At the Intersection of Hate and Murder

I am still trying to take in what happened in Orlando, but although I've read numerous accounts of the massacre, I still feel strangely numb - I think it's just too big and too horrible to comprehend.  And too much of the same old hate, hate, hate we have all endured for a lifetime, a nightmare fear now brought to a terrible reality.

But I offer a couple things to my readers today, for consideration. First, I am irritated with the media-manufactured controversy on whether it was terrorism or a hate crime, or whether it was directed at gays or at Americans, and yada yada yada. Of course it was ALL those things at the same time, and more. I couldn't find an image to convey what I mean, so I made up this simple graphic of what seem to me to be the four main causes of this crime:

It's important, very important I think, to see ALL these factors as valid causes of this tragedy; human beings are complex, and people rarely do anything just for one simple reason.

If you don't believe me, just ask yourself why you ate what you ate for breakfast this morning, or for dinner last night - whatever you put in your mouth, was it because you were on a diet, or falling off one, because the cupboard was bare or overflowing, because you were sick or well, tired or inspired, or because you ate alone at home or out with friends, or, or, or - what?

And perhaps a few more causes could be added to my graphic; for example, I just read this brief but highly significant report in the Orlando Sentinel:

Gunman Omar Mateen visited gay nightclub a dozen times before shooting, witness says

Was he casing the joint, or was he locked in a closet of self-loathing and trying to break out?

And I am quite touched by this interview with the murderer's father - despite my anger and grief, I see a man struggling to come to terms with his own enormous pain and loss, and not yet quite understanding the part he played, at second hand as a parent, in this massacre:

Father of Orlando Mass Murderer Apologizes, Clarifies

(Video not embeddable by me)


The Orlando victims have been remembered around the nation and the world: in New York, the Empire State Building spire went dark in mourning, while the World Trade Center spire was lit in rainbow colors last night:

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

In Sydney, Australia, the harbor bridge was lit in rainbow colors too:

Embed from Getty Images

Crowds gathered at the Eiffel Tower in Paris:

Embed from Getty Images

One man held a sign saying, "We are a 'certain idea of the world,' never targeted 'by chance'" - a riff on a famous quote by Charles de Gaulle:

Embed from Getty Images

The Eiffel Tower was lit in the colors of the rainbow:

Embed from Getty Images

While an illuminated balloon bore the colors of Old Glory:

Amsterdam also remembered at the Royal Palace:

Embed from Getty Images

Crowds gathered in Seoul:

Embed from Getty Images

And on a beach in India:

Embed from Getty Images

And in London, a vigil was held in Soho:

Embed from Getty Images

Will it ever end?  A chilling report from the Guardian: 1,000 mass shootings in 1,260 days.

The Pope and the Atheists

Pope Francis, in a homily he gave today in Rome (found via Andrew Sullivan):

"The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

This does sound like a different kind of Pope.


A further thought: Turning from the contemplation of these high and lovely thoughts to the utterly barbarous and demonic beheading of a British soldier in the streets of London in broad daylight, your Head Trucker finds no room in his heart to countenance any further shilly-shallying with the violent and the malign among us. This sickening act, like that of the bombing in Boston last month, is beyond all decency, a crime against humanity, and it must be stopped now - by whatever means necessary.

The crazies and the fanatics must not be allowed to roam freely among us and kill us at their whim; the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

.

The President Speaks on the Connecticut School Shooting

In the Briefing Room of the White House, President Obama made an emotional address to the nation about the killing of 27 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, yesterday:




My sympathies also go out to all the victims and their loved ones. Despite the President's moving words, however, I just don't believe anything will change as a result of this latest horror.

It's been nearly 14 years since the Columbine massacre; 5 years since the Virginia Tech slaughter; and still things rock along just as they did then, and nobody has done a single thing to stop these tragedies from happening.

Your Head Trucker is not going to discuss here the whys and wherefores and causes and effects; plenty of people are paid to do that, and you're going to be hearing what they think in the days to come. And most of them will be utterly wrong.

And whether anyone is right or wrong, nothing - absolutely nothing - will change. Except that this kind of thing will happen more and more often. You will just get used to it and accept it with a shrug as a normal, if sad, part of this mad modern world we live in.

Won't you?


Further Reading:

List of rampage killers in the Americas

List of rampage killers: School massacres

List of rampage killers: Workplace killings

List of rampage killers: Familicides


From these lists, please note that you can quite easily maim and massacre bunches of people with knives, machetes, spears, swords, clubs, bombs, molotov cocktails, grenades, etc., as you can with guns.  Which is what happens in countries where civilians aren't allowed to own guns. Like China.

Do keep that fact in mind while you are listening to the forthcoming ya-ya debates over gun control, and see what it does for your thinking.

Shootings in Orlando

One dead, six wounded. By a guy who was fired two years ago from an engineering company, where he returned today with a gun.

Jeezus. How do you keep guns out of the hands of crazy people? Here, Ft. Hood, Virginia Tech, and all the other incidents.  And even if they are perfectly sane when they buy a gun, how do you know they won't go postal one day far down the road?

I've never had very strong feelings about gun control one way or the other, but I'm starting to question that. Maybe it's the part of the country I grew up in. If you live way out in the woods you're a fool if you don't have some kind of firearm on the property, for several reasons.

And I've known little old ladies who lived in town who slept much better at night, living alone, because they kept a pistol on the night stand by their bed.

But from Columbine to now - this is ridiculous. I don't know what the answer is exactly, but we just can't go on this way.