What is courage? - Was Omar Mateen courageous?

[Ntwadumela]

Courage in my honest opinion is the absolute most important trait a person could have and the one I value the most. Omar Mateen was not at all a courageous man. He was an absolute coward who went to a club full of defenseless people and opened fire on them. I also believe that the most cowardly thing a person could use in a fight is using the advantage of numbers to gang up on a helpless victim. That too is absolutely disgusting. Life is a test of wills, and without courage, we'd all fail.

 

[DuskEngine]

Precisely.

He was not a brave man. He took a machine gun into a crowd of helpless, unknowing people and started shooting. A machine gun fires hundreds of bullets a minute. How the hell were any of them able to defend themselves? Or even know what was going on before the blood and brains started spraying about? A warrior, a brave man, fights against a powerful foe. A coward targets helpless people and tells himself he's brave when not a single one has the ability to fight him back.

He called 911 beforehand. He did not attempt to flee from the police. He understood that undertaking the act would likely result in his death, and he went through with it anyway. If there were 0 consequences for a violent act beyond 'whatever your victim can throw at you', then yeah he would have been a coward, but he understood the retribution it would bring down and did it anyway.

If he believed he was going to be punished by society for what he did but immediately rewarded after his death, it wasn't courage because he was making a rational, if delusional choice to flee punishment in favor of personal pleasure.

I'd say you're confusing rationality for courage. Undertaking a harrowing and terrible task out of a sense of duty or in anticipation of a greater reward still requires you to swallow your fear.

The question of whether it would have been braver to surrender to the police and face justice is an interesting one, and raises the question of whether courage is something one musters in the face of animal terror or in the face of sustained punishment, shame and dishonour.

 

[glass_houses]

If he had the expectation of a proper trial and not being subject to torture and potentially giving away other terrorists attacks in the process then I would agree with you but it only is about the suicide and not the rest of the act.

He didn't give the 49 odd defenseless and helpless people he trapped in the dark and sprayed with a machine gun a fair go. Why would he deserve a fair trial?

He. Was. A. Coward.

He didn't fight a noble fight. He found a barrel, filled it with so much fish that it was like a Tetris game made of scales and threw a stick of dynamite into it.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

He didn't give the 49 odd defenseless and helpless people he trapped in the dark and sprayed with a machine gun a fair go. Why would he deserve a fair trial?

Because you don't get to just arbitrarily decide that someone deserves or does not deserve a fair trial and if you think that is how it works then you don't understand due process

 

[glass_houses]

Because you don't get to just arbitrarily decide that someone deserves or does not deserve a fair trial and if you think that is how it works then you don't understand due process

I'm not American. I couldn't give a flying fuck about due process.

Also, I'd like to point out that while the sick fuck did call the coppers before he started slaughtering people, he took some live ones as hostages when the cops arrived. Usually, the purpose of hostages is to use them as shields so that no one can shoot you without killing them.

If you don't like the fish in the barrel metaphor, may I offer a different one? If someone finds a building crammed full of people and lacking fire exits, and calls the fire brigade before setting fire to it, are they still a good citizen for reporting the fire?

 

[DuskEngine]

I'm not American. I couldn't give a flying fuck about due process.

Does your nation's legal system derive from the Magna Carta in some fashion? If not, how is Sharia law working out for you?

 

[glass_houses]

Does your nation's legal system derive from the Magna Carta in some fashion? If not, how is Sharia law working out for you?

Tell you what; I'll answer that question when you tell me how taking helpless hostages as living meat shields so the cops can't shoot you counts as being courageous.

 

[DuskEngine]

Tell you what; I'll answer that question when you tell me how taking helpless hostages as living meat shields so the cops can't shoot you counts as being courageous.

Taking hostages leads me to believe that either
a) He was fucking stupid in addition to being vile and thought there was a way he was going to walk out of there, or
b) Intended to sow more fear and uncertainty among the survivors and law enforcement.

Whatever it is, that in particular isn't brave by any stretch of the term.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Tell you what; I'll answer that question when you tell me how taking helpless hostages as living meat shields so the cops can't shoot you counts as being courageous.

It doesn't, only initiating the plans and possibly the suicide by cop at the end were courageous. The other things were not but nothing he did was an act of cowardice (although several were acts of evil)

It is a form of moral cowardice to deny someone a fair trial just because they are suspected of a very severe crime though