Sending Love to Boston April 19, 2013 Jill We have many Feministe readers, friends and family members in the Boston area (and with loved ones in the Boston area). Stay safe. We’re sending love and good thoughts.
I’m glad they caught him alive, death would be an easier way out than he deserves. I want to know everyone who might have known something was up with these guys. The older brother was married to a woman from one of the most whitebread suburbs in RI, her family says they had no idea he was capable of this. But it seems they were apart and the wife was living with her parents and the brother had a girlfriend. He may have had a domestic violence incident in his past. It will all come out soon.
I’m glad they caught him alive, death would be an easier way out than he deserves. In what way is death a “way out”? I don’t understand what this statement means.
Trigger warning, I think. I don’t disagree with the sentiment. For people who are happy or have a life to celebrate, or can foresee celebrations in their future, this won’t make sense. Death is a sentence, and one that is usually unfair and unwarranted. If you live in a prison, either one of your own mind or one where there is no accessible exit, death is an escape. I, for one, don’t think death is the worst thing that can happen to this little shithead. I want him to sit in utter boredom for the rest of his hopefully very long adult life. And if he realizes what he did (or tried to do, because frankly I doubt he’d have thought himself very successful), all the better. Guilt for the next 60-80 years sounds about right.
FYI – Jane Doe Inc. in Massachusetts is working on gathering the facts regarding the older brother’s history of domestic violence. From their official statement: “We continue to work with our partners as this information is unfolding in order to expand and deepen our shared understanding of the connections between domestic violence and other forms of violence.” I also read an account somewhere from one of his sister’s friends that asserted that the older brother had been physically violent toward the sister. Also, if you can stomach the misogyny and violent imagery, the younger brother’s tweets (@J_tsar) demonstrate that he is hardly the innocent and impressionable young kid that some in the media seem to be rushing to paint him as. His feed runs the gamut from a chilling tweet shortly after the bombings that hints at sociopathy: “I’m a stress free kind of guy,” to an even creepier tweet back in January: “Breaking Bad taught me how to dispose of a corpse,” to an endless assortment of misogynistic junk I won’t quote here. Meanwhile, the media has found a number of friends and family who are shocked and have described him as nice, sweet, funny, caring, shy, etc, including my personal favorite, charming*. What does it say about our society that a college student who openly broadcasts his misogyny and obsession with violence doesn’t send up any red flags and is seen as a normal, well-adjusted kid?? I’m certainly not saying that all people who tweet such things are terrorists in the making, but it boggles my mind how much garbage a person can spew before anyone even blinks. *My favorite DV expert/author wrote an interesting blog post about charm that I think folks might appreciate: Rethinking Charm