Murder, Rape, Hope: The Week In Review
A lot happened last week, so rather than write one unified comment, I am going to hit three things. Because we are where we are and where we are isn’t so good, this piece will start glum, but stick with it, my final thoughts are a bit hopeful.
Let’s begin in Texas: Another school shooting, more dead kids, lots of blame to go around. Oliver North vilifies “violent culture” and Ritalin. Texas Lt. Governor Greg Abbott tells us that homosexuals and doors are to blame. “White supremacy” and trench coats and Satan are behind the triggerman. Oh, here’s bullying and spurned love. Welcome old friend “mental illness” and new pal “political correctness.” Congress? Trump? Sure thing! Or why not convince people that it didn’t happen. The only “blame” piece I’ve read that makes sense deals with the lead-up to school shootings. It advises that we listen more, not just to students who tip us off to other students, but to the fears and frustrations that students have with everyday life.
So, what’s my take? Why did Dimitrios Pagourtzis shoot up his school? My brain/gut combo answer is general teenage angst which slid into rage, weaponized. I don’t think that “white supremacy” had any more to do with Pagourtzis’ actions than “political correctness,” a fondness for trench coats or the Dark Lord’s pillow talk. Blaming Ritalin is as stupid as saying that the school had “too many doors.” High school life is full of bullying and feelings of rejection, so, sure, add “perceived victimization” to teenage angst. Mental illness? People don’t murder without some slippage in sanity but blaming “mental health” is lazy.
What I think about Dimitrios Pagourtzis is irrelevant. I don’t know the kid and neither do any of the people playing blame. But, there are things that I do know:
- Segregating school shootings from other mass shootings is counterproductive. Yes, the victims of school shootings (and often the perpetrator) tend to be younger than those of other mass shootings, but, that is irrelevant — a shooting is a shooting, a life is a life. There is much more to learn when we look at school shootings as mass shootings, than if we treat them as a singular phenomenon.
- While mass shootings are a 20th Century invention, mass murder is not. We’ve got thousands of years of mass murder in the history books. We’ve been studying it for decades and know a lot about it. We know that it can be carried out by individuals or by groups. We know that, unlike spree killings or serial murders, mass murder is a one-time event. We know that mass murders are almost always planned and that, whatever “flavor” mass murder takes, it is essentially an attack of “us” on “them.”
- Curing or treating “mental illness,” ridding ourselves of “white supremacy,” ending “bullying” and misogynistic “spurned male” violence, finding ways to treat “hyperactive” kids with something other than Ritalin, banning doors, etc. are all good fights to engage in for their own sake. Solve those problems and we are better off for a lot of reasons, and perhaps a handful of would-be mass murderers turn their attention to gardening. But know, that we will always have murder. If someone is hell-bent on killing, they will kill.
- All mass shootings are events unto themselves. Every single one of them has a different cause. Because of that, no single fix that will keep people from killing people. At best, we find ways to mitigate damage.
- So, the question becomes: How do we keep a person intent on killing from killing one or a lot of people? Of course, “early intervention” is key, but when that fails, we need to lessen the threat. Gun “enthusiasts” say that we lessen the threat by arming ourselves. The message is “you come at me and you will be killed.” This strategy assumes that the attacker does not want to die, an assumption that goes counter to what we know about individualized mass murderers, most who are on a death trip. It also assumes that a “good guy with a gun” has some edge over a “bad guy with a gun” thanks to the “good guy’s” goodness. This belief is absurdly juvenile and historically untrue.
- Dimitrios Pagourtzis killed ten people even though Santa Fe High employed two “good guys with guns.” Two “good guys” did not stop Pagourtzis from killing ten people. Pagourtzis ran out of ammo and gave himself up.
- Pagourtzis did not use an assault rifle. He used a shotgun and a .38, two “utilitarian weapons” that he took from his dad. Gun rights bros say that this is proof that banning assault rifles and doing background checks won’t work. Absurd, dishonest, and stupidly dumb. Imagine: Pagourtzis is armed with a club. He thumps a few people and is subdued. Odds are no one dies. Pagourtzis has a knife. He kills one person and slashes another before he is subdued. Pagourtzis attacks using a handgun and shotgun. He kills ten. Stalled by the limitations of his weapons, he gives up. Pagourtzis gets his hands on a semi-automatic weapon. He kills 20 before being killed in a firefight in which three police officers die. Pagourtzis scores an AR-15 and rigs it with a bump stock. The semi-automatic weapon now behaves like a machine gun. He kills 58, injures 851, and is subdued by his own hand. What weapon Pagourtzis had access to matters a hell of a lot.
