Zoom Chron Blog

Earlier today I teased context to a video clip I recorded from Thursday’s wild Mineral County Commissioner’s meeting where the usual methods of keeping Federal investigations and Confidential Criminal Justice Information insulated from public disclosure were thrown out the window by outgoing Sheriff, Ryan Funke, and his “specialized” LEO lawyer, Lance Jasper.

What is going on here?

If you’re Deb Jackson, who represents the Mineral County Attorney’s Office, what’s going on is an effort to obtain a copy of a contract proving a deal exists between the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office and a Kansas-based company, called ESU Pursuits, to provide six vehicles to the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office for $170,000 dollars (this dollar amount represents half the order, so just 3 vehicles–thank you for the clarification from a reader).

But this company, counters Funke and his LEO lawyer, Lance Jasper, is entangled in an FBI investigation, so HOW DARE Jackson subpoena Sheriff Funke AND Shawn Smalley, the former County Commissioner who resigned from his position just before questions about this deal started getting asked months ago.

Publicly available information that one can glean from online searches is one thing, but privileged information about knowledge of an FBI investigation is something else, which is why I figured an attempt to give Lance Jasper a call would be worth rolling the dice on.

I mean, it’s not like he would be dumb enough to call me back and talk about what he just blabbed about in a public during a County Commissioners meeting, right?

Right?

I called Reep, Bell and Jasper to confirm if Lance Jasper was still employed by this law firm, since I heard it was no longer in existence. A woman named Jessica answered and, instead of telling me that Lance Jasper is running a NEW law firm now called LPJ Law, she massaged the truth into a lie-adjacent omission that this new law firm exists by simply saying “yes” to my inquiry. I then gave her my name and number, not expecting the special LEO lawyer to call me back less than an hour later.

The 8 minutes I spent talking to the raspy-sounding Lance Jasper were concerning for reasons that will become glaringly apparent.

I told Jasper that, from what I had just watched online, it appeared he and the Sheriff (and former County Commissioner) were turning a simple request for records into a public spectacle for reasons that made no sense, so I asked which FBI office was involved.

Did I get a clear answer? No, Jasper mentioned “Monte”, as in Monte Shaide, but then said the investigation was being handled by the FBI in another state.

Hmmm.

After about two or three minutes I started thinking this whole conversation with Lance Jasper wasn’t making sense, so I asked a very direct question:

“When is the last time you had a drink of alcohol?” I asked Lance Jasper point blank, half-expecting him to hang up on me immediately. Instead, he kept going, but without answering my question, so I asked him again more emphatically.

“I’m not a public figure,” he said, dodging my question again, to which I pointed out he was representing one, and that there were rumors about his alcohol abuse. I got another refusal to answer and started wondering if maybe it wasn’t alcohol, but something that could keep a person up for 2 or 3 days.

I pressed Lance Jasper on my knowledge of his previous law firm’s role in the parity pay litigation against Missoula County on behalf of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, then hit him with my reporting that David Barsotti had allegedly died recently.

“I didn’t know David was dead,” Lance said. Do I believe him? No.

After Jasper agreed with me about LEO corruption in Western Montana, giving me (unsolicited) the name of a client he represented in Ravalli County I should look into, it was ME who ended the conversation.

WTF is going on here?

I’d ask Lance’s partner, Jenna Penielle Lyons Dubler-Houser, but she’s probably still recovering from Burning Man.

Tomorrow Lance Jasper has assured the Mineral County Commissioners he’s going to bring the contract for the Sheriff vehicles in order to account for the $170,000. I reached out to a few officials, including leaving a voicemail on Ryan Funke’s direct line to let him know how much I enjoyed chatting with his special lawyer.

Exactly how special, well, that remains to be seen.

If you appreciate my coverage of what happens in our neighboring county please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. I’m going to keep a close eye on this story as it develops because I think there’s more to discover, and it ties directly to the judge who enjoys nibbling on nothing burgers.

UPDATE: sounds like the Friday meeting will NOT be happening.

Thanks for reading!

Before I read this article I thought it was illegal to publicly masturbate around children, but now, thanks to a female prosecutor in Florida, I understand that ALL THINGS THAT ARE WRONG ARE NOT ILLEGAL.

A Soros-backed Florida prosecutor told the public that a man pleasuring himself on a park bench in front of children was “wrong,” then insisted it is not a crime.

Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell used a press conference to defend her office’s refusal to charge Kevin Chapman, 61, after his arrest at Kit Land Nelson Park in Apopka.

A father and his two-year-old were at the splash pad. Witnesses, park staff, photos and video put Chapman on a bench with his hand in his shorts, facing the children, for minutes. The park manager said his shorts dropped when he stood up.

When negative attention descended on this female prosecutor she did what any woman in a position of power has the power to do: she cast herself as a victim of men, specifically the Florida AG and Governor:

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier put it in a formal letter: her office not only skipped pretrial detention, it declined to charge him at all and called the case “not suitable for prosecution.”

“Central Florida deserves better than a state attorney who prioritizes the guilty over protecting the innocent,” Uthmeier said. “She gave this guy a free walk in the park, and now other kids are in jeopardy of having a tragic incident happen to them.“

Worrell’s counter was that the toddler supposedly did not clock what was happening, and that no other adult saw the genitals clearly enough. In other words, a man can sit in a children’s park and finish the job so long as the two-year-old is too young to give a courtroom speech about it.

She then turned the argument into a grievance about Gov. Ron DeSantis, who suspended her in 2023 for dereliction of duty. Voters put her back. The children at the splash pad did not get a vote.

“It is clear that the underlying intention here is to unjustly remove me from office, yet again,” she said. Of Uthmeier: “He struts and shouts as if volume can mask ignorance, but all he’s proven is that he’s a punchline in a job that demands serious leadership.”

Closer to home, Missoula’s past “leadership” in the County Attorney’s office also had a soft spot for criminals, like the drug dealer who stabbed a young man to death in “self defense” when his drug deal went wrong in a Missoula restaurant bathroom.

How did Pabst accomplish this feat of not prosecuting a killer for killing someone? I’m still not exactly sure, but it had something to do with fear and what a “reasonable” person might do to protect their drugs when someone starts hitting you in the head.

For more context, here’s how NBC Montana reported this at the time:

We began to look at case of a young man stabbed to death in a Missoula restroom on New Year’s when his family asked us to help answer their questions.

The attacker, Joshua Paniagua, admitted he did it. But prosecutors didn’t charge him with homicide for stabbing Benjamin Mousso, 18. The reason — simply put, Paniagua claimed self-defense.

…

Prosecutors later charged Paniagua with two felonies — tampering with physical evidence and criminal distribution of dangerous drugs — and one misdemeanor.

Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst explained it this way, “We are bound ethically to follow the law and can only file charges where probable cause is met and where we are likely to obtain a conviction.”

First off, this idea that prosecutors only bring charges “where we are likely to obtain a conviction” is total bullshit. The example that immediately comes to mind is the prosecution of Brandon Bryant for intimidation when SOMEONE ELSE sent City Council edited videos of Bryant’s recorded speech.

It’s possible, though, that I’m biased and/or NOT the kind of reasonable person who would be “afraid” if my meth-for-weed drug deal went south.

But don’t tell that to Kirsten Pabst:

Paniagua admitted he stabbed Mousso four times.

The charging document claims, while Paniagua’s conflicting story made investigators question the “appropriateness of his actions and the level of force he used in response to Mousso’s attack … Paniagua maintained he ‘had no choice in the stabbing.’”

“We are looking at the reasonable person standard,” said Pabst.

Montana law specifically allows someone, in this case Paniagua, to use force, including deadly force, to prevent a robbery.

Here’s how that statute reads: 45-3-102.Use of force in defense of person. A person is justified in the use of force or threat to use force against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that the conduct is necessary for self-defense or the defense of another against the other person’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, the person is justified in the use of force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm only if the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm to the person or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

Not long after Missoula’s “reasonable” prosecutors sided with the reasonable drug dealer, the reasonable drug dealer “freaked out” and less-reasonably suggested in charging documents that his mother was possessed by the devil.

Don’t worry, the drug dealer had devised a very reasonable “torture chamber” in which to reasonably deal with his devil-possessed mother.

Paniagua’s mother called 911 around 11 p.m. on Saturday to report her son was “freaking out,” stating he had screwed all of the doors shut and saying his mother was “possessed by the devil,” Missoula County prosecutors said in charging documents. The woman was calling from a neighbor’s house, where she had fled after he “came at her with a hammer,” according to court documents. Paniagua had similar episodes on previous occasions, typically induced by alcohol and drug use, she told authorities.

