 |
| Public Memorials at Sandy Hook Elementary |
Americans are still struggling to come to
grips with the recent massacre of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Connecticut. Nationally, the mood has
gone from one of shock and mourning to one of blame and politics – a game that
possibly threatens to injure even more innocents by depriving children with
potential mental health issues and struggles from realizing full and equal
civil rights and lifestyles commiserate with those of their peers. This is a dangerous game. Despite the confident advertising of the pharmaceutical
psycho-therapeutical commercial industry, we really do not seem to understand
very much at all about the inter-connectivity between personality, action and psychological
states of mind. In fact, we seem
uncomfortably unable to answer basic questions as to what “normal” is, let
alone how to define, treat and legislate the abnormal.
The world of psychological and emotional
disorders is too complicated for untrained lawmakers, or even worse, lawyers,
to try to fix in their well-meaning, amateurish, headline-grabbing sort of
way. Persons with real needs and
disabilities might easily find themselves caught between hardline conservative
Tea Party gun-slingers desperate to avert the disaster of gun control and the good intentions of the liberal left
(often with an eye towards their own professional pocketbooks). Blaming events such as Sandy Hook on the
mentally ill not only conveniently deflects criticism and legislation aimed at non-sporting
gun owners and sociologically suspect separatists, but seems to buttress
age-old political slogans stating that guns don’t kill people, it is the “mentally
ill” person behind the gun that kills people.
On the other side, you have a juggernaut of
compassionate, caring, professional liberals split between well-intentioned if too
often ineffective efforts to aid and assist the mentally ill and disabled and
the promise of increased budgets and funding into their programs, clinics and
practices. The decision to blame the
mentally ill for social disasters is a dangerous path that must be trod most
gingerly and with a humility that is not yet present in the debate.
Indicating our confusion is our almost
complete lack of consensus as to inter-connections between free will, disease, mental
health and genetic predispositions.
Singling out the mentally ill for a focus on gun control is like
depriving persons with a history of alcoholism in the family from obtaining a
driver’s license and seizing the licenses and vehicles of those who voluntarily
enroll in rehab or even Alcoholics Anonymous in order to prevent drunk driving.
Another interesting debate stemming from
Sandy Hook is whether or not to tear down the school as a memorial or to reopen
it. Understandably, many parents and relatives
feel too shocked and grieved to allow their children to return to school in a building
that still rings of horror and death.
On the other hand, many parents want the
site cleaned up, rehabilitated and reopened so that their children can go back
to the building they know of as their school and to resume their normal lives –
similar to decisions made in the wake of the Columbine shootings.
Neil Steinberg, a Chicagoan whose view I have learned to trust, sums it
up as, “In a way, [Sandy Hook
is] playing out, on a large scale, what individuals who suffer tragedies go
through. They are torn between focusing on the bad thing and forgetting about
it, or trying to. To forget too quickly feels wrong. As does lingering too long.”
Certainly, many of
the parents in Connecticut are thinking back towards the quiet, confident wisdom
of the Amish who, after a similar tragedy at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania,
quietly tore down the schoolhouse site and reopened classes elsewhere.
 |
| New Hope School replaced the former Nickel Mines building. |
The Amish are a plain, simple, God-fearing
folk. The tragedy was horrific and yet,
Amish culture is strong enough and evolved enough to fall back upon itself and to
continue to move beyond the site of the crime or their anguish over lost loved
ones. It was rather, our anguish as
outsiders perhaps that they needed to shield themselves from – from our
well-intentioned intrusion into their private and personal lives, from the
media attention, from gawking, voyeuristic tourists and from the temptation to
be diverted by the actions and attitudes of outsiders away from the needs of
their own community and private faith.
The Amish of Nickel Mines made headlines by
reaching out to the widow and family of the shooter in order to help them deal with
a tragedy that impacted them also.
Noting this forgiveness, this moving beyond the crime-ness and this
compassion should lead us to consider that the Nickel Mines Schoolhouse was
removed for our good, not theirs.
In contrast, Lionel Shriver of the London Guardian noted that Nancy Lanza,
the mother of the Sandy Hook shooter, and his first victim, has been singled
out for blame and recrimination, “With
funerals of children and teachers standing-room-only, Nancy’s service last Thursday
drew a sparse two dozen relatives. … According to the script in progress, Nancy Lanza doesn't deserve our
tears. Implicitly or explicitly, we blame Adam's mother for his baffling
rampage … one White House Twitter follower wrote of Nancy, "RIP, but she's
culpable".
Whether or not Sandy Hook is demolished or
reopened is not the question, and as poetic as the Amish action and example at
Nickel Mines was, parents and politicians need to look beyond that action in
order to examine the motivation and intentions behind it – to help the public
forgive and move on.
As Steinberg notes, the decision to tear
down and memorialize or to clean up and reopen will be more-or-less correct and
more-or-less irrelevant, regardless of the decision.
On the other hand, legislating against the mentally ill – rather out of conservative fear, or from liberal ambition and compassion, singles out and scapegoats a minority population that already too often deals with a lack of resources, social prejudices, public stereotypes and fear.
On the other hand, legislating against the mentally ill – rather out of conservative fear, or from liberal ambition and compassion, singles out and scapegoats a minority population that already too often deals with a lack of resources, social prejudices, public stereotypes and fear.
The debate over, and in my humble opinion, the
necessity of, greater gun control legislation is important but it should not be
based on the knee-jerk need to memorialize murdered innocents or the fear of
such violence occurring elsewhere – it will recur regardless. Decisions must not be made on the backs of a
group unable to speak up for and defend itself.
When Christ encouraged his disciples to let
the dead bury the dead, he was not being unkind, merely giving space for those
who needed to mourn to do so while encouraging his disciples to not be
sidetracked from their work and spiritual goals by such occurrences and
concerns but to rather maintain their focus and energies on the larger tasks at
hand.
Christ could speak these same words to
American politicians today – let the families of Sandy Hook deal with their
grief in private and without the media or the politicians. Sandy Hook might be exploitable, but as
tragic as it is, it does not change or even greatly inform public debate beyond
adding to the statistics. The best
memorial and the best action is to move on with prudence and purpose while
keeping an eye on the larger tasks at hand, including fitting more effective
gun control into America’s legal, constitutional and cultural context – wisely,
firmly and effectively, not slapped together out of fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment