On July 20 the nation woke up to news of yet another mass killing by a deranged maniac with access to guns and explosives. How droll. Except, of course, for the way in which the gunman timed and marketed his insanity. Wanting to be “the Joker” of comic-book and movie fame, he shot up the premier of the final installment of the Batman “Dark Knight” movie franchise in Aurora, Colo., in the process killing nearly … well, it doesn’t really matter does it?
If being rather sanguine about this latest tragedy seems cold, it is only a reaction to the tedious pointlessness of it all. Inevitably, the public and the press will be horrified and outraged. The media, going for ratings, will spend unlimited amounts of time discovering and then analyzing what the killer had for breakfast. One group of politicians will call for stricter restrictions on guns. Another group will “defend the constitution” and pledge, with equal ferocity, to defeat any attempts to enact stricter gun laws. Eventually, the media will become bored, people will forget and the momentary political advantage that comes with fighting for or against guns and guns right will diminish. We’ll forget, and then it will happen again, and the same process will begin and conclude once more. Only this time, even more people will be dead.
Is this cynicism? No, it is history, and it has been the pattern after every mass killing over the past couple decades. Virginia Tech, Columbine and now, Aurora. They join dozens of other incidents where the victims were fewer, less notable or the killer less interesting. Instead of being distinct in our memories, they all blur together into a seamless mass of horror that we would just as soon forget as do anything about.
We don’t do anything about these tragedies because doing so would raise uncomfortable questions. For some, the uncomfortable question would surround the easy access to firearms that certifiably insane people seem to have in this country. Rather than admitting that, perhaps, our guns laws are too loose or too little enforced, better to turn it around, as Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican (of course), did by claiming the shooting was the result of “ongoing attacks on ‘Judeo-Christian’ beliefs.”
Gohmert, who seems certifiable himself, noted, “Some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedom, that that was important,” he said. “Whether it’s John Adams saying our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people … Ben Franklin, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters … We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country.”
Continuing his insanity, the Texan conservative noted that perhaps if America had not been at war with God, he would have not stayed his protective hand and kept the gunman’s bullets from ripping flesh, blood and bone asunder in Colorado. “People say … where was God in all of this? We’ve threatened high school graduation participations, if they use God’s name, they’re going to be jailed … I mean that kind of stuff. Where was God? What have we done with God? We don’t want him around. I kind of like his protective hand being present,” said Gohmert.
Of course, Gohmert concluded with the “full conservative” response to any mass shooting that happens to take place. “It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?” he asked. It is so formulaic and expected a response that it’s a cliché. It could be self-parody, but conservatives tend to not get jokes and have consistently shown they actually outdo what even The Onion can come up with.
For others, the uncomfortable questions raised by the shooting won’t be about guns, but about the deplorable state of mental healthcare in this country. Of course, mental healthcare here in the United States must be the best available, outshining by an order of magnitude what can be found in other countries – especially that socialist hellhole Sweden.
These folks, for instance, won’t want to admit that there could be any connection between gutting funds for mental health at the state and local level and the Colorado shootings. They will dance a jig or two to avoid having it pointed it out to them that federal mental-health spending was slashed by $300 million, or nearly 10 percent, the day before the shootings took place while at the same time they argue that tax breaks for nonexistent, job-creating billionaires should be indefinitely extended. They will disappear when someone tries to tell them that ending the war in Afghanistan or scrapping a couple of submarines or stealth bombers would free up funds that could go to providing mental heath services that might have caught on to the gunman’s insanity before his victims did for years to come.
Nor will partisans of hyper-libertarian philosophies that disdain community and mutual responsibility toward one another appreciate questions like the ones that are inevitably asked when tragedies like this occur. How can someone this insane, this troubled, this disturbed, go on undetected and unnoticed by everyone? Are we not our brother’s keeper? Shouldn’t someone have noticed? Shouldn’t someone have cared enough to do something if they had? Not in a society where it is every man and woman for him or herself, that’s for certain – and certainly not in the America those holding this ideology wish to create.
So, instead of answering these tough questions about ourselves and what truthful answers to these questions might entail, the media will have its circus. Politicians will have their ritualistic fight about guns. Then we’ll tire of the tragedy, turn to something else and forget. Until the next time.