When law enforcement from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department arrived, the woman told a sergeant Paniagua had made a “torture chamber” in the home and said she was fearful when he had brandished the hammer toward her. Charging documents do not further describe the chamber.

Not coincidentally, it was around this time that I started wondering if perhaps Missoula was NOT being led by reasonable people. In fact, I began suspecting they might be either deeply corrupt or dangerously retarded.

While I could see that this was dangerously insane reasoning six years ago, I failed to appreciate how declaring unreasonable people reasonable would impact my own life and threaten the very fabric of society, but here we are.

A year ago today a sizable portion of Americans found it more than reasonable that someone would want to assassinate Charlie Kirk because of his politics. How many of those people also condemned Kyle Rittenhouse for reasonably defending himself with lethal force against violent rioters? How can those two things exist in the same brain?

Unlike Pabst, who DEFENDED her reasonable killer instead of prosecuting him, prosecutors in Wisconsin had no problem ignoring Rittenhouse’s reasonable fear of bodily harm in order to charge and fully prosecute him for murder, which he was eventually acquitted of.

Is our criminal justice system professionally objective or politically and/or hormonally schizophrenic?

To continue pursuing answers to these tough questions, resources DO tend to help, so to help me and my serious LACK of resources, online donations can be made here, at my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

Today I’m going to reference several nurses and one celebrated male incel shooter as I provide some historical context on the cultural shift underway after the Lindsay Clancy mistrial was declared last week.

The claims now flying in the court of public opinion from members of the jury frame the “very arrogant” rogue holdout as being impervious to what anybody had to say, including nurses serving on the jury.

Female jurors from the Lindsay Clancy trial criticized the lone male juror who opposed a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict.

One juror said:

“He was very arrogant. He really didn’t take anything that anybody said.”

She claimed he disregarded information provided by nurses serving on the jury.

Another juror said:

“He admitted he had reasonable doubt, and I started filling out the forms. I was so excited.”

She added that he later said:

“But I’m still not gonna say that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.”

A third juror questioned whether he should be described as “rogue” but acknowledged the frustration inside the deliberation room.

So a nurse serving on the jury in a case where the defendant was also a nurse? Maybe we should learn more about the experiences of nurses and how they handle conflict in the workplace.

As surprising as it may be, healthcare professionals don’t always treat each other with kindness and respect. In fact, research suggests that lateral violence in healthcare is a serious issue. Also referred to as horizontal violence or bullying, lateral violence is defined as non-physical, aggressive, hostile, and/or harmful behavior between coworkers. While individual acts of lateral violence can appear relatively harmless, they create a toxic environment that takes a toll on employees’ morale, hindering the success of the healthcare institutions for which they work.

…

While anyone can engage in lateral violence, it is typically perpetrated by individuals who view themselves as superior to other members of their team. Organizational managers and directors are the most frequent perpetrators of lateral violence against nurses, making it difficult for lower-level nurses particularly, to report their abuse. However, nurses with the same job title also commit lateral violence against their peers. In these cases, it is typically the seasoned nurses who victimize those who are new to the profession or new to their organization.

For anyone who remembers the Ken Kesey novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched wasn’t known for her nurturing bedside manner. Instead, this is how the Wikipedia entry describes her:

Nurse Ratched is the head administrative nurse at the Salem State Hospital, a mental institution where she exercises near-absolute power over the patients’ access to medications, privileges, and basic necessities such as food and toiletries. She capriciously revokes these privileges whenever a patient displeases her. Her superiors turn a blind eye because she maintains order, keeping the patients from acting out, either through antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs or her own brand of psychotherapy, which consists mostly of humiliating patients into doing her bidding. Her tyrannical rule and her cruel personality stem from her time as an army nurse during World War II.

Nurse Ratched is just a fictional character, one might say, so why bring up a fictional character as an example when the REAL nurses on the jury were just trying to convey their expertise to the arrogant holdout who weirdly thought the premeditated murder of three innocent children should lead to some sort of punishment instead of sparking a solidarity movement because so many women apparently also want to murder their children.

So, what could be wrong about bringing the nursing expertise into the jury room?

