They Got the Creeps

 

     And anyone reading about the horrible parenting of the Crumbleys should get the creeps, too.

     And I'll tell you why later on.

     Suffice to say, Detroit Police, Oakland County Police and the US Marshal's Office got Michigan's middle-aged answer to Bonnie and Clyde early this morning. They were found in an industrial building 40 miles from their home and the school that their son Ethan had shot up early this week, killing four students and injuring seven others.

     Let's take stock of the facts as the Oakland County Police and prosecutor's office have informed us:

     The Crumbleys, on the aptly-named Black Friday, bought a Sig Sauer pistol. They didn't just get it for themselves but for their 15 year-old son, who then used it just days after it arrived to murder four of his classmates.

     The boy was caught looking up ammo on his cell phone at school and, after he was reported having done so, his mother texted him later that day and said, "I'm not mad at you lol You have to learn not to get caught."

     The Crumbleys were called in to the school the day of the shooting after a troubling note was found on their kid's desk featuring a picture of a gun, a bullet and a victim. The parents refused to take him out of school and didn't even notify the school officials that their son owned a gun.

     An hour or two later, the kid walked into a bathroom and emerged with that gun and two or three loaded ammo clips that he then used to kill four classmates.

     When the Oakland County DA's office announced they were taking the almost unprecedented steps of prosecuting the parents on four counts of unintentional manslaughter, they promptly took out $4000 at an ATM, turned off their cell phones and droves 40 miles away to Detroit. Essentially, they abandoned their legal obligation to show up at their arraignment yesterday, their home, their jobs, their attorneys, their car and, essentially, their own son. Because that's what right wingers do when they detect a whiff of comeuppance.

     The Nazis did that in March and April of 1945 when the death camps were liberated because prosecution for their countless war crimes was considered a personal affront. Now the Crumbleys are on suicide watch. The Nazis did that, too. Ask Hitler, Goebbels, Göring and Himmler.

     So, all three Crumbleys are occupying the same jail and Jennifer Crumbley even sobbed at her arraignment, not over her or her husband's or son's actions. She cried because she didn't live up to her cardinal rule of not getting caught.

     Here's why the Crumbleys should give the creeps to anyone who knows something about their dysfunctional family dynamic:

     This is the kind of home Kyle Rittenhouse came from and is still living in.

     Rittenhouse's mother must have known that an AR15 was waiting for her son in Kenosha. Yet she was OK with that to the point where she gladly drove him down from their home in Antioch, IL

     His mother was also photographed in homemade riot gear as she'd attended right wing rallies and riots, complete with a loaded semi-auto rifle.

     All things considered, it's kind of a miracle that Rittenhouse hadn't shot up a school with Mommy's gun like Adam Lanza did at Newtown.

     Here's the thing: There was no justice at Sandy Hook seven years ago because Lanza killed his mother and himself. Alex Jones and other right win gun nuts said it was a false flag.

     And Rittenhouse is walking around free after it was decided by a very misguided jury that he had a legitimate right to defend himself from the chaos he'd largely created in Kenosha.

     It sure would be nice to know that there's such a thing as a 100% certainty in cases like this, that there is a more than reasonable expectation that justice will be served and that all three Crumbleys will be sentenced to the maximum penalty allowed under Michigan law.

     But we don't live in a nation of slam dunks and sure things. Because as long as there are crooked, right wing judges like Bruce Schroeder who actively hobble prosecutors and influence juries, as long as there are right wing politicians who write the laws that allow terrorists like Kyle Rittenhouse to literally get away with multiple murder, we never again will have the luxury of even a reasonable expectation that justice will be served after a mass shooting.

     And, sadly, the Crumbleys, just one of countless tens of millions of right wing families that pass noxious and dysfunctional values down to their children, are one of those cases.