Sometimes, People Suck

Seems like a week where all of the news, even when it's good, comes from bad roots. The stories from this week make me want to find a cave to live in, far from the selfish, the deluded, and the stupid.

• Topping the list of this week's assholes is Major Nidal M. Hasan, who decided that his best option in the face of frustration was to shoot a few dozen people at Fort Hood on Thursday. The mind boggles. The people he shot didn't start the wars he opposed, and they were no more involved in it than he was. The people he shot didn't deny him his release from his commission. The people he shot didn't determine his deployment to Afghanistan (if that's what pushed him over the edge). Get ready for a bunch of yahoos who lament "those people," the foreigners who cause so much trouble--even though Hasan was born in Virginia. Prepare for the religious bigots who will undoubtedly decry "those people," the Muslims whose religion provokes them to violence--even though millions of Muslims live violence-free lives in America and around the world. (UPDATE: No need to wait--it looks like vile conservative shit-spewer Michele Malkin has already stepped up for that faction.)
• Overshadowed by the actions of Major Hasan is Jason Rodriguez, a disgruntled Floridian who decided that his best option in the face of frustration was to shoot a half-dozen people at the company from which he was fired two years ago. The people he shot didn't fire him. The people he shot didn't deny him unemployment benefits. Again, the mind boggles.
• The saga of Louisiana Judge Keith Bardwell has finally come to a close--except for the civil suit he still faces for his idiocy. You may recall that Bardwell came to the public's attention for refusing to marry an interracial couple, the fourth time in the last two-and-a-half years he's done that, and the who-knows-how-manyth time he's done it in thirty-four years as a judge. Now he's resigned, and that's at least a positive development, even though it doesn't go far enough. Religious figures get to determine who they will and will not perform services for based on their interpretations of their various mythologies, but civil servants don't get to defy US law based on some whacked-out perception of "suffering" the possible children of such a union would experience.
• Maine voters, or at least 53% of them, who voted to reject gay marriage. I'm confident that eventually common sense will win out, but for now it looks like the assholes are still numerous enough to block this simple measure of equality.
• Michele Bachmann and her merry band of morons, who congregated to chant Faux News talking points and compare Health Care reform to the Holocaust. In addition to the idiotic signs, the crowd consisted of people like Judith Garloch, who traveled from Ohio to display her ignorance. She was enthusiastic, but like all of the other reform opponents, "Ms. Garloch, like many in the crowd who while visibly angry, could not articulate the main problems in the health care system or how they should be solved." That's because they don't have a fucking clue--they just hear "socialism" and "communism" and "death panel" and they don't want their taxes to go up (an unfounded fear) and they don't want their health care to change (another unfounded fear), so they froth at the mouth and repeat the nonsense they've heard.

The mind truly boggles. This planet is doomed.