The Insanity of Government Violence

Last evening the state of Georgia executed Andrew Brannan, a Viet Nam (close) Combat veteran, for the murder of Sheriff's Deputy Kyle Dinkheller. The murder was captured in one of the most disturbing videos I have ever seen. The only reason I saw it was that is was posted on a thread I was commenting on. I wish I had not seen it.

I am not going to comment on the righteousness of capital punishment. I am certainly not going to defend the murderer. No, my analysis is going somewhere else.

To my mind, here is what happened:

Our government took a young man, Andrew Brannan, taught him how to kill, taught him that killing was a "goodness" in the "right circumstances" (of course, those circumstances were to be determined by other people. Primarily for money (and "the economy"). After the government no longer needed Brannan's services in the most stressful environment one can imagine, and after teaching hime that killing was OK, the government terminated his services and wished him well walking around amongst the rest of us.

Brannan was suffering from Mental Illness, PTSD and Bi-Polar disorder. Of course, he was a "War Hero", so no one considered that maybe, just maybe, Brannan should not be in possession of firearms. Heck, Brannan probably should not have been in possession of a motor vehicle, but I digress.

Then another government agent, Kyle Dinkheller, pointed a firearm at Brannan because of Brannan's erratic behavior, triggering Brannan's government training to stand his ground and fight when under threat of death by firearm. Brannan murders Dinkheller in the subsequent shootout.

Here is the chain of events:

Government takes Brannan, trains him to kill in order to stop the spread of Socialism (at the same time that same American Government is expanding Socialism domestically in the form of Medicare and the War on Poverty programs). Brannan piles up a bunch of murdered bodies in Southeast Asia, and is awarded a medal for his efforts.

Brannan returns to America with the serious mental health issues often caused by the stress of killing human beings in an environment in which they are also trying to kill him. He murders Kyle Dinkheller. The State steps in and murders Brannan.

So now we have bodies from Southeast Asia to rural Georgia. 2 of those bodies belong to people that were willing to kill for the State, and who were in turn trained by the State to kill, and who were eventually killed by agents of or from the State, past or present.

I wonder:

Does the U.S. Army now maintain Brannan's grave with a little flag and a bronze marker noting the medal he was awarded? Or does being ignominiously murdered by the State negate that?

Do the American people know how many innocent and unarmed Americans have been shot during traffic stops because the Deputy Dinkheller murder video is used as a training video in police departments across America? Come on, who wouldn't be jumpy after watching that video?  But does anybody tally up the cost/benefit analysis of that training? You know, how many cops saved versus how many innocent people killed or maimed during traffic stops as a result of that "training video"? Of course not. No more than the cost/benefit of any of the other silly "programs" that our Statist policy wonks dream up. The 99.999999999% of us are unarmed regular folks trying to make it home alive from work. 100% of the police are ready for a shoot out during every traffic stop. The mounting evidence of that disconnect is piling up around the country.

The answer to our rising body count in State sanctioned violence is not more and better violence. That way lies disaster and madness, me thinks.