Dumbass Kids with Chainsaws

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A British landmark and the central focus of a UNESCO World Heritage Site was destroyed this past Thursday evening when a sixteen-year-old boy with a large chainsaw made his mark on the history of the world by deliberately felling the beautiful old tree.     The tree had been growing in a dip called "Sycamore Gap" along the famed Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland in the north of England for more than two centuries.    Hadrian's Wall is a 73-mile stone structure that was built by the Romans more than 1900 years ago to mark the northern boundary of their empire in Britain.  

The tree, actually a "hawthorn" and not a "sycamore,"  was one of the most beloved and photographed trees in the world.  It had been featured with actor Kevin Costner in its branches in the 1990 film, "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves."  The tree was actually growing so close to Hadrian's Wall that when the teenaged miscreant cut it down, the tree landed on one side of the wall while the stump remained on the other.

The dumbass kid with the chainsaw was arrested but is now out on bail.  A man in his sixties was also arrested in connection with the crime.

I will admit to being conflicted as to what the punishment should be for murdering a tree, especially when the murder was committed by a seemingly mentally and morally underdeveloped teenager, but I am of a mind that the punishment should be something substantive. 

Meanwhile, in the United States of America, several backwater GOP members of Congress, the equivalent of dumbass kids with chainsaws, are holding the United States government hostage with threats of a shutdown this evening because they don't like a funding deal that their leader, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, worked out with President Biden several months ago.  As his party renegs on the agreement,  McCarthy ignores the ticking clock and wallows in impotence and self-pity.   The useless Speaker of the House can do little more than twiddle his thumbs as the government crawls toward a shutdown at midnight tonight.

Like the kid in England who murdered the historic tree, the GOP members of Congress who are intent on murdering our democracy, which is also between two-and-three hundred years old, deserve a punishment that is substantive.  Perhaps their current spate of costly jackassery will inspire the voters back home to take them to the electoral woodshed!