Why is it always sympathy for the perpetrator?

from the Not PC Blog


A shop girl is sacked for stealing from her employer ... and there's outrage and public support for the thief, and a call taken up by all quarters of the blogosphere to boycott the franchise they see as responsible. This morning the website leading the charge for the thief trumpets to loud applause that "the charges have been dropped, but Subway still need to he held to account for their actions." Sorry, Subway needs to held to account!? What about the goddamn thief?

This is just dumb, but it's a kind of dumb for which this example is just a trivial one. It gets worse, much worse -- with that clue, see if you can find a common thread here:

• An Otara couple are convicted of beating the woman's three-year-old son to death "for continually soiling his pants" -- beating him to death with baseball bats, an oar handle and vacuum cleaner pipes ... and when the verdict is announced from the well of the court comes the supportive cry: "I love you, Sis!"
  
  
• For a prank, for an afternoon's 'fun', an Otahuhu fourteen-year-old drops a concrete block on to a speeding car, killing the driver instantly... and people express sympathy for the killer. His friends call him "cool." When asked how he felt about the accident, the 'look-out' for the killer said, "Sad. Not for that man, but for [the killer]. He's my mate." Few point out what it means to have a mate who's a killer.
  
  
• A drive-by gang shooting kills a two-year old, the gang refuses to give up the killer (and the police appear powerless) .... and an MP admits that "the killing of a child is appalling," but said it would be "wrong to blame gangs." "Just like I'm not prepared to say the police are all rapists,' said the MP, 'I am also not prepared to say that all gangs are criminals."
  
  
• A young man drives his car at full speed through a crowd of packed party-goers, killing two ... and his cousin tells sympathetic television reporters that he is "a good man," and the mother of one young girl whom this fuckwit killed says she "feels sorry" for the killer. For the killer!
  
  
• A student shoots and kills 32 of his 'fellow students' ... and a brainwashed dimwit says she feels "incensed" because the murderer isn't memorialised with his victims. "Who am I to judge who has value and who doesn't?" asks the moron. "I am not in that position. Are you?"
  
  
• A "green think tank" says children are bad for the planet" and another environmentalist (one beloeved of many local environmentalists) declares mankind a 'virus' ... and instead of outrage, condemnation and denunciation, these statements are met with yawns. "Haven't we heard this before?" people say -- and of course they'd be right.
  
  
• Islamofascists commit atrocity after atrocity, and outrage after outrage ... and the chattering classes condemn, not the fascists, not the bombers, not the killers, but those who have the temerity to express outrage at atrocity. Or anger at the killing. Or those who draw cartoons expressing derision at the culture in whose name the atrocities are committed.
  

Why am I listing these events in this way? Because I suggest there's a common thread to them all. Do you see it? Can you see what ties these events together? Specifically, what is the common factor in the reactions to each of these outrages?

Could it be, do you think, the inability to pass moral judgement? Rather than moral condemnation of a wrong-doer or sympathy for a victim who is wronged or killed, what is expressed in each is sympathy for the perpetrator.

Have people gone mad? Have some of us completely lost the ability to discriminate between good and bad? To make moral judgements? Are people no longer able to condemn anybody? Not thieves, not people who kill their kids, not even stone killers who show not an ounce of sympathy for those they killed or would have killed ? What's gone wrong?