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I would ask that you take at least three minutes of silence, and sit there in silence and realize, realize how long it takes for a child to lose voluntary control of their body,. --Kaylynn Williford--one of the prosecutors in the Yates trial
Maybe I've seen too many dead kids to have compassion for the people who make them dead. Perhaps I am too familiar with the physical mechanics of what it takes for a little body to give up and quit working. I know more about this case than I care to and I'm not going to argue about my views on it. I've seen plenty of monsters and Mrs. Yates is the worst fucking kind.
Oh...wait...scratch that...her husband's worse.
Maybe I've seen too many dead kids to have compassion for the people who make them dead. Perhaps I am too familiar with the physical mechanics of what it takes for a little body to give up and quit working. I know more about this case than I care to and I'm not going to argue about my views on it. I've seen plenty of monsters and Mrs. Yates is the worst fucking kind.
Oh...wait...scratch that...her husband's worse.
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that's scary. the nation of two goes terminal. i know there's all kinds of issues that muddy this up, but w/o thinking too deeply on it, in an ideal society or world or whatever i think i'd love to see mandatory counseling for parents, just something to ping the world kids are stuck with & make sure everybody's ok in there. at first the story just rang with Lost when i tried to imagine being there, but this thing with the husband is creepy bad, the twist. there's damaged and then there's *that* kind of damaged, the people that are why intentional defenselessness isn't compassionate.
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So horrible, so true.
I keep seeing people say they cannot believe she was not found guilty by reason of insanity. I don't care if she is insane or not, I keep seeing in my head a woman who had the pre-thought to drown the oldest one first so there was no one to help the younger ones. I see someone who depsite all their cries of "she is ill" who deserves no mercy.
So what, she was suicidal? Then do your children, your family and yourself a favour and take just your own life. Remove the disease.
What about a man who knew she had these sort of problems who continued to breed with her? Does he not share an iota of what has transpired. You do not leave children alone with a crazy person, but you are included as one of the insane if you leave your children home alone with a person you knew was this crazy.
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yes, it is apphauling.
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Crazy?
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Law, however, is too much for me- and in my family, it is the only thing I ever hear. All I can do is turn away and hope that my wishes for the lives of the children to be magically restored will be passionate enough to come true.
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I think--I know--there are, unfortunately, far worse than her. Sociopathic predators. Repeaters.
I don't think she should be killed, not because she should be spared, but because it encourages the death penalty, which isn't so much wrong, as useless when applied by humans.
Especially American humans. You end up with (then) Gov. Bush happily throwing the switch on 154 people. What amazing trust he has that the judicial system will be blind to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation.
Isn't it good to know that juries are *always* right?
And that's why I don't think she, or anyone, should be executed. What worse punishment could there be than for her to live in her head in a small room alone for the rest of her life? You kill her, her pain's over. What punishment is that?
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That quote got to me.
3 minutes....
*shudder*
How are you able to deal with this type of stuff on a regular basis?? God, Cate, I don't know how you deal with it! ~deb
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Why does her husband and lawyer want to save her from the death penalty? Surely, it's the kindest thing that could happen to a mother who'd killed her children?
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Re: Crazy?
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Profoundly well said, C.
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Re: So horrible, so true.
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Re: yes, it is apphauling.
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I could think of a few. But seriously, I don't see the point in keeping someone like her alive.
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Dealing with this stuff?? I don't know sometimes how I do it. I cry. A lot. And I laugh. A lot. : )
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I mean, if a person?someone asides from Yates?at least has life imprisonment, then that person has a chance to live if and when it?s discovered that, yet again, the judiciary fucked up and sent someone to the gas chamber. Usually a black person, as was the case recently with that guy who was supposed to die based on some peckerwood?s testimony that was ultimately retracted?like, whoops.
Then again, I don?t think it entirely bad if prison guards occasionally leve sharp objects with their lonely charges.
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Maybe I'm insane, because I just can't fathom how people can describe themselves as compassionate and yet switch that compassion on and off when the mood strikes. In my mind, you either are compassionate, or you're not--you can't play both sides of the game just because you're suffering from the modern affliction of "compassion fatigue," or because you've set an arbitrary standard on where compassion ends and retribution begins.
I've just read the writings of a lot of people who have never met this woman, who know very little about the case beyond what the media vomit up for our deranged curiousity, and yet think she, her husband, and whomever else irks their sense of righteous indignation should be killed or tortured. Maybe I'm insane, because I'm way more afraid of that kind of the almost universal monstrous lust for blood and revenge than I am of one sad, sick religious fanatic who flipped out and did something unthinkable. Yates didn't kill her children alone--she killed them with the complicity of a nation busily shrieking about their moral indignation on every subject while refusing to do one damned thing about mental health because "boo hoo, it'll cost the taxpayers too much and we desperately need that money to buy big screen TVs and SUVs and Playstations, and besides, mental illness isn't even a real illness, dang it!"
I've seen the monsters, and they are US.
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I just can't get over how so many people gloss over the possibility that Yates might actually have been desperately mentally ill, living in a twisted reality where her acts might have made sense, merely because WE can't imagine it and because a dozen lumpen hillbillies chosen specifically for their cultural ignorance and lack of knowledge of anything remotely relevant to the case made an in-depth psychological analysis (ha) of the woman and decided that she was healthy in spite of the long history of evidence to the contrary.
Let's just put her to death, this satanic monster, so we can all wash our hands of our responsibility as a people and find "closure," right? One more down means one less obligation to seek help for those who need it, one less reminder that we choose not to protect those who need sanctuary from their own demons. Just let Ayn Rand rule the day and all will be right with the world, right?
I don't want to "set people straight," or any other such thing. That's not my responsibility or my right--all I can do is ask people if they'd really want to live in a world driven by an endless cycle of rage, closed-mindedness, and retribution.
Is compassion something that can be measured out like laundry detergent, selectively applied according to our whims and caprices, or does it need to be unconditional to be real?