This is why I don't watch TV news

And this is also why I no longer harbor any hope for mankind's future.
And why I am never, ever going out of my house again ever as long as I live. Ever.

I made the mistake of turning on the TV this evening at news time. It's generally not a paying proposition at any time, but news time is definitely a losing one. I don' t know what got into me.

Local news channel 17, first story up: a 6-year-old may be tried as an adult for shooting his grandfather. Come on. Please. That's the news story - the lead news story. A 6-year-old kid has shot his grandfather - in the armpit, they manage to tell us, but not whether it was accidental or intentional. Doesn't matter, because the news is that he could be tried as an adult in Missouri courts. The news anchor asks the reporter in the field how this could happen since state laws set the age at which someone can be tried as an adult at 12.

Twelve years old, for god's sake! A 12-year-old who commits a crime can be tried as an adult!

Oh well, what am I saying? Our nation's leaders who are legally considered adult, and chronologically certainly measure up, have no more reasoning maturity than the average 12-year-old.

What is happening in this world? Soldiers are frisking and tying up little kids in Iraq. They're bulldozing and shooting them in Iraq and Palestine. Supposedly literate news people are talking about trying a 6-year-old child as an adult.

(But! We will not permit a fetus to be aborted under any circumstance! And I tried twice to link pictures of the laughing, celebrating old white men as their dimwitted, disgusting leader signed a bill to make sure of that, even in a case where the mother's life might be jeopardized by bringing the child to term, but it made me so sick to look at them that I changed my mind both times.)

What in heaven's name is going on?

The reporter in the field informs us that, according to some judge, there are exceptions to the 12-year-old ruling. We don't get to hear what those exceptions are, but we are left assuming that this case of the 6-year-old who shot his grandpa would fall under them.

Okay. I know that this kid is not going to be tried as an adult. But WTF?!? Why are they even reporting the possibility? Why is that the story?

No. Never mind.

I don't want to know.

I'm going right now to at least lock my doors to keep the world outside.

And windows. Pray it works.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

(Oh, cripes, maybe I shoulda bought some plastic and duct tape. Maybe it's an airborne virus that makes grown people go incomprehensibly senseless.)