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Saturday, June 18, 2016

Fear and Hatred in Orlando

Last weekend, a man filled with hatred walked into a nightclub and shot dead over fifty people. The sadness, the horror and the disgust for his actions were so massive that I wanted to immediately write a long diatribe about his misguided actions and the foul philosophy that drove him. But I decided to wait for  my initial passion to cool and address this only after both my own thoughts and the motives of the killer were clearer. My initial shock and outrage that we'd just seen another horrific mass shooting was magnified by the realization that the death toll had just reset an almost century old record as the bloodiest mass murder in the US (I assume we weren't counting events like Wounded Knee), but other than statistics  does it matter so much if the death toll is 49 (Orlando), 33 (Virginia Tech) or 28 (Sandy Hook)? To each person who had his or her life cut short and to their loved ones who have to deal with the aftermath, it's as big a tragedy whether one or a hundred other died alongside for no good reason. Does it matter more if it's a a grade schooler, or a college student? Does it matter if it happened on a military base or in a movie theater? Does it matter if it happened at midday or in the early hours of morning just before last call? In the end, the fact that it happened at all is what should matter and how we react in the days to come will define the kind of country and people we are.

Depending on one's political views, the most compelling part of the story is either that the club catered to gay people and the victims were mostly gay people or that the killer was a young Muslim man who made a grandiose pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State in the middle of his cowardly attack. A secondary concern also dictated by one's political worldview is the use of a semi-automatic rifle, legally purchased by a man who had been investigated previously for links to terrorist groups. And yet, we have to wonder if these concerns need be mutually exclusive, or if in fact we should be equally concerned by it all. I am leaning strongly towards the latter position as I think it over.

Let's start with the major conflicting concerns - was this a crime of terror or hate? Did the killer attack because he was homophobic or anti-American? We may likely never know, and never with certainty since he died in the hostage rescue; in reality even had he lived, there is  good chance that we would not know because he himself did not know why he did what he did. My guess is that he was driven by many reasons, and attempting to point a finger at just one flawed philosophy misses the bigger picture here. He was likely driven by homophobia, given the public statements of his family and other acquaintances. Even if he were a homosexual himself, as seems very possible notwithstanding his father's denial, it doesn't preclude hatred of gays from driving his actions, and may even have exacerbated his anger and hatred. Yet, it is very likely, especially given his own declaration, that he had developed a hatred of his own country that also motivated his actions and that hatred has its roots in his religious beliefs. And this despite the fact that he was far from a pious or observant Muslim - his alcohol consumption alone marks him out as a pretty unobservant Muslim. But just as his own homosexual desires could not soften his hatred, so too his flouting of basic tenets of Islam do not hide the fact that his hatred for America started and ended in the violent Nihilistic teachings of fundamentalists.

This does not smear the guilt over every Muslim, in America or anywhere - after all, this was also a clear attack on gays so should all straight people be considered guilty? The best course, as President Obama has done, is to treat this exactly for what it is - a crime of hatred and terror, but the crime of a single violent, unbalanced individual. It is dangerous to act as if his Muslim identity is paramount - the day after his attack, an Indiana Christian extremist was intercepted by chance in California en route to wreak similar havoc on destruction on the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles - and focusing only on Muslims ignores the reality of these other threats and leaves us vulnerable. To ignore his religious extremism is just as dangerous - but this push back against religion cannot come from the government. For one, the government is constitutionally required to eschew religious discrimination, As long as the believers comply with American law - and nearly every American Muslim does, regardless of the foolish chatter of those calling for banning of Sharia law in America without a shred of proof that Muslims have ever sought special treatment under the law - the government has no reason to step in or treat them any different from anyone else.

