I kid you not.
Posted on 11/09/2006 4:03:16 AM PST by Chi-townChief
According to some who knew the man who set himself on fire along the Kennedy Expressway last Friday, it wasn't a suicide. They're calling it the act of a martyr.
The man who doused himself with gasoline and lit himself near a 25-foot-tall sculpture titled "Flame of the Millennium" was Malachi Ritscher, 52, a local musician and anti-war activist.
The medical examiner ID'd Ritscher on Wednesday through medical records. Friends were already convinced it was him. One admirer of Ritscher sent me an e-mail with the Subject Header: "It was Martrydom, Not Mental Illness."
"Do you remember the Buddhist monks who publicly burned themselves in Saigon to make an anti-war statement during the Vietnam War?" he wrote. "Something similar happened in Chicago ... [The] man who set himself aflame ... [was making] a powerful anti-war statement ... delivered just as America was making an important electoral decision about the war in Iraq.
"Not all people who kill themselves are mentally ill. Most major religious traditions, including Buddhism and Christianity, teach that death is something to be welcomed. And death in the service of a greater cause, like peace, makes you a martyr, not mentally ill."
I'm not so sure the two things are mutually exclusive.
Remembering the man Ritscher apparently penned his own obituary and posted it on his Web site. In the third person, he says he was born Mark David Ritscher in Dickensen, N.D. in 1954. He moved to Chicago in the early 1980s and changed his name to Malachi. "He was the modern-day version of the 'renaissance man,' except instead of attaining success in several fields, he consistently failed, and didn't worry too much about it," says the obit, which mentions a number of Ritscher's interests and activities, including jazz, photography, poetry, painting watercolors, concocting a hot sauce recipe, working as a licensed stationary engineer and collecting everything from books to knives to glass eyes.
"[Ritscher] participated passionately in the anti-war and free speech movement," says the obit. "He was arrested at a protest on March 20, 2003, and spent the night in jail ..."
There's also mention of a son "from whom he was estranged," and two grandchildren.
Parting words In addition to the obit, Ritscher left a long farewell note on his Web site. "My actions should be self-explanatory, and since in our self-obsessed culture words seldom match the deed, writing a mission statement would seem questionable," he wrote.
"So judge me by my actions. Maybe some will be scared enough to wake from their walking dream state -- am I therefore a martyr or a terrorist? I would prefer to be thought of as a 'spiritual warrior.' Our so-called leaders are the real terrorists in the world today, responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden ...
"When I hear about our young men and women who are sent off to war in the name of God and country, and who give up their lives for no rational cause at all, my heart is crushed. What has happened to my country?
"I too love God and country, and feel called upon to serve ..."
Ritscher describes an incident in 2002 in which he claims to have had a knife as he passed within close range of Donald Rumsfeld. To his "deep shame," he didn't attack. There is also discussion of God's role in the universe, the two-party system, and the Bush administration. Throughout he comes across as intelligent, passionate, bitter, angry, disoriented -- and disturbed.
Brendan Burke was a friend of Ritscher's.
"Malachi was an incredible and gentle soul," Burke said in an e-mail to me. "He was very well known in the jazz community in Chicago. He was completely dedicated to preserving a record of the Chicago avant-garde jazz scene. He would show up at jazz shows at the Empty Bottle or other venues and set up his mobile recording rig, once or twice a week, every week ... Malachi would drop off a recording [with the artist, but] he'd never take any money. He just wanted this music to be documented, and he recorded thousands of shows.
"We know Malachi was deeply committed to the anti-war movement, but he had also suffered from depression and other difficulties from time to time. We'll all miss him terribly and are really at a loss right now."
My sincere sympathies to all who knew Ritscher. But with all great respect, if he thought setting himself on fire and ending his life in Chicago would change anyone's mind about the war in Iraq, his last gesture on this planet was his saddest and his most futile.
May he find peace now.
mailto:rroeper@suntimes.com
Well, that's one less Demo vote next election.
I encourage other Lefties to follow Malachi's lead.
"Another hate-filled looney..."
Yep.
Red Foreman had a name for people like this, DUMBASS!!!
Bravo! Burn in Hell!
Here's your sign!
Just DARN!
Somebody had a barbecue, and didn't invite me! :)
He did this before the election. The joke's on him.
Yep. Only among leftists can those wielding a knife and contemplating murder be described as "a gentle soul."
Just a little bit of modern-day performance art. :)
""Malachi was an incredible and gentle soul,""
And thats why he chose to set himself on fire? I pray we don't have to many more of these 'gentle souls'.
Ya know, I've been thinking about this. Now chances are this individual would still have offed himself one way or another. But do you think he would have chosen this particular method if he had not been indoctrinated with that lie that today passes for "history"?
Burn in life. Burn in hell too?
I'm inspired. I want to do the same thing in order to make my views clear. Now I just need to find an anti-war activist to set on fire....
Perhaps we could persuade some Congressional Republican leaders, those who've led the big-government spending spree, to emulate the immolate?
Damn, disqualified from a Darwin.
I kid you not.
Just a dead psycho crispy critter for his cause and no one cares
Sincerely, THE GENE POOL
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