The incel shooter I mentioned at the beginning of this post is worth bringing into our examination of nursing because there’s a strange irony lurking in his backstory that isn’t included in the movie version of what happened in Montreal in 1989 at the engineering school he shot up.

Since Hollywood’s hottest director, Denis Villeneuve, didn’t think the killer’s backstory helped develop his admittedly feminine-centric worldview, I emphasized the elements of the shooter’s backstory that I found relevant for a podcast episode (not out yet) I recorded Monday with Thomas from PsyOp Cinema.

After the divorce became final in 1976, the Lépine children, then aged 12 and 9, returned to live with their mother, who had been promoted to director of nursing at a Montreal hospital. In 1977 the family moved to a house purchased in the middle-class Montreal suburb of Pierrefonds. Gamil attended junior high and high school, where he was described as a quiet student who obtained average to above average marks. He developed a close friendship with another boy, but he did not fit in with other students. Taunted as an Arab because of his name, as a teenager he legally changed it to “Marc Lépine”, citing his hatred of his father as the reason for taking his mother’s surname. Lépine was uncommunicative and showed little emotion. He suffered from low self-esteem, exacerbated by his chronic acne. Family relations remained difficult as his younger sister Nadia publicly humiliated him about his acne and his lack of girlfriends. Lépine fantasized about her death, and on one occasion made a mock grave for her. He was overjoyed when in 1981 she was placed in a group home because of her delinquent behaviour and drug abuse.

Seeking a good male role model for Lépine, his mother arranged for a Big Brother. For two years, the experience proved positive as Lépine, often with his best friend, enjoyed the time with photography and moto-cross motorcycles. However, in 1979, the meetings ceased abruptly when the Big Brother was detained on suspicion of molesting young boys. Both Lépine and his Big Brother denied that any molestation had occurred.

Instead of having any of this narrative sully the director’s vision for bringing this shooting to the Big Screen, it’s totally omitted so the female survivor can say this about her unborn child at the end:

“…if I have a boy, I will teach him how to love; if I have a girl, I will tell her the world is hers”

Human babies enter this world with no concept of gender–that’s formed culturally by mothers AND fathers as a baby matures–so if understanding where things go wrong is something we, as a society, actually want to do, we can’t keep doing what we are doing, as a society.

Put more simply, let’s make Nurse Ratched fiction again!

Thanks for reading.

I have a unique take on the recent “AI Summit” at the University of Montana, which was reported to be a flop for young people in attendance, according to this Missoulian article:

Students at the University of Montana didn’t exactly seem excited about the promise of artificial intelligence at the Montana AI Summit this week.

Even the summit organizers acknowledged as much, posting a note to the event’s website on Thursday that admitted the summit’s panels and presentations weren’t relevant to everyone in the audience.

“Some sessions went over people’s heads. Others were too basic for people already building. A few sounded like a pitch when a small business owner needed something they could use Monday morning,” the note read. “We heard that. We’ll do better next time.”

After reading the article, then comparing the Missoulian’s report with what was reported to me by my source in attendance (who said similar things about the age gap and missing enthusiasm), I’ve got a theory about why a similar summit on campus in January had a better vibe:

That wariness stood in contrast to the mood at a similar panel in January, where students seemed more open to the new technology.

At this week’s summit, energy and excitement about the possibilities of AI were notably absent among students at the university-hosted event. 

Could something be getting lost in translation between the rhetoric of technology being a useful tool, and the actual application of it in people’s lives? Maybe it has something to do with the apparent campaign to say DATA CENTER BAD? Is that what this comment from Jason Neiffer is implying by referencing “bullies”?

“I think right now there is a lot of bullying of people that use AI a lot, or there’s an immediate question of the output,” he said. “I think that should always be, especially if we’re talking about professional output, a judgment of the quality of something, and not the onus of which it was created.”

Jobs in education are tough, he said, and if there’s a place for educators to use these tool sets, “we absolutely should.”

Before I pivot to Buddhism in order to speculate why someone from a Buddhist retreat center would be attending an AI Summit, here’s how one of those young people framed the problematic “roll-out” of AI:

Grace Smith, who is also a Game Design graduate student, said the way AI has been rolled out, being integrated into many digital products automatically, has also impacted the public’s perception of AI as a tool.