Pagourtzis felt people (or life) had done him wrong. Someone was going to die. Satin didn’t tell him to kill. His trench coat didn’t give him special power. He was not experiencing a Ritalin-induced psychotic break. The many doors of the high school did not magically open for him. Pagourtzis walked into the school, found a classroom, and started shooting, “good guys” be damned. He killed ten people.
There are a lot of if’s. If teachers were armed, Pagourtzis might have killed five people instead of ten. If there had been ten “good guys with guns,” Pagourtzis might have been shot dead the minute he showed himself. If Santa Fe High School had one door (and a moat), Pagourtzis might have laid siege at the front gate. If Pagourtzis popped into a classroom and got the drop on the teacher with a gun, he might have taken the teacher down and then feasted on the students. If Pagourtzis had an assault rifle, a few more guns modified to shoot automatic, and an Eric Harris to his Dylan Klebold, he might have topped Columbine.
Given that we are not going to heal our nation’s psyche any time soon, we have two choices: Arm up or arm down, to pursue mutually assured destruction or disarmament. Modern weaponry has made it easy to kill a lot of people with little effort. If you want to limit deaths in mass shootings, you must limit a potential killer’s access to the kind of weapons that enable mass murder. It is insane to go bigger, badder, deadlier. Hell, that doesn’t even work in the movies.
Now let’s talk about rape. In India, a couple weeks ago, three girls were raped and set on fire. The assaults occurred days apart, miles apart, and by different groups of men. This is nothing new. Rapes happen so often in India that human rights advocates worry that assault is becoming so familiar that the country is “entering a state of rape-tolerance.” India’s rape statistics are abysmal, especially considering that 99% of cases of sexual violence in India go unreported. What’s reported is about 100 cases a day, or 36,000 a year. And, it isn’t getting better. The Times of India reports that from 2015 to 2016 there was an 86% rise in the rape of children. (Girls aren’t only contending with rape. According to Lancet, via The Guardian, an “average of 239,000 girls under five in India die each year, or 2.4 million in a decade, because of their gender.”)
Outside of India, we read vivid reports of individual rapes. The news comes in flashes. Three girls are raped and set ablaze and we hear about it. The pandemic of rape in India is ignored (partially thanks to the Indian government trying to snuff discussion on the issue), especially its use as a weapon of war. Superficial and sensational reporting means when we read of the issue, we are exposed only to the carnage. We don’t read of the resistance to this plague.
Women and men are fighting back against Indian rape culture. Occasionally we get glimpses of a movement, but we aren’t told how widespread it is. Families take to the street to demand change. The protests are happening daily, across the country and across castes. India’s international community is protesting in solidarity (hopefully this will grow). India’s public officials are staging hunger strikes to protest the government’s inaction. Organizing the anti-rape movement is a grind, and dangerous. No matter, resistance is growing so strong that some predict that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who many thought was in for a long ride, is a political goner.
There are few things worse than being fearful in your own skin. While being set on fire and being bullied are not equal, I don’t parse fear. Fear of being shot at school or raped while going about your day can be as damaging as fear of having your sexuality exposed or your person mocked. Fear can easily cripple us to inaction, so when people stand up to that fear and confront rapists, bigots, bullies, and men with guns, that is a big deal. When that resistance to fear takes political form, it can be life changing.
Turning our attention to Pennsylvania: On Tuesday, Elizabeth Fiedler, Sara Innamorato, Summer Lee, and Kristin Seele won their Democratic primaries for seats in the Pennsylvania’s House. All four ran as Democratic Socialists and against moderate/centrists opponents. Fieldler, Innamortate, and Lee won in landslides. Innamortate and Lee took out incumbents, both from a longtime Pennsylvania political family. Fielder beat a party favorite. All three won in “deep blue” districts, so they are almost assured to be Penn legislature members in the fall. While Seele beat a party favorite, she will be running against a Republican incumbent.
