Monthly Archives: June 2015

Scratching the Surface of my Response to the Latest Horror

I’ve been busy. And I had started writing a draft about time management and lines and waiting. But that will, ironically, have to wait.

Because I cannot not write about what just happened in South Carolina.

This despicable act of unfettered evil brings up the worst thoughts in me.

The thought that has not left me since the news broke about the massacre is that I would like the monster that perpetrated this horrific act to be dead.

I wanted him to have been found dead by a self-inflicted bullet wound, or to have been killed in a standoff while being apprehended. But he was not.

He was found and was quietly arrested.

I had not wanted him to be alive. I did not want a being with such disregard for human life to be walking among us. To be breathing the same air that we breathe. To have the opportunity for laughter.

I cannot bring myself to call him human. I find myself regarding him as an animal. A vicious animal.

And I do not like the existence of these thoughts in myself.

I do not like that I can so fully deny someone’s humanity. Or that the sanctity of life is not absolute in my mind.

And I do not like that I also do not have the strength, even when I believe there is pure evil, to be in favor of killing this monster now.

I do believe that there can be times to kill. Had I been there, in that church, with a loaded gun and a clear shot, I would not have had any moral compunction in pulling the trigger. But there is a difference between self-defense (or defense of others) and retribution.

I wish he were dead. But I cannot shake the thought that someone throwing the switch loses some of their own humanity in the process of doing so, and becomes closer to becoming the monster.

And I cannot shake the thought that not throwing the switch takes away some of the humanity of those who must morally answer to the families of the victims.

Once the evil is out there, it cannot be undone. It cannot be erased. There is no fitting retribution. There is no fitting rise above retribution.

Some problems have no fitting solutions.

I am sad. I am angry. I am physically nauseated.

And I am overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed with disgust that there are segments of society which provide a fertile ground for hatred and racism to grow.

And overwhelmed with the suspicion that this evil being could very well have come into existence without a fertile hate-filled growth environment – that there can exist evil by itself, with no explanations or excuses.

Overwhelmed with the failure of humanity, which I deeply believe is overwhelmingly good, to have not come further in vanquishing barbarity and corruption.

Overwhelmed with shame at some of the fundamental history of my country, and overwhelmed by a feeling of incompetence for not knowing how to heal it.

To the families and friends of the victims, my heart goes out to you fully. May you some day find peace.

And please, please, please, may the societal devaluing of life crumble upon itself so that we all can climb upon the ruins of hatred to reach the place we need to be.