I have seen a couple of posts in recent days (VodkaPundit and Cold Fury) about the Killdozer attack, and I’ve seen a Killdozer Gadsden Flag on Facebook a couple of times.
For those of you who need refreshing, the Killdozer was an armored bulldozer that a guy built over time in his garage twenty years ago (the anniversary was this week), and he then used it to smash through some buildings of people he was mad at as well as shooting at police and others during an hours-long rampage that ended when the bulldozer got stuck, and the guy killed himself in it.
Contrast that with that other guy who had a similar set of grievances with his city government and went to a city council meeting and killed six people and wounded several others.
A bit of an idle question, but why has the former become a folk hero and the other has not?
A few possibilities come to mind:
- Despite his best efforts, the Killdozer guy did not actually kill anyone besides himself and otherwise only caused property damage.
- Construction equipment is cool, and DIY armor is cool. DIY armor on construction equipment? Unparalleled.
- The former got national play because of #2 whereas the latter was just a regional or local (to the St. Louis area).
- The RACE thing. The former was white; the latter was black.
I really don’t think it’s #4, but probably a combination of the first three.
I do, however, think it’s a little ::sniff:: gauche to celebrate the attack.
But this is the Internet, and I’m not a professional writer with blog deadlines to meet. Your mileage may vary.