Point is that four Democratic Socialists ran against moderate Dems, two of them incumbents, all the moderates backed by the state’s Dem party, and the Dem Socialists won. The four Dem Socialists were demonized as extremists and told that they were selling pie-in-the-sky, yet none of them wavered on the issues. They campaigned on single-payer, fair wages, good paying jobs, income equality, economic displacement, and basic issues like schools and roads. Their points of view were solid, no ideological mumbo-jumbo, just very plain appeals — This is what we want, and this is how we will work for it. They showed up to fight. And voters responded.
There are some important lessons here. First is that not all races demand the same flavor of politician. Yes, run Connor Lamb in a Republican stronghold. Doug Jones is perfect for Georgia. But in “deep blue” districts realize that more radical Democrats like Fiedler, Innamorato, and Lee are good candidates.
Second, unless you do not want American politics to shift left, victories like this should not upset you. Fiedler, Innamorato, and Lee are almost guaranteed election in the fall, their presence in Pennsylvania’s state house will only move discussion there to the left. Congress and state legislatures are captured by the reactionary right. Pushing these institutions to the left is good. Pushing to the left, brings these bodies to the center.
Next, almost every moderate Democrat that I talk to or hear criticism from says two things: One is that they are totally FDR Democrats from an ideological point of view. Two, they are all for nearly everything a Bernie Sanders is for, BUT they don’t think that these are “practical” goals. They think that “America isn’t ready” for universal healthcare, etc., and that pushing these things “will only lose elections” and “alienate Republicans.”
The problem with these objections is that the United States is not static. If it was, there would have been no Civil Rights Movement or Anti-War Movement and the Democratic Party would not have shifted left in reaction to these movements. If the country was static, it would have stayed left and there would not have been a conservative backlash. Ronald Reagan would be a footnote and the Republican and Democratic parties would not have shifted right. Politics is fluid and it looks like the country is drifting left. Fiedler, Innamorato, and Lee would not have won if the country was stuck in reverse.
If moderates are indeed closet FDR Democrats, they should see an opportunity in Fiedler, Innamorato, and Lee. When the Democratic Party has a fighting left, one that is serious about retail politics, the debate is broadened. Possibilities open. Not just for things like single-payer, but stopping voter suppression, creating more political opportunity for women and people of color, and restraining money in politics, three things that are help all Democrats and democracy. As important, a radical Democratic presence gives us a greater opportunity to repair the damage Trump and the GOP are doing.
When we come out of this moment — and we will — there will be plenty of stuff to fix. Almost all of Trump’s executive orders must be reversed. Trump’s tax cut must be rescinded (nothing is “permanent”). The EPA, HUD, Department of Education, etc. must be reassembled and repaired. There will be a lot of positions that need to be filled. We must take a good look at our courts.
Trump doesn’t care about foreign interference on elections. We will be left to dealt with that. He has trashed international agreements — on trade, the environment, arms control. We will have to figure that stuff out. Trump has made a hash out of climate change, infrastructure, immigration, and income inequality, so, there’s that.
Trump and the GOP has not only fucked all this stuff up, but they have done so from a far-right position. We cannot start undoing the damage from a centrist stance. We need not go full commie, but if we start negotiating with the Right from the Center, we will be screwed. There is no middle ground on climate change, white supremacy, DACA, LGBT rights, food safety, clean water, police violence, voter suppression, and Billy Ray Cyrus. Leftist, moderate, sensible conservative, and libertarians need to push Trumpism out of the debate. This country is not a “better place” when misanthropy is considered a respectable political position. If my “politically correct” “intolerance” “alienates Republicans,” so be it.
Know that Trump gone does not rid us of a right-wing GOP. The Kochs, the Waltons, the Mercers, and even the Trumps are not going away. They have more power and wealth than ever before, and they will fight to hold onto it. That is the nature of power. That is how politics work. No worry. Slavery was met with abolition. The Robber Barons got blasted by farmers, labor, socialists, and anarchists. The Nadir was countered by the anti-lynching movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and eventually the Civil Rights Movement. Homophobia was thwacked by Stonewall, ACT-UP, and Queer Nation. American history is full of the “Good Fight.” We are finally seeing that fight on “our side” and with it some successes. Finally. Let’s keep it going.
This originally appeared in my newsletter, Soriano’s Comment on May 21, 2018. Sign up for a free subscription.
