Barbarian of the Local Sort

(Talk about a hole where one's soul is supposed to be...)

NOTE: I don't want people thinking that there are barbarians in South America but not elsewhere! Today, Nov. 28, 2006, I just learned of 2 cases of microwaving month-old babies to death in the great USA! One allegedly occurred in Dayton, Ohio in August, 2005 and the other in the state of Virginia in 2000. If something like this doesn't hit our hearts hard, nothing will.

As some of you will remember this incident, I don't have to swear as hard as in the other stories. I wish I could say this one wasn't true, but I can't. It's as true as I am sitting here writing to you. Still, I think it's better not to use real names. How important are they anyway? The incident is what is important. The debasement that occurred is what I am trying to get across to you. The sheer inhumanity. How does that line go”"a rose is a rose by any other name," more or less? I still don't have all the facts straight, but I'm not sure who does besides the family. And I certainly can't spend too much time digging or waiting around for facts to turn up. I think I can give you the main ones. So, here I try.
Nancy lived with her family about 50 minutes to the north of our bustling capital city. So, that far away we're talking about peaceful farms, friendly neighbors, basically, and all the rest that go with bucolic living let's say. Except that some of Nancy's neighbors weren't friendly. They were deadbeats, lazy and envious people with a psychopath or two thrown in the heap.
Nancy and her family's farm was a dairy. Family-owned and operated. They weren't making any millions but they were doing fairly well for themselves. Well enough that some evil-hearted neighbors had been demanding and getting money from Nancy's family for a few years. Finally, Nancy is fed up. She isn't paying those deadbeats another cent and that's it! Their plight is not of her making so it isn't her problem.
Well, for one or two of those deadbeats, this decision was a sort of insult to them. Then, not only an insult but a challenge. "We'll see who is the more persuasive, she or us," one of them said to another.
On dairy farms we all know that somebody has to get up early, this means like at 4:30 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. and go out to wherever the cows are and milk them. This is every single morning all year, what they now call 24/7. On this particular morning in May of the year 2000, it was Nancy, even though she was married and had several rather big children. Nancy was in her fifties. She's going along to the cows or coming from the cows when she is suddenly grabbed by one of these deadbeats and collared. When I say collared, I mean a bomb was put around her neck. A "collar/neck" bomb that was timed and could be set off by some remote device. We would think the bomb was to scare her into paying the extortion fee once again. The equivalent of 7 or 8 thousand dollars was demanded. Why it didn't work that way I'm not sure. Did she tell them she would once again pay if they'd take that bomb away and they laughed it off and told her it was too late? Was she so brave or stupid as to think they'd never set the bomb off; therefore, she never offered the payment? Was it some kind of combination of the both of these? You got me, but here's what truly transpired.
Her family called the police who sent bomb/explosives experts over to the farm to work at detonating it. Nine hours of this, mind you. We know Nancy did a lot of crying, thinking, praying, you name it, that day. Who wouldn't? That afternoon, late, the bomb went off, blowing up Nancy and one of the experts. Two dead as much as anyone can be dead. Three other experts were considerably injured. All of this was on site. It seems inconceivable, but the experts could not perform a total detonation. All they managed was a "partial" one, according to the media. Three or four years later, a "copycat" case occurred with a Venezuelan rancher. He was a victim of extortion also.
Talk about a hole where one's soul is supposed to be, this is certainly near the limit as regards evil, man's "inhumanity" to man. Who raised those deadbeats? We can seriously doubt that they ever as much as set a single foot inside a church of any type their whole lives. If not, how could they turn out so "desalmados" or soulless? The world is frightening my friends. We can deal with such a world only by our being ready to go any second. Don't you agree or are you one of those completely healthy and complacent people?