A commentator on MSNBC suggested last night (11/05/09) that the horrors at Fort Hood occurred because the perpetrator, the Army psychiatrist, had 'snapped' due to the stress of doing post-combat counselling of combat soldiers. So another mass murder has occurred because someone snapped. Shortly after Columbine, I recall someone on a call-in show insisting that society could gain nothing from the disaster until someone figured out what had made the two youthful murderers 'snap'.
An interesting word, 'snap', in this context. The notion it conveys is of a personality under great, perhaps unbearable stress, who 'snaps' in the manner of a steel girder or two-by-four when the pressure becomes too much. There's a kernel of sympathy at the base. Maybe you, maybe I, maybe anyone, would 'snap' if we were subject to the same conditions. So maybe anyone, everyone might succumb. To that extent, moral judgment becomes blurred, maybe even suspended, in a warm blur of empathy. How can we blame the gun wielder for being overtaken by fate?
There's only one small problem with this metaphor. It doesn't apply. The Army psychiatrist, the Virginia Tech zombie, the Columbine killers, innumerable others - the process is remarkably similar in all these cases, and it has nothing to do with snapping. What it does have to do with is a morbid fascination with the commission of a spectacular, self-glorifying act of violence, that a long, systematic process of self-brutalization and enurement transforms from a horrific fantasy into an act that can actually be done in real, concrete life.
The Columbine case is typical and illustrative of the process. The two young thugs spent more than a year, planning, scheming, and daydreaming about their rampage. To be sure, some of this time was necessary to procure firearms and fabricate explosive devices. But the vast majority of the time and emotional energy was spent by the two, closeted together, playing video games, talking, discussing, gradually making what seemed incredible and obscene, practical and commonplace. (The actual 'plan' was incredibly juvenile. The two killers were dead by each other's hand less than 15 minutes after they began.) Over time, the real human presence of their classmates fades and blurs into the cyber reality of video game victims. Gradually, systematically, they nurse the trivial slights and insults they experience into a cause for righteous anger - they infuriate themselves. (Neither boy was a victim of bullies. The leader was a lifelong bully himself.) Over a year, what at first was the aeriest fantasy of revenge becomes something they might do, then something they could do, then something they will do. An unspeakable crime becomes ordinary, acceptable behavior.
It takes a long, long time to get from first period homeroom to mass murder.
The Army psychiatrist went through the same process, immersing himself in the phenomena of suicide bombing and extreme Islamic fundamentalism. The metaphor he used may be different than Columbine, but the process of systematic de-sensitization, self brutalization, and the like, is identical. The same may be said of the Virginia Tech killer and all the others. None of them 'snap'. One and all, over a significant period of time, they work the petty annoyances and frustrations of everyday life into causes for rage, dehumanize the class of victims who will become their eventual targets, and finally act. The final impetus may appear random (e.g., deployment to Afghanistan), but the process is anything but.
In short, these are anything but impulsive crimes, perpetrated as the result of great stress. They are repulsive, deeply premeditated acts of utter viciousness, intended to satisfy a self-indulgent morbid fantasy and the narcissistic demands of a pathologically inflated view of self. Neither the acts nor the actors are entitled to the least bit of sympathy.
So for my money, save your tears and sympathy for the victims of these appalling acts - for these people actually do experience a 'snapping', of the ties between husband and wife, between parent and child, between friend and companion, of life threads that were intended to be spun out far longer and spread wider than they are. "Spare me your expressions of regret" (a line of Robert Bolt's from the movie Dr. Zhivago that I really like) for the criminals. Trust me, they have already lavished all the sympathy on themselves anyone could ever hope for.
(P.S. Some readers may have noticed the absence of proper names in the essay above. It's not a coincidence. Years ago, I attended still another seminar, this one in evidentiary law. The presenter, a DA from some county in Southern California, was a very funny guy, with an Eastern seaboard accent. Most his stuff was based on street hypotheticals, encounters between cop and suspect. But every once in awhile, he'd touch on real cases. He always spoke indirectly about the perpetrators of these - 'the Heisman Trophy wife killer' or 'the people who came to Sharon Tate's house.'
In the midst of all this, he suddenly paused and became dead serious. "I never use the proper name of a murderer," he said. "Never." This expression of moral purposefulness was all the more striking, coming as it did in the midst of what was basically a light hearted presentation.
In any case, it seemed like a good principle to me, and I've tried to stay with it.)
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