You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's
May 2024 Blog/Column
Child's Play
by Mykel Board
Spare the rod and spoil the child
--Old
Proverb
Discipline your children, and they will give you
peace
-- Proverbs 29:17
The rod and reproof give
wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.
– Proverbs 29:15
True freedom is impossible
without a mind made free by discipline.”
― Mortimer J. Adler,
===============
“Gooo gooo gah gah goo
gah.”
Little Liam crawls from his crib to the door of his room. He babbles to himself… or to no one... as ten-month old babies are wont to do. This evening, Mom and Dad are off at the movies… Oppenheimer… and they’ve left Liam with Ashley, the 16 year old babysitter, daughter of Mr and Mrs Kosminski, friends of Liam’s parents.
Liam pushes his head against his bedroom door. It creaks open with a click… He pushes again. The door opens enough for Liam to crawl through to the hallway.
Meanwhile, Ashley is diddling
her cellphone… simultaneously texting her love to her sweetheart,
Dexter, and to her girlfriend, Brittany, describing Dexter’s
attributes.
“You can’t believe how that guy’s
hung,” types Ashley to Brittany. “God… think kielbasa!”
“Wow,” texts Brittany back.
“I love you more than Beyonce loves Jay Z!” Ashley texts to her boyfriend.
“For the same reason?” Dexter texts in return.
While Ashley texts, little Liam has left his room and crawls toward the staircase that connects the upper bedroom area with the living room and kitchen downstairs. As he approaches the staircase, his right arm slips over the top steps. His arm and shoulder slide down. The boy’s ten-month old brain is smart enough to figure this isn’t right. He backs up and changes direction.
Now, he’s headed toward his parents’ room. Liam tries it again… pushing his head against the door. Again it works. There’s something familiar about the room. Liam recognizes the big bed where sometimes he sleeps... nestled between his parents when he is being comforted by Mom and Dad on an especially cryful night.
But those two things –one on either side of the bed… What are they? Liam recognizes the color… black… but has no vocabulary to say or think it. He knows this side is Mommy’s side and that side is Daddy’s side. He crawls toward the black thing on Daddy’s side. There are some handles on the outside of Daddy’s black thing. They look like big toys… something to climb on. Liam crawls over to one of the tall black objects and grabs it.
It flops open. Inside is a smaller toy… made of metal… long on one side and curved… something like a banana… on the other. Down where the two sides meet, there is another little piece of metal with a second curved piece around it. Liam pulls himself up using the drawer and its handle for support. Then he reaches inside and takes the gun.
The barely-a-toddler now crawls toward the voice coming to him from the living room. The gun, held tightly in two tiny hands, scrapes along the floor… a trail of drool follows the child as he goes.
“I just love it when he talks to me like that,” Ashley, changing to conversation from text, is saying. Little Liam has no sense of meaning, he just hears the voice and it draws him like a magnet. Down the stairs… KERCHUNK. The gun pulls his arms... KERCHUNK… KERCHUNK… KERCHUNK. Step by step his little body follows.
To the living room… behind Ashley… gurgling loudly to get her attention, show her what he found when POW! BLAM!
A voice from the cellphone pleads… “Ashley? Ashley? Are you all right Ashley?”
FLASH AHEAD
At the
trial, Liam is convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He’ll
spend the rest of his life in prison… with no chance of probation.
The next week, Liam’s parents are arrested. Fantasy? Impossible? Well...
FLASH TO MICHIGAN... OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL 2021 A boy shoots two handfuls of students. KERPOW! KERPOW! KERPOW! More blood than a pro wrestling match. Four dead. Seven injured…
Two years later, the killer stands to receive the sentence for his crime… TERRORISM. What does he get? This kid… who when he committed the crime wasn’t old enough to have sex, to drive a car, to drink a beer, to smoke a cigarette, to vote… a little boy with a gun… What is this child’s punishment? LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE. The max… not the little boy max… but the big adult make-decisions-for-himself max.
Rosemary Bayer, the Democratic state senator from the district, says. “I’m not a doctor. I’m not a psychologist. But it’s never the kid’s fault.”
I can hear another voice now. It’s Literary Device calling to me. “Mykel,” she says. “It’s not the same. A baby has no freedom of choice. What happened with your imaginary kid was an accident. The kid wasn’t responsible for what he did.”
I answer, “Is a fifteen year old with severe mental problems responsible for what he did?”
[ASIDE: You probably know, I’m an abolitionist. I don’t believe inprisons at all. I think no one should be put in a cage and the fact that so many go back time-after-time proves prisons don’t work. They’re not supposed to. They don’t exist to prevent crime. They exist for REVENGE… and to feed the prison industrial complex. In fact, the only exception in the anti-slavery amendment to the constitution is prisons. But this is even worse!]
Yes, it’s a kind of prison for slaves. Someone without rights… a child… is thrown away for the rest of his life. Most children have the right to grow into their freedom. Fifteen year old Ethan Crumbley will never have that right. But wait… there’s more.