“There’s almost a sour taste in young people’s mouths because of that — being forced to use something, versus being given a toolkit and the options, are way different,” she said.

Coercion isn’t a good strategy for integrating AI into every facet of our lives for the same reason coercion isn’t an effective means of forcing a religious conversion, but if someone WANTS to seek out new methods of achieving balance and peace in their lives, like using a meditation app, then why not empower them to do so?

There are now thousands of meditation apps available worldwide, the top 10 of which have been collectively downloaded more than 300 million times. What’s more, early work on these digital meditation platforms shows that even relatively brief usage can lead to benefits, from reduced depression, anxiety, and stress to improved insomnia symptoms.

“Meditation apps, such as Calm and Headspace, have been enormously popular in the commercial market,” said J. David Creswell, a health psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University and lead author of a review paper on meditation apps, published today in the journal American Psychologist. “What they’re doing now is not only engaging millions of users every day, but they’re also creating new scientific opportunities and challenges.”

The connection between technology, spirituality, and the billionaire class was mockingly framed in a movie called Mountainhead. In this “fictional” depiction of tech billionaires hanging out at an alpine estate in the mountains, Jason Schwartzman’s character is the poorest of the friends, and he annoys them by constantly pitching his meditation app.

Hmmm.

The poorest of them all is Soups (Jason Schwartzman), the owner of a meditation app. His net worth is a mere five hundred million, a soup-kitchen-level poverty in the realm of billionaires (thus the nickname, Soups). Jesse Armstrong has a talent for exploring the pecking order of the rich, and I was reminded of a Succession episode where a character described an income of five million dollars as a nightmare: “Can’t retire, not worth it to work.” Here Armstrong turbocharges the same sensibility applied to a different fractal space. The numbers are different, but the dynamic is the same. Soups can’t crack the b-nut — that is, raise a billion dollars for his app — and it gnaws him.

With all this in mind, let’s take a closer look at the Namchak Foundation, since someone from Namchak thought the AI Summit was a useful summit to attend for Buddhists teaching non-attachment to the material world.

Long time readers of this blog might recognize “Lama Tsomo” as Linda Pritzker, the Buddhist LARPer who helped inspire my decision to write a book I’m calling The Great JuBu Karma Con: How A Judaic/Buddhist Death Pact Took Root In Big Sky Country. Now, let’s take a look at how the person behind the Buddha Garden in Arlee, Montana, is pushing her new retreat center near Hot Springs.

If you ask ME, the Dalai Lama is always smiling because he gets CIA money and can therefore suck boy-tongue anytime he wants without consequence. That’s why the 990 form connection to the “Academy for Love of Learning” is so concerning to me.

The late Gloria Steinem connects to the Epstein network through her relationship with Stanley Pottinger, a relationship described in detail by Johnny Vedmore on the Monica Perez show.

It’s no secret Jeffrey Epstein had two major centers of operations (among others) in New Mexico and Manhattan, so isn’t it interesting that the Academy for Love of Learning is based in Santa Fe, with a “below market” apartment in Manhattan?

Coincidence?

It’s also no secret that the “Pritzker” name is ALL OVER the Epstein files, with deep ties to the Chicago/Democrat/Obama political machine, which heavily influences Democrats here in Montana, especially those residing in Missoula. Is this why Missoula became a safe space for an Epstein-adjacent, Berlin-born banker by the name of Klaus von Stutterheim?

The influence of Judaic thought, along with an occult branch of spiritualism known as “Theosophy”, on modern Buddhism is also important to consider, since it goes back to the religious showdown at the 1893 Chicago World Fair, which I cover in detail in my book. I also just recently made the connection between the President of that time period, Grover Cleveland, and Montana’s Russ Cleveland, who is currently pitching Initiative 194 to get “dark money” out of politics.

Interesting.

For additional context on the Epstein network’s appreciation for Buddhism and Tibet, here are some relevant files from my cursory DOJ search:

To wrap up today’s post, allow me to piggyback on the words of Chief AI Officer and Deputy Chief Information Officer, Christopher Tarabochia, who is quoted in the Missoulian article saying this:

“At the end of the day, we’re on a learning journey together,” he said. “By no surprise, these things are called large language models. … Maybe we’re actually learning a new language.”

