While the nation is riveted by the mass murders in New York and Texas, Colorado is burdened with its own mass murder, the sole difference resting in the number of victims. “Only” three in the Thornton Walmart shooting.
Actually, there is another difference. It is an outrage of its own. This is the attempt by the stepsister of the killer to mitigate the murders by her stepbrother. He is “not a monster,” she says. Why? He has been “hearing voices” for 29 years ago. “Honestly, Ibelieve there is only so much a person can take.”
You would think that some demon or bullet or bomb invaded the murderer’s brain. But no. It was his “bad LSD trip” 29 years ago.
Maybe it was, but the decision to take LSD was the murderer’s alone. The responsibility for the voices in his brain, if in fact that is what moved him to murder, is his alone.
Though we certainly feel for his stepsister’s horror and shame, her rationalization of her stepbrother monstrous murders is a perfect reflection of a cadence that has invaded our culture. Almost as inevitable as a rhythmic percussion section, Michelle Willoughby, 43, shifts personal responsibility for her brother’s heinous action to some impersonal, outside force. This is the essence of the victimhood culture in which we find ourselves. If a person chooses to take drugs, then the ill effects are not his fault. If a person commits murder because of these ill effects, then it’s just a “tragedy.”
Before taking LSD, the Denver Post reports his stepsister as saying, the murderer was an outgoing, social person who sometimes had multiple girlfriends. He played football, water skied, fished, hunted and went camping every weekend in the summer. He spent hours in the gym. “My brother was a people person. He had a different aura.”
And who changed all this? Not the brother! Nor the family, which did not seek professional help. Nor his priest, who also did not seek professional help. The culprit was the drug, only the drug, as if it forced itself on the murderer. But now, not to worry. His sister says that her stepbrother may finally get the psychological help he desperately needs.
Tell it to his victims’ families.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
