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It’s not just about hate

The causes and cures of mass murder are oversimplified at our own peril.

Just in case this Jewish community were worried that it stands alone, the overwhelming attendance at the community vigils in Denver and Boulder last Sunday, and in Colorado Springs last Monday — including significant numbers of non-Jewish Americans —put an end to that. Everyone from the highest state officials to the “average” citizen came to express solidarity with the Jewish community and to show their condemnation of the murder of Jews in Pittsburgh on Shabbat, Oct. 27, 2018.

The hate that animated the killer, the need to name his hate and to unequivocally reject his hate and the hate of white supremacists in general, and the need to expunge our society of the rhetoric of hate, were made perfectly clear.

Alas, if only a deviant form of the complex workings of a human mind and of an advanced technological society could be reduced to one word: hate. Mass shootings in this country, including the mass murder in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, are not just about hate. Chants and slogans will not free us of this scourge of mass shootings.

Mass shootings are also about:

• mental illness;

• easy access to guns;

• unrestrained virulence in social media;

• political discourse;

• breakdown in family life and the loneliness that, paradoxically, electronic connectedness fosters;

• still more paradoxically, the ubiquitous use of the word hate.

• the non-contradiction of anti-Semitism.

One at a time:

Mental illness. It is a defamation of the mentally ill to correlate mental illness with violent crime. Virtually all mentally ill people are peaceful. That said, mental illness can generate a view of the world that justifies and indeed mandates murderous violence. The amount of resources that America in general and Colorado in particular devotes to treatment of the mentally ill is disgraceful. In Colorado, for example, countless mentally ill people end up either in nursing homes or jails, neither of whose personnel are trained to treat the mentally ill; personnel who, through no fault of their own, readily make wrong decisions. Initiated Ordinance 301 offers Denver voters the opportunity to determine whether they wish to devote more resources to the mentally ill. Whether mental illness played a role in the Pittsburgh shooting is not yet clear; it did play a role in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting.

Guns. We shall not rehearse here the many arguments we have marshalled on these pages against America’s lenient access to guns — and to advanced weaponry, such as AK 47s. Suffice to say that the worst hater or mentally unhinged person in the world, if denied lethal weapons, could not perpetrate a mass murder such as in Pittsburgh last week and earlier in Parkland, Florida (2018; school); Sutherland Springs, Texas (2017; church); Orlando, Florida (2016; nightclub); Charleston, South Carolina (2015; church); Oak Creek, Wisconsin (2012; Sikh temple); and, alas, in many other places in our country — alas, too many to mention. The shooters in these instances each painted an individual profile, but they all shared one thing in common: guns.

Political discourse. Our ears hurt when we listen to some of the political discourse these days. The problem, of course, is universally acknowledged, with a universally held solution — the perceived violator of the norms of political discourse is strictly on the other side of the political spectrum, not on my side. Let the other side alter its rhetoric. Actually, if we applied the traditional Jewish definitions of improper speech — such as leshon ha-ra — rather than the current partisan definitions, we would easily discover violations all around.

That said, the largest onus falls on the one with the most power, President Trump. He vitiates his cogent and appropriate tweets, such as his responsible one about anti-Semitism,  with others, such as his inflammatory one about the “fraudulent” media being the “true enemy of the people,” as if all media were liars, biased though some surely are. His jagged inconsistency in messaging disfigure those policies of his that do work.

(This is not the place for an elucidation of Judaism’s definition of improper, culpable speech, but suffice to say that current, culpable discourse sets a certain tone, a certain divisiveness, a certain us vs. them. In a mind rendered evil for other reasons, this us vs. them can indirectly contribute to violence. To the extent that Jews participate in the political process, and by all measures we do so disproportionately, it would be salutary for all of us to reexamine those Jewish tomes on leshon ha-ra and other forms of culpable speech — including the prescribed ways as to how to respond to it.)

Social media. Read the cogent critique on the irresponsibility of publishers of social media on Page 2. The point in this space is broader: the way social media can stoke individual passion and build an absolute cocoon, even a cocoon of evil, absent any meaningful counter-perspective. This goes a long way to explaining, possibly not the actual generation of a mass murderer but the framework that gives him comfort, confidence and justification. No one has yet figured out how to counter the virulent potential of 21st-century social media, but they clearly are a generator of perversity that is immune to calls to reject hate.

Family life. Even if not as universally as guns, the dysfunctional family background of mass shooters remains a commonality. It is a defamation of the dysfunctional family to suggest that it ineluctably generates mass shooters. Clearly not. Just as clearly, however, the answer to mass shootings must address the messy, complicated, economic stresses and moral declines that constitute much of current American family life. To take one example, 39.8% of all births are now out-of-wedlock, an intrinsic issue, which, for some children, means being abandoned by their father — apparently a factor in the background of the Pittsburgh murderer.

We have here a civilizational shift, one of whose consequences and causes is loneliness. “What has come to count as connectedness is displacing the real thing.” “There is growing consensus that loneliness — not obesity, cancer or heart disease — is the nation’s number one health crisis,” “as physically dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and contribut[ing] to cognitive decline”; “we  are parched for genuine community” — recent column by George Will.

We have here the etiology of some violent crime; we have a web of potentially criminal difficulties far too large to be addressed by slogans about one word.

A word. Several years ago Rabbi Steven Foster cautioned against Broncos fans and the Denver sports media invoking their hate of the Oakland Raiders. He was criticized for stretching an obviously different type of hate and dragging it into the political arena. Actually, we thought he was right. Words have power. Their innocent use can become toxic, especially words that are repeated again and again. A habit of mind that hates the Raiders will, of course, in almost all instances not spur violence; but then again, it is not most people who become mass shooters. The constant use of the word hate even in an innocent context, such as sports, can inure a person to its significance. Then, in a non-innocent context, the constant repetition of the word can weaken its malignity. Please re-read the second paragraph of this editorial. It is a single sentence. In order to reflect some of the current discourse, it intentionally uses the word hate five times. It is too much. After a while, its extensive use, even when accurate, can undercut or even recast its malignity and thus boost its allure.

Non-contradiction of anti-Semitism. The phrase is that of Eliora Katz in the Wall Street Journal. Anti-Semites are contradictory. The Pittsburgh shooter blamed Jews for helping Muslims, but the Muslim shooters of Jews elsewhere blame Jews for hurting Muslims — just as Jews were blamed for both capitalism and communism. There is no rational basis for anti-Semitism. So it needs to fought on all fronts, from white supremacism on the right to those who shut down pro-Israel speakers on the left, from Islamic extremism to social snobbery to demonization of Israel to discrimination in hiring and firing . . . to whatever new form it may assume tomorrow. Anti-Semitism is not just about white supremacism.

If we are serious about stopping mass murder in this country, then, besides the immediate necessities of improving security at our institutions, we must acknowledge just how multifaceted a social, political, economic and moral a problem it is that we face.

Copyrigh © 2018 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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