Mom and Dad Crumbly get charged with involuntary manslaughter. Think about that. INVOLUNTARY is without will… not by design… by accident. Can you imagine a crime that happens BY ACCIDENT? Isn’t the nature of crime that you have to commit it? What is COMMIT if not VOLUNTARY? Is a miscarriage involuntary manslaughter for the anti-abortion crew? I don’t know.
Ooooo but the parents ignored the kid. They didn’t realize he had mental problems… HOLD ON! IF HE HAD MENTAL PROBLEMS it was the DISEASE that caused the kid to shoot up the school. It was INVOLUNTARY, right? The kid is innocent for… besides being a kid… reason of INSANITY.
The fact that a penalty of LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE exists proves that the purpose of prisons is not to “correct” or reform lawbreakers… but to PUNISH them. No that’s wrong too. The purpose of punishment is correction. You slap a dog on the ass when she shits in the house so she won’t do it again. That’s punishment. You make a kid finish his dinner or have what’s left for breakfast… cold… the next day. That’ll teach him to finish what’s on his plate every night. (My parents actually did this.) Get it? Punishment is a way of teaching.
LIFE IMPRISONMENT is not punishment. It’s not to teach. It is REVENGE… It is blood for the blood-thirsty. It is a throw into the lion’s den to please the crowd. The audience is family and friends of the victim… and they give the thumbs down. The press calls it closure. But the only closure is that cell door for the rest of that inmate’s life.
[NOTE: In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that it was fine to give kids a life sentence without parole. I wonder when the court will rule that it’s okay to let kids vote and screw. If they have to pay the penalties, they should at least get the privileges, don’t you think?]
As for the parents…
Their
convictions confirm punishment for “repeated acts or lack of acts
that could have halted an oncoming runaway train. They repeatedly
ignored things that make a reasonable person feel the hair on the
back of their neck stand up,” the judge says. “Opportunity
knocked over and over again, louder and louder and was ignored. No
one answered. And these two people should have and sure didn’t.”
So NOT DOING is involuntary manslaughter… even without an inkling of the results of that not doing.
But back to kids… they’re the theme of this blog. Either they’re just people like adults or they’re sub-people not able to make their own choices. If it’s the former, then they should have the same rights as adults… sex, voting, smoking, drinking. If it’s the latter, then they are not responsible for their actions, and may be trained like an errant puppy… but not put away like someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
See
you in hell,
Mykel Board
ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]
→ A Better Solution Dept:
The Associated
Press
reports:
A teenager who opened fire at a central Indiana middle school in
2018, wounding another student and a teacher, will go to a
residential treatment center, as ordered by the judge.
The court ordered that the
now-18-year-old be held in the Hamilton County Juvenile Service
Center for 120 days while a probation department finds “a suitable
secure residential facility” for him. Not the perfect solution, but
better than a lifetime in the clink.
→ Throw the Whole Team in Jail dept: A strange internet site reports that in 2002 a thirteen-year-old hockey fan, Brittanie Cecil, was struck in the head by a traveling hockey puck while she and her family attended a local hockey game. Seated fifteen rows up from behind the goal, the puck hit her so forcefully that it fractured her skull. If that isn’t INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER (girlslaughter?), I don’t know what is.
→ But was it INVOLUNTARY
dept: Among the
most famous criminal executions is the 1916 execution of Mary, the
Circus Elephant, who killed a homeless man temporarily hired as her
keeper. Several other people have been killed by elephants since
then, proving that the death penalty does not prevent murder… even
for elephants. Mary, was tried, then hanged from a crane. Here’s
the death photo.
BACK TO THE NATION DEPT:
The newest issue of THE
NATION has a
great column by Kali Holloway on why TikTok banning is such a bad
idea. (As is most (all?) censorship.) It again makes me point out
that THE NATION is the only lefty magazine I know that is often right
(I mean CORRECT) about things.
Besides the Holloway column,
there’s also
a good one by Ginny Hogan (strangely, but slightly, different on
the website than in the magazine) with the pull-quote talking about
the up-coming presidential election.
We
have our two candidates.
One of them is deeply uninspiring,
and
the other is Donald Trump.
Time
to subscribe, I’d say.
LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:
I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.
I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.
Here's a start:
I alreay posted my centerfold picture printed in the zine Trey Mayhem sent me recently. It’s called Murder and Mayhem and it’s also a record label Murder and Mayhem records. You can see the blog here. Or/and contact Trey at TreyofToday@yahoo.com
My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachelorette!
Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com
Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency
And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.
And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.
Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.
Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.
Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.
George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.
And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.
And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.
Here
are a couple video links.
This
from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low
And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong who has recently died in a motorcycle accident.
Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.
Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both. It’s hard (and costs money) to send him email. So. If you remember how to write a letter… send him one at: Kyle Nonneman, #16534211, Snake River Correctional Institution, 777 Stanton Blvd Ontario OR 97914-8335
My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.
Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.
Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com