If we humans were simply “learning a new language” then nothing would be proprietary about how that language is interfacing with human minds and human-built systems, but that’s not the case. Instead, what I think we are seeing is a new form of eugenics intended to cull the human herd for the long-term benefit of a psychopath class actively seeking to become TRANShuman.

I hope the karma-peddling JuBu spiritualists prove me wrong.

In the spirit of enhancing this learning journey we’re all on, my final educational data point about Namchak is what the name means (hat-tip to the source who put this data point on my radar, because I think it’s significant):

If you know, you know.

Thanks for reading!

The survivor in this AI-rendered image wasn’t receiving a medal in the real version of this picture because, even if I had a survivor medal to give him, I doubt Dale would accept it.

But he deserves one.

While I knew Dale was a tough bastard who spent time on the streets of Missoula after coming to Big Sky country from Orlando, what I did not know about Dale was how he refused direct orders in 1975 amidst the chaos of American troops exiting Vietnam.

“We were ordered to leave the kids behind,” Dale told me, referring to young orphans at an Vietnamese orphanage. “But we knew what would happen to them if we did–the kids would be raped, murdered, decapitated, and their heads would be put on wood spikes, so we pooled our money and paid some helicopter pilots to evacuate them.”

For saving children from a horrific fate, Dale and the other soldiers who refused direct orders were demoted a rank. Now Dale deeply despises the US military, which is why he never sought out the VA benefits he’s owed.

Dale’s father had a VERY short career playing baseball for the Phillies before the war. “Look him up,” Dale said, so I did.

Dale Eldon “Nubs” Jones (December 17, 1918 – November 8, 1980) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher. Jones played in two games for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1941. His only decision occurred in an 8–6 loss to the New York Giants on September 23, 1941.

During World War II, Jones served in the United States Navy in the Pacific. He died on November 8, 1980, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Dale also wanted me to look up an old actor with the same name, since Dale Robertson was a family friend and threw one hell of a wake for his Dad.

Dayle Lymoine Robertson (July 14, 1923 – February 26, 2013) was an American actor best known for his starring roles on television. He played the roving investigator Jim Hardie in the television series Tales of Wells Fargo and railroad owner Ben Calhoun in Iron Horse. He often was presented as a deceptively thoughtful and modest Western hero. From 1968 to 1970, Robertson was the fourth and final host of the anthology series Death Valley Days. Described by Time magazine in 1959 as “probably the best horseman on television”, for most of his career, Robertson played in Western films and television shows—well over 60 titles in all.

The more recent data point I learned about Dale, though, is interesting when you consider our cultural moment with the Lindsey Clancy mistrial.

Dale was a juror for the Beau Donaldson rape case, which, for those who don’t know, was a pretty big deal for this little college mountain town, though an outsider who read the book ten years later asked on Reddit recently…where’s the impact?

If/when my book comes out, I put Kirsten Pabst’s post-Krakauer career into the context it deserves, using her own words and national efforts to re-cast prosecutors into victims of vicarious trauma to show how the lessons learned locally were all about CONTROLLING NARRATIVES in order to prevent local authority from ever experiencing the terror of actual exposure, especially the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office–an entity never closely scrutinized by the Federal investigation that ensued.

The cultural influence of the University, and the unintended consequence of killing the humanities program on campus, is something I will be writing about soon from a very interesting angle because I want to document some of my most recent research for an interview I have scheduled later this week. More on that later.

Returning to Reddit, according to an anonymous commenter on the above Reddit thread, it was someone working at the University who blew the whistle on UM’s rape culture. Here’s the comment:

Another anonymous commenter framed the impacts like this:

Four months ago, when this Reddit thread was first posted, we had yet to see the modern American woman’s ability to identify with a mother who methodically murders her own three children, but here we are. No wonder a hero like Dale goes unrecognized in the community he’s chosen to live out the remaining years of his life.

As timing would have it, I’ll be recording a conversation later today about the career of Denis Villeneuve and how his early movies, like Prisoners, is part of a larger cultural agenda to re-cast the mythic narrative of “the west” by, in part, redefining what masculinity means, like showing how a prepper father ready to protect his family for any natural disaster finds himself (spoiler) in a race against time to save his kidnapped daughter from a woman who kills children as a means of waging a war against God.

If you appreciate the unprofitable LABOR involved in bringing local stories to a local audience (which the online Reddit crowd appears to be hungry for) please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!