on collapse, and an anti-government sentiments advocated by our so-called leaders, some of whom are irresponsible enough to speak openly about secession from the Union.
We are forced to listen to the pro-life people who rail against abortion but who will not spend a dime to feed a hungry child; we must accept that 46 cowardly United States senators put their own political careers and the corrupt interests of a well-financed gun lobby before nearly 90 percent of the American public who believe criminals and mentally disturbed individuals should not be allowed to purchase guns easier than they can purchase cigarettes and booze; we must endured as some of our idiotic political leaders equating same-sex marriage with bestiality; we must try to comprehend a growing number of white people (ideological descendants of the failed Confederacy) who subscribe to ever growing, and very thinly veiled, racism; and we must shake our heads in disbelief that some conservatives believe that allowing children to go hungry is acceptable because their parents refuse to “take responsibility” for their lives.
This is the dark place where the Tea Party, extreme libertarians, and political ultra-conservatives have taken us in their efforts to undermine what they call the “liberal agenda.” Those of us who believe “choice” is a constitutional right; that church and state should be separate; that limited, effective gun ownership reforms are critical to public safety; that marriage is not a singular institution limited to “reproductive’ couples; or who detest both blatant and coded racism must now defend against charges that we are “socialists,” secretly working for the United Nations against the sovereignty of the United States of America.
This is the end result of a society that turns on itself at the instigation of fear mongering by extreme political pundits and commentators who bully our political leaders into leading us all off the cliff of rationality. We don’t know when, or even if, the senseless violence will end because the political paralysis infecting every segment of our society seems to be incurable.
We do not like to express these thoughts, the harvest of our own personal pessimism about where we are going as a society. We could say much more because there is so much more to say, but we don’t like to vent for the sake of venting. We simply had to get a few things off our chests as we cope with images of innocent people being harmed by pressure cooker bombs; a whacked out hillbilly sending the President and a US senator ricin laced mail; and a justice of the peace and his wife arrested for brutally murdering a district attorney, his wife, and lead prosecutor. It’s an insane time.
God Bless America.
By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
John Floyd is Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization