Marine flinging a puppy, observations.

I am both amused and disgusted by the most common response to this video.

Such a large number of people are arguing that it must be a hoax or fake of some kind. I looked at it. If it is a hoax, we have got some world class writers and actors in the Marines.

The arguments for the video being a fake are really, really reaching. The simplest, and most plausible explanation for the video is that it is exactly what it seems to be.

Maybe that makes me sound cynical about human nature. Which is worse, though? That one person committed an impulsive shocking act to see how the people around him reacted, or that a group of people planned to make a shocking and defamatory video?

I am amused that so many people are trying so hard to work out a way to look at the video and say that no one threw a live puppy off a cliff.

I am disgusted that so many people are unwilling to face the facts of life. Things like this happen. Not everyone in the world is nice. Young men in combat get screwed up.

Working hard to explain it away will not make it have not happened.

The callousness in the video is only one of many instances that happen every day. This is just a clear, uncomplicated expression of it. Many of us have had our moments of not caring, of impulsive viciousness. We just find ways to justify it to ourselves in our minds.

Tell me you have never done something you are ashamed of.

Tell me you have never told yourself: "Well, I was just a kid, and I didn't know any better. I would never do something like that now."