Morons Untie!

I guess I should probably be taking this a whole lot more seriously than I do at this point in the day.  

First thing this morning when I found a couple of photocopied "Democrat Nazis" with swastikas scattered on my lawn (total of 3), I was upset, angry, and somewhat concerned.

I guess in the real world, the whole Reductio Ad Hitlerum rule is not ... common knowledge.  I mean, Godwin's Law has been out there for a while, but I do recall in the late 90s hearing "Invoke Hitler/Nazis, lose the argument."  Granted, that was in the long-ago innocent days, before the majority of the United States decided to vote for a facist populist who said he wouldn't leave the White House when he lost the election.  Then he decided to lie about it.  Or maybe it's just a mental defect - please note that I am specifying "Mental Defect" and not "mental illness" because as we've learned in the past few decades, there are many conditions which can be diagnosed can be treated in many different ways.  I specify "mental defect" because a defect is unlikely to be corrected in any way, and if the person who has this particular condition chooses not to seek to overcome the condition, the defect remains the fault of the individual who possesses it, and those who surround the individual may experience significant difficulties in their daily contact with the afflicted individual.

But getting back to the yard waste, yes, someone set marker to paper, did correctly spell Democrat and Nazis, though they failed to correctly depict the swastika.  That is, there are two symbols which look very similar.  Most people upon glancing at them would consider them the same figure.  The truth is that the version of the Swastika used by the Nazis was for a very long time considered a good luck symbol in many Eurasian and African cultures, including Hinduism.  When one looks at a Swastika, if the arms are bent in a clockwise direction, that is the symbol that Hitler and the Nazis used to represent them.  It had a very long history prior to the Nazis, which is now confused with the deaths of millions all because a man with one testicle and magnetic charisma decided he wanted to be evil.

The Swastika on the paperwork we got has the arms bent in a counter-clockwise direction, which was a valid variation, but tended to represent night, or darkness, when used as a good luck symbol.  Not bad luck versus good luck, but just dark.

So I suppose the feeble fool who wished to sow fear decided not to bother with history, just use crap, and we're all the richer for it.  I don't blame this fool's teachers, or anyone other than the fool.  I probably should not presume that the fool is male, though it does seem to be an intrinsically male behavior to throw a feeble insult and then retreat from any confrontation.  

Do I fear for my life?  Nope.  Not even a little bit.  Sure, any fool can buy a gun, any fool can fire it, and any fool can die from a gunshot.  But it's been my experience that people who spend their money photocopying handwritten signs and then spreading them throughout the neighborhood without any sort of attribution are likely to be hiding in a closet, somewhere - and not in a nice, benign, well-dressed way, but rather in the sort of way that, if discovered, would probably be disowned by their parents, evicted by their landlords, or generally caused to go elsewhere.  

If, on the other hand, the pages were meant to be a threat, I'm not one to back down.  I'm certainly not willing to put up with their shit.  I am likely to be less friendly to anyone offering any such sort of ... material.  I might accept it if only to allow me to get a better look at the individual so I can speak to the police sketch artists, and make sure these ... cretins are appropriately counseled.  

Not that I wouldn't mind going a little Mjolnir with a five-pound "engineering hammer" I have in my toolbox.  But hey, my wife's the Nordic one, so if she calls Thor Odin-son down upon you, you'd best hope it goes quick and Marvel-like, rather than old-world deity affliction - like the sort that involves pus, infection, drainage, leeches, bleeding, and leaving the body out to dry rot away before being ... launched in a burning boat for a Viking funeral.  I promise, if need be, I'll provide a few boards and some out-dated gasoline to assist in the disposal of the body.  Whether or not it's still breathing.  Because, you know, health care is a finite resource, and it should be reserved for those who show the potential to improve and overcome their condition, rather than passed out to that which we probably should have filtered out of the gene pool through simple standards - such as "be decent, or go away."