Who is really crazy?

[OKDem08]

Below is an (abbreviated) editorial in the OK Gazette by Robin Meyers of the Mayflower UCC of OKC.

A month & a half ago, something happened that was as disturbing as it was nearly invisible. Malachi Rischer, a 52-yr-old experimental musician from Chicago, killed himself to protest the war in Iraq. At 6:30 a.m. in the morning on Nov. 3, he followed w/morbid care a plan to end his life as the ultimate protest. He left a suicide note to explain his actions, set up a video camera to record the gruesome act, stood at a busy downtown Chicago off-ramp, poured gasoline on himself and then set himself on fire at the height of the morning rush hour.

In his statement, he wrote" "If I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country...If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem & turmoil caused by my country."

Apparently, Mr. Rischer had planned everything carefully, except for the one thing he could not have imagined: that nobody would notice. Indeed, that nobody was listening.

A reporter pieced the facts together & word began to spread. The bloggers took it from there -mostly to speculate on just how crazy Rischer was. The consensus was that Mr. Rischer was crazy--because crazy is as crazy does, & the whole thing is "just a shame". But if he is crazy, then what would you call this war & our ability to drive right past it on our way to the mall? How can we play Christmas carols when born-again chicken hawks have turned Baghdad into hell on earth, & then pretend to pass judgment on the mental condition of someone who took his own life just to try to wake us up?

...

Before you pass judgment on Risc her, let's confront something even more frightening: that the president who led us into this murder & mayhem is the one who is hopelessly deluded. That madness has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and would have us believe that you can defeat terrorism by breeding terrorists.

Now that's crazy.