Lonely Moonbat Sets Self Ablaze

Malachi Ritscher, a man tortured by loneliness, bereft of loving family, and self-admitted acid-dropping child of the sixties, set himself on fire and died in Chicago on the Interstate during rush hour traffic. He left a note that said “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

Mark David Ritscher changed his name to “Malachi” when he moved to Chicago. He became obsessed with anti-war protests and was quite unhinged over the Iraq war. He left a long rambling suicide note on his website trying to claim that he was committing suicide as a protest over the Iraq war. But if you read between the lines, you can see that Malachi was horribly lonely and deeply confused over his own mortality and place in the universe. He was dissatisfied with his own life and really wanted his mediocre life to count for something.

First, the news item from the Chicago Sun:

As horrified Friday-morning commuters watched, a man apparently doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire along the Kennedy Expy. near a 25-foot-tall Loop sculpture titled “Flame of the Millennium.”

A homemade sign was found near his charred body that read, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” said State Police Lt. Lincoln Hampton. Police are reviewing a videotape that also was found near the body.

The death of the man, whose identity has not been released, was being treated as a suicide, authorities said.

Now from the Blog Chicago Reader here:

His identity has still not been officially determined, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they are certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene. Bruno Johnson, who owns the free-jazz label Okka Disk, received a package yesterday from Ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings.

Malachi had delusions of grandeur and thought of himself as a Christ figure. From his own online suicide note, which he called a “Mission Statement” here:

If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you.

It is clear that he wants to die for the sins of the United States.

He had also come very close to murdering Donald Rumsfeld if his note can be believed:

I have had one previous opportunity to serve my country in a meaningful way – at 8:05 one morning in 2002 I passed Donald Rumsfeld on Delaware Avenue and I was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people. I had a knife clenched in my hand, and there were no bodyguards visible; to my deep shame I hesitated, and the moment was past.

He also maintained a site with the url of killthepresident.net. So he was clearly deranged and hysterical over political policies in Washington.

The guy was a complete narcissist. He was absolutely in love with himself, despite his own admitted long list of failures. He wrote a rambling obituary to himself here.

He was the modern day version of a ‘renaissance man’, except instead of attaining success in several fields, he consistently failed, and didn’t really worry too much about it.

Despite his anti-war leanings, it really was the loneliness and despair that drove him to suicide. Again, from his own obituary-

The handwritten manuscript of his ‘fictional autobiography‘, titled “Farewell Tour”, was under consideration by publishers. It had a general theme of shared universal aloneness, and was controversial for seeming to endorse suicide after the age of fifty.

The metaphor for his life was winning the lottery, but losing the ticket. In the end, the loneliness was overwhelming.

He had a son, from whom he was estranged (at the son’s request)

He was confused over his own mortality and his standing with God. He thought that God was inside people rather than in Heaven, and specifically, he tried to cast himself as a Christ figure, wishing to sacrifice his own life for the atonement of others. He was fond of quoting bible verses that suited his purposes. From his suicide note, he stated:

What is God? God is the force of life – the spark of creation. We each carry it within us

Maybe it was the drama of the radical war protests that was keeping him going. And maybe he sensed that the election was going to create a course correction that would make even his protests obsolete. He had nothing more to hang onto. Whatever the reason, he had been planning this stunt for a while, filling up his website with memorable pictures of himself in childhood with his siblings, and pictures of his close friends in the jazz scene. The picture above was entitled “one last shot.”

Hat tip to TransBuddha.