RIH, Charles Manson

I was 18 when Charles Manson sent a crew of his followers to a house outside L.A. where had formerly lived a man who was a son of Doris Day.  The man had gotten Manson mad sometime previously, for not taking him seriously as a musician.  Although the man, Terry Melcher, no longer lived in the house, Manson told his crew to go there and kill all the residents.

Which they did.  They followed up a night or so later by committing a second murder spree, this time at a house next door to someone with whom Manson had a connection, and this time with Manson actually present.

Charles Milles Manson, who died this week at 83 in prison, left us seemingly with no more redeeming qualities than he had on that day in August 1969.

The Manson murders (and there were others besides the two sprees that month) remain to this day one of the memorable events in the lives of any of us over 60.  I lived in northern Virginia while the DC-area sniper was out shooting random people at gas stations and elsewhere a few years back, including at a gas station I often used.  I can tell you that we made conscious decisions not to be out, not to be too visible while that was going on, until the guys got caught.

It was eerily reminiscent of the time after the murders, but before Manson and his people were caught, even though they were in the opposite part of the country and I was in college in Boston most of that time.  You looked over your shoulder; you slept less than soundly.

I was driving around yesterday when the news on the radio mentioned that Manson was dead.  Now, if there is a TV special on the murders, you can bet that I would record and watch it, same as I would anything to do with the JFK assassination or a couple other events I can't get enough of or, for a positive example, anything on the 2004 Red Sox.  I read "Helter Skelter", the book written by the prosecutor of the Manson cases, five times if I read it once.

But when I heard the news, I thought a bit about it.  Manson was in his mid-thirties when the murders happened, and had spent much of his life behind bars before that.  Raised by an abusive aunt and uncle, he learned to trust no one, and started his criminal activities before he was ten.  He also learned how to persuade people to follow him -- it is pretty scary to see recordings of interviews with him later in life, and listen to the way he talked, and realize how he could get confused people to follow him.

The left is always trying to excuse people's actions because of their upbringing (I'll have to give some thought to why that might be the case, although it probably relates to their moral relativism).  In Manson's case, his upbringing was atrocious, and he became a criminal as a seemingly normal part of his pre-teen life.  That he was a criminal by nature is not surprising at all; it would have been surprising had he found a way to straighten out and fly right, barring a religious epiphany.

I didn't reach any conclusion in my thoughts, but I did start to wonder how you build someone from infancy as an untrusting and amoral person, fail to correct them when they steal and assault others at nine or ten, and then blame them for what they become -- in Manson's case, a career criminal and then a serial killer.  Manson himself, as I now recall, referred to himself as something that "society made."

Unlike the left, though, I understand that there are societal norms and mores; that there is an unassailable presence of a right and wrong that is to be defended.  Murder of the innocent is a wrong in any case.  No matter what execrable background Manson had, by 35 he had long since learned, just by virtue of living in American society, that what he was going to do with the victims in August 1969 was wrong, that making murderers out of those he had put under his spell was wrong, and that he would be punished for it.

It is easy for me to shake off any thought of excuses.  His upbringing led him to discard morality, but his understanding of that morality makes him guilty and allows us to regard him as the evil being he became.

Rot in Hades, Mr. Manson.  RIH.  No one will miss you.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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