Destroying Literary Shrines Should Be Illegal Everywhere!!!

Facebook post by me in reply to a man saying this was no accident but planned from beginning to end:

Jack, you have hit the nail dead on! You are exactly right in one of those situations in which there is no satisfaction in being right. (Like a message board member of my acquaintance who said some numbskull would try to emulate Fifty Shades of Grey thinking it was cool. The next day some jerk was arrested and held on half a million dollars bail for having done that very thing. She took no satisfaction in having correctly called this.)

Unlike the would-be 50-shader, Thom Mayne acted within the law, but he is no better than any common criminal. I have the same gut reaction to him as to kidnappers, rapists, murderers, child molesters, and animal abusers, although his most basic character type is that of an assassin and as far as I am concerned he should be treated accordingly. He is no better than any of them, barely better than evil dictators, and yet he tries to set himself up as being better than anyone living or the cherished memory of anyone dead. I fully expect a wave of one-upsmanship as such vandals compete to see how much of civilization they can destroy. Look at the Taliban and Islamic State who videotape themselves committing such atrocities. At least they have the "excuse" that "their God told them to." Thom Mayne has no god but himself. He recognizes no authority nor does he possess any sense of decency or compassion. He has no essence recognizable as a human soul. He is a sick, twisted, perverted, deranged sociopath merely mimicking human characteristics while possessing none himself.

Try looking up the list of presidential assassination attempts and factor in assassinations of other well-known figures, political or otherwise. I could find only three cases where the president escaped and someone else was killed, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was unharmed but the mayor of Chicago was killed, Harry S. Truman, who was unharmed but a secret service agent was killed, and Ronald Reagan, who was wounded but recovered while his press secretary, James Brady, took over thirty years to suffer and die from wounds inflicted in the attempt. In most other attempts, successful or otherwise, sometimes bystanders or people who try to intervene are wounded but they are not the intended target. The chief, leader, or head person is the intended target and usually the worst casualty.

That's exactly what happened here. Ray was the intended target--since he was already dead and could not very well be killed--and digging him up and driving a stake through his heart would constitute at least one actual crime and probably several--and burning his books would be not only difficult and criminal but way too obvious--Mayne went for the next best thing. Every unwilling witness was pretty much placed in the position of members of society following a major assassination. They cannot say they personally lost a family member, but everyone suffered a loss. Society was NEVER the same, particularly following the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and John Lennon. We can never listen to Lennon's music again without a sense of sadness and tragically will be unable to enjoy the works of Bradbury without the sickening skewer of outrageous injustice eternally torturing our entrails. In the doubtful circumstance that Thom Mayne is capable of having any feelings whatsoever he likely revels in the suffering and destruction he has caused.