Daft Old Duffer’s been busy on the keyboard this weekend. Ed
Am I alone in feeling a sneaky sympathy for the murderer Raoul Moat?
Yes, I know he had a history of violence and yes, I know he shot down a man in cold blood.
But what worries me is how he came to this state where the only way out he could see was to kill and then commit suicide.
He seems to have been a normal enough child, so what set him on the path of body building, steroids and macho swaggering?
Muscles
Did he think, as so many young men do, that muscles and aggressive behaviour would bring him admiration, from men and women?
And when, finding that instead, his carefully fostered physical appearance provoked reactions of fear, did he think, well, to hell with them then, now I’ll really show them?
Did his many brushes with the police result directly from this immature posturing rather than from any actual criminal act?
Certainly his final act of violence seems to have been provoked not by any such criminal intent but because he found his girl consorting with another man.
The act of a lonely, in-love man shocked by his pain and reacting in the only way he knew.
Significant
I find it significant that, on the run, he declared he had no intention of harming anyone outside the police that he regarded as his unjust persecutors, I think that was a cry for a lonely person pleading for some understanding, some help.
Saying, in effect – see, I’m not an animal – I’m normal. I don’t want to hurt anyone except those who want to hurt me.
And when that cry went unanswered – even by his own mother – again the reaction – alright then, so you’re all against me. You’d all better watch out in that case.
Desperate man
Let us not forget this desperate man must have had opportunity after opportunity to shoot a policeman.
But, despite his threats to do just that, the only person he shot in the end was himself.
