On May 25, 1997 David Cash chose not to interfere when his friend Jeremy Strohmeyer murdered a 7 year old girl. He's been described as a remorseless, amoral sociopath and I don't defend his behavior.
I'll be adding to this in a day or so but I'd like readers to think carefully before answering the following question:
How is David Cash's indifference to victims any different than that of all the other Americans who've managed to grace this weblog?
Can you tell us what he did?
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, there's a big difference between ignoring bullying-harassment and ignoring outright murder.
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ReplyDeleteDavid Cash and Jeremy Strohmeyer were at a casino at about 3 o'clock in the morning. A moron was gambling there and let his 7 year old daughter wander around unsupervised. Strohmeyer murdered the girl in the bathroom (who knows why) and David Cash saw what he was doing and simply walked away. He later defended his behavior by explaining that Strohmeyer was his friend while the girl was a stranger he had no reason to care about. This is a more extreme form of depraved indifference than ignoring violence and cruelty in a school or attending a football game where a known bully, batterer, or date rapist is playing, but the basic principle is the same.
ReplyDeleteI'd still argue that that guy was an extreme asshole. Most people in his situation would not have just walked away and not given a fuck.
DeleteAlso, I read he got bullied a LOT at college when he bragged about what he did. :)
David Cash's indifference to the girl's suffering is more extreme than the usual forms of depraved indifference I usually blog about, but the fact remains that indifference is part of American culture. The legitimacy of criminal behavior is a function of the criminal's status, the victim's status, and the nature of the crime. When a high status criminal (athlete, rich kid, celebrity, etc.) imposes harm upon a low status victim (nerd, dweeb, faggot, etc.) and both parties are roughly the same age, the public rationalizes that the victim somehow brought it upon himself or that it really isn't a crime at all. As long as someone else's kid is being harmed, most Americans are ok with it. David Cash was hated because Strohmeyer wasn't anyone special and he committed a crime against a little girl. If Strohmeyer were a 300 pound sociopath of the gridiron and he brutalized a smaller, weaker male of about the same age, he and anyone who witnessed the crime and walked away would have been forgiven.
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