Scott Evans Dekraai, the 41-year-old Huntington Beach man held without bail for last week's mass killing spree in a Seal Beach salon, is a teabagger. This license-plate frame at right was on Dekraai's Toyota SUV, proving that he was a proud member of the gun-lovin', tax-hatin', gubment-despisin' so-called Tea Party. The JoinTheTeaParty.us link on the frame leads to the mirror site TheTeaParty.net, which describes itself as “a division of Stop This Insanity Inc. and is a
national non-profit 501 (c)(4) organization created in 2009 for the
education and advancement of the constitutional conservative values of
the Tea Party movement.”
]
It continues, “This organization was created to help give the
power of government back to the people. We believe, like many of you, that our government has grown
out-of-control in a death spiral of unsustainable and barely imaginable
trillion-dollar deficits and a national debt rivaling Gross Domestic
Product. This government has ignored the Constitution that defines us;
invaded the liberty from which our nation was born; and daily drains
away the individuality and entrepreneurial spirit of Americans in order
to advance a radical, socialist policy built on the back of American
taxpayers. We–like many of you–decided to stand up and do something
about it.”
Federal Election Commission records reveal the laughing (alleged) mass murderer pictured above gave $300 on Aug. 8, 2010, to Stop This Insanity, Inc. If only Stop This Insanity could have stopped this insanity that happened on Wednesday: a lone gunman in a bulletproof vest and loaded to the hilt walking into a bustling hair salon and popping off shots that killed eight people and left one senior citizen clinging to life. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas announced Friday he will seek the death penalty against Dekraai for the
largest mass murder in Orange County history.
Speaking of groups composed of people who feel victimized (but, in the
interest of fairness, are not completely filled with murder-victim
makers), mens rights activists have rushed to Dekraai's defense. TDOM of A Voice For Men titled his post on the mass murder “Eight Dead: Isn't That Just Delightful?” He tries to draw a comparison between the cases of Dekraai and Catherine Kieu Becker, the Garden Grove woman accused of slicing off her
estranged husband's penis and tossed it in the garbage disposal after he told her
he wanted a divorce.
The writer notes that Sharon Osborne joked about the Becker case on national television, apparently calling the act “delightful.” “So far, I
haven't heard the word 'delightful' used in connection with the
incident,” TDOM states of the Dekraai case. “But why not? . . . If it is funny and 'delightful' when a woman commits an act of
violence against a man, why isn't it just as funny and 'delightful' when
a man commits violence against a woman?”
That last line hangs there for 184 more words until TDOM ends his post with, ”
Violence against anyone is a serious
matter. No one should think it is 'delightful' or funny.”
Ferdinad Bardamu of In Mala Fide, an online magazine dedicated to publishing “ideas that polite society considers 'racist,' 'misogynistic,' 'homophobic,' 'bigoted' or other slurs used to shut down critical
thinking and maintain the web of delusions that keep our world broken
and dying,” also brings up the Becker case in his post on the Seal Beach murders titled, “Anti-Male, Anti-Father Divorce Laws Drive Man to Commit Heinous Rage Shooting Against Ex-Wife.”
Keep in mind that living, breathing Dekraai had primary custody of his 8-year-old son, having the boy 56% of the time while his now-dead ex-wife had her son 44% of the time. Also keep in mind while reading Bardamu or TDOM that the man at the center of the case allegedly used innocent people as collateral damage, unlike the accusations against the woman said to have wielded a knife one crazy night.
Better yet, ignore all that, according to Bardamu: “[D]o I expect this horrific crime to inspire any introspection on the part of Americans, or any questioning of the role of feminism in poisoning the relationship between men and women? Nope.”
If the sexes of the presumed killer and target were reversed, Bardamu reasons, and it was discovered a woman mass killer was having problems in family court, “her plight would be lamented and her actions excused by
the exact same people who are going to be condemning this guy. Expect this horse to be flogged to death and back for the next month or so as proof of systemic “misogyny” in American culture. See how women reacted to the story of the guy whose psycho ex cut off his penis and shredded it in a garbage disposal.”
Jezebel also zeroed in on the In Mala Fide post, focusing instead on comments like these left under Bardamu's rant:
[E]nough of this type of offensive action might just
start making women and their supporters* think twice, especially if they
also become targets. (* Divorce attorneys, child services workers and
counselors, family court judges, and other enabling cogs in the feminist
legal system).
What
options other than overt acts of physical violence are there for a man
to deal with a shrew ex and corrupt family court system? To those who
are horrified and surprised at this one question…. why? Isn't the real
question – “How come this isn't a lot MORE common?”. And please avoid
the “Well… nothing justifies killing blah blah blah” as we've all voted,
supported, and tolerated governments who kill over parking tickets much
less loss of children. And if keeping your children isn't worthy of
killing what is exactly?
Fuck me.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.