Horror, Terror, and Forgiveness (op-ed)
“The Horror! The Horror!” are the dying words of Mr. Kurtz in the novel The Heart of Darkness. There’s a consensus these words summarize the totality of human evil witnessed by a man driven insane by succumbing to its savagery. But Kurtz’s attempt to describe the unspeakable failed because it’s impossible to articulate what’s unimaginable.
Following the South Carolina Emanuel AME Church massacre (9 blacks were shot and killed by a 21 year old white male.) attempts were made to describe the unspeakable and others pondered political solutions to the unimaginable violence.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. labeled the shooting an act of terrorism and said there is a culture of terror against black people, a local pastor at a prayer vigil downgraded Jackson’s sentiments to domestic terrorism, and the next day at the U.S. Conference of Mayors President Barack Obama said, “We have to stop being confused about this. You don’t see murder on this kind of scale … In any other advanced nation on earth … I refuse to act as if this is a new normal or pretend it is simply sufficient to grieve and that any mention to do something to stop it is simply politicizing the problem … If congress had passed some common-sense gun safety reforms after … A group of children had been gunned down in their own classroom … We might have stopped one shooter … you all [The 300 mayors in attendance] might have to attend fewer funerals.”
But these comments also failed, not in articulation but in accuracy.
Before 9/11 Jackson would have called the shooting a hate crime in an effort to claim conditions in America haven’t changed and blacks are still victims of racist attacks reminiscent of Red Record lynchings or the Red Summer of 1919. After 9/11 the words terrorism implies the same victimization as hate crime except it has more shock value, like Kurtz repeating the word horror.
But this was an individual act of mass murder. That’s all the description needed. Does first degree murder need conviction or sentencing assistance from hate crime charges? And terrorism is the systematic use of violence in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological goal. The only way this becomes terrorism is if black churches invest in armed security and metal detectors because they believed there is a culture of terror against blacks. And if black churches react in such a fashion promoting the idea that their houses of worship are unsafe they should pay attention to the plight of fellow Christians in Nigeria.
In 2011 the terrorist group Boko Haram killed hundreds of Christians and destroyed 430 churches, 2012 -- 900 Christians were killed, 2013 -- 612 Christians were killed and approximately 300 churches were destroyed, 2014, according to Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram was responsible for killing 2,053, and in 2015 the death toll equaled lasted years total in just January. This is terrorism and its totality is an unimaginable campaign of horror.
Now the President believes Americans are confused about common sense gun safety reform, maybe, but proponents of preventive government action are confused about the flip side of freedom. In a free country people are free to break the law, especially if they are willing to accept the consequences. No legislation can prevent this choice. The function of government when a law is broken is to apprehend the perpetrator and prosecute him or her to the fullest extent of the law, and in South Carolina the fullest extent of the law is the death penalty, which should make punishment the subject of any public policy discussion not prevention. (If there is principled opposition to the death penalty now is the time to demonstrate the courage of conviction.)
And those that immediately demanded the perpetrator’s execution probably couldn’t imagine themselves speaking the words of forgiveness by the family members of the victims. Those same words probably failed to register in the mind of the man in
custody. But forgiveness is the only act of prevention under these circumstances, because forgiveness prevents the family members from succumbing to self-destroying rage and permanently being victimized by the horror.
First Published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 6/24/15
Following the South Carolina Emanuel AME Church massacre (9 blacks were shot and killed by a 21 year old white male.) attempts were made to describe the unspeakable and others pondered political solutions to the unimaginable violence.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. labeled the shooting an act of terrorism and said there is a culture of terror against black people, a local pastor at a prayer vigil downgraded Jackson’s sentiments to domestic terrorism, and the next day at the U.S. Conference of Mayors President Barack Obama said, “We have to stop being confused about this. You don’t see murder on this kind of scale … In any other advanced nation on earth … I refuse to act as if this is a new normal or pretend it is simply sufficient to grieve and that any mention to do something to stop it is simply politicizing the problem … If congress had passed some common-sense gun safety reforms after … A group of children had been gunned down in their own classroom … We might have stopped one shooter … you all [The 300 mayors in attendance] might have to attend fewer funerals.”
But these comments also failed, not in articulation but in accuracy.
Before 9/11 Jackson would have called the shooting a hate crime in an effort to claim conditions in America haven’t changed and blacks are still victims of racist attacks reminiscent of Red Record lynchings or the Red Summer of 1919. After 9/11 the words terrorism implies the same victimization as hate crime except it has more shock value, like Kurtz repeating the word horror.
But this was an individual act of mass murder. That’s all the description needed. Does first degree murder need conviction or sentencing assistance from hate crime charges? And terrorism is the systematic use of violence in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological goal. The only way this becomes terrorism is if black churches invest in armed security and metal detectors because they believed there is a culture of terror against blacks. And if black churches react in such a fashion promoting the idea that their houses of worship are unsafe they should pay attention to the plight of fellow Christians in Nigeria.
In 2011 the terrorist group Boko Haram killed hundreds of Christians and destroyed 430 churches, 2012 -- 900 Christians were killed, 2013 -- 612 Christians were killed and approximately 300 churches were destroyed, 2014, according to Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram was responsible for killing 2,053, and in 2015 the death toll equaled lasted years total in just January. This is terrorism and its totality is an unimaginable campaign of horror.
Now the President believes Americans are confused about common sense gun safety reform, maybe, but proponents of preventive government action are confused about the flip side of freedom. In a free country people are free to break the law, especially if they are willing to accept the consequences. No legislation can prevent this choice. The function of government when a law is broken is to apprehend the perpetrator and prosecute him or her to the fullest extent of the law, and in South Carolina the fullest extent of the law is the death penalty, which should make punishment the subject of any public policy discussion not prevention. (If there is principled opposition to the death penalty now is the time to demonstrate the courage of conviction.)
And those that immediately demanded the perpetrator’s execution probably couldn’t imagine themselves speaking the words of forgiveness by the family members of the victims. Those same words probably failed to register in the mind of the man in
custody. But forgiveness is the only act of prevention under these circumstances, because forgiveness prevents the family members from succumbing to self-destroying rage and permanently being victimized by the horror.
First Published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 6/24/15
Comments
Post a Comment