06.02.13
Bean Pounding: Thoughtless and cruel
The smallest victim in the national micro-fad of bean-pounding.
Our unique and grotesque micro-culture of castor bean pounders is both thoughtless and cruel. They know when ricin mail hits the news the FBI will descend in force (with assault rifles) on a quiet neighborhood, yellow hazmat suits deploy, and a house or apartment will be ransacked.
But they do it anyway. We are left to believe they cannot make the mental connection between what they have seen happen and what is most probably going to happen to them! It’s sociopathic.
And so, buried in the news, there is the forlorn photograph of the Richardson family’s cat, being mercifully taken away by a city worker after the FBI blew the house apart at 111 Maple and there was no one left to care for it.
Our bean-pounders know the neighborhood will be turned upside down for days. They know they’ve stressed out the little people who’ve had to open their poison powder mail, not the targets. But it doesn’t make any difference. They have their schemes.
This hasn’t occurred in a national vacuum. American ricin bean pounders haven’t generated spontaneously, like the old myth that if you throw garbage and fish heads in a jar, seal it up and wait a week, flies and maggots will result.
“And you can go on the Internet and find out any one of a gazillion recipes on how to make ricin [said a homeland security expert] adding that it takes only a beginner’s knowledge of science to “weaponize??? it. — the Associated Press, yesterday.
Thanks for the received “wisdom.” What a wonderful thing to put in a news story. Bet the editors loved it!
To strenuously reiterate, the paradox is that the spending of over a decade screaming about how easy ricin is to make has some bearing on why we’re seeing what we are.
Some government officials now seem to realize this. But the media, largely, still doesn’t. For the most part it simply can’t write pieces that don’t include how deadly ricin is and that recipes are on the internet.
And this is shameful because, of course, they now must realize that Americans are suggestible and that there will be a certain number among them, even if small, who act out on this.
Is the person responsible a menace to their neighbors in New Boston, Texas? No, they weren’t. Although the presence of an FBI force changed it for the weekend.
Mostly, those into bean pounding are hazards to themselves.
And they certainly don’t merit the money that must subsequently be wasted upon them in the quick reaction force investigations that come down.
Our press and national security ways had a hand in this, even if unintentional, having steeped the country in a paranoid almost valueless lore on terrorism for years.
So, unimaginable and ridiculous stories, virtually custom fit for sitcom drama or movie scripting, replete with bizarre social media pictures that beg for republication, become a new norm.
Back and forth, two pieces of work, from the NY Post:
[Shannon Guess Richardson’s] son, Brenden Guess, 19, told The Post that his mother was paranoid that her husband was trying to poison her with ricin.
“She thought he was injecting it into her food and drinks,??? he said, adding that she became suspicious after discovering on his computer an order for castor beans, from which ricin is derived.
“She told me she was trying to be as careful as possible. She didn’t eat unless it was straight from the store to her hand, basically.???
A family friend said Nathaniel previously posted dozens of pictures of his guns — which have since been taken down …
Local authorities have since condemned the bean-pounding house.
Thanks to Frank at Pine View Farm who permits me to use the comments section of his blog as a preliminary scratch pad.