From a practical standpoint furthermore, the threat of Muslim extremists is far overstated and our perception of the greater risk is largely colored by political grandstanding; by my estimate, we've had five major attacks on the US that could be attributed to Muslim extremists - Fort Hood, the Boston bombing, Chattanooga military recruitment center, San Bernardino and now Orlando and of these, both Orlando and San Bernardino seem to be more complex and driven by confused and mixed motives. In the same time period (dating back to 2009) we've had 28 other mass shootings, including Tucson, the Aurora movie theatre, Sandy Hook, Charleston Church, Umpqua Community College and Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood. This does not include the seditious and quasi-terrorist actions of the Bundy clan in Nevada and Oregon. These many mass shootings were motivated by a variety of issues, but extremist Christianity was definitely one of the causes, in attacks on the Black Church and Planned Parenthood (will Donald Trump start talking about "radical Christianity" along with "radical Islam"?). Military installations were targeted on multiple occasions, including a second attack at Fort Hood. All this shows that we have an outsize fear of one type of killer and one motivation, which is mostly unfounded. We should be especially cognizant of the fact that not one of the terrorist attacks attributed to outside influences, be they al-Qaida or ISIL, was actually planned, directed or overseen by those organizations. In other words, the attacks have much less in common with the terror attacks in Europe and are really no different than our many, many other shootings. The push back on religious extremism must come, but it must come from all of us and it should hold all extremists to the same standard. Muslim extremists are dangerous but no more than any other violent angry person.

In the aftermath of any attack, there is a debate about gun control and it follows a standard unchanging script. There are calls for tighter laws, the gun lobby pushes back, a lot of statistics and claims are thrown around by all sides and at the end of the day, nothing is done. The only equally predictable outcome of this will be that gun sales will spike...AGAIN!I am a long time proponent of greater gun control, but one thing I now realize, and amazing as it may seem, I find myself in agreement with the NRA that this is not the time to discuss gun control. We have different reasons, I imagine - the NRA, thinks no time is a good time to discuss the topic and fears that the heightened emotion in the aftermath of such an attack may overcome the typical obstruction to any form of gun control; I fear that the heightened emotion in the aftermath of such an attack may lead to passage of a flawed and purely reactionary law. The key factor to remember about these many, many mass shootings is that they were committed with legally purchased weapons and that many of the perpetrators owned the weapons for weeks, months, even years before they snapped and committed their crime. Most, if not all suggested laws would have little effect on deterring these mass shootings. Much ink has been used, metaphorically, on the implausibility of a meaningful buyback scheme similar to what Australia achieved twenty years ago. While highly unrealistic, it remains the only way that gun deaths in the US will ever drop. But such a program cannot be forced by the government, it must come from a change of heart amongst gun owners, and the time to address this is not in the immediate and emotional aftermath of a mass shooting when gun owners are defensive and unwilling to engage with equally intransigent gun control advocates. But when passions have cooled, then it is time for America to address the question of whether we really need assault weapons for self defense, whether such weapons are actually "sporting rifles" at all, and whether any gun, be it a pistol, shotgun or long rifle actually increases the safety of its owner or whether it increases the probability of death by the gun. Let there be a debate, without needless and irrational emotion, and if America judges that their scientists should be forcibly restrained from collecting any data on gun deaths and violence or that doctors should be forced, by law, to keep from discussing health risks involving guns, then so be it: we will have decided that we would rather keep our guns with all the dangers they entail than risk a society without easy and universal access to these instruments of death and defense.

Meanwhile, our best and most appropriate response to this latest shooting is to do everything that repudiates and rejects the intent of this attack. As I said before, this attack was likely motivated by a mix of different ideas, but whether it was terror or hatred that predominated hardly matters when it comes to our response. Terrorists aim to scare society and to provoke harsh and fear-driven responses, especially from the government that both hurt everyone as a whole and through its disproportionate response, builds support within a minority group; in such a case, a Muslim terrorist would hope that government and societal reprisal against all American Muslims would isolate and radicalize that same group. Our best response, again as epitomized by President Obama's actions, is to reject the role that the killer would have us play and react in a measured and rational manner. If we stop for a moment and look past the name and ethnicity of the killer we see no difference between this and any other mass shooting in the US - so if we do not barricade ourselves in our homes in fear when mentally ill young men gun down score of young school kids, why should we allow the acts of an unstable killer in Florida to affect us differently? We react with a resigned shrug when a college student guns down his classmates, so why should we react with less fortitude just because this killer claimed to kill in the name of his religion instead of some equally garbled and confused manifesto? We do not blame all Christians for a killer who invokes that faith, why would we do any different for Muslims in America?

The hatred and homophobia that may have played at least as large if not a greater role can be best defeated by utterly rejecting the very premise that these victims were in any way different from us. The politicians and others within this country who have marginalized, demonized and discriminated against gays and lesbians are not responsible for this specific hate crime (especially if the hatred was born and nurtured in a non-Christian environment), but with every statement or action that builds a wall between segments of society they encourage the darkest corners of society to give in to the hatred and anger and eventually it boils over; while our politics of discrimination had small role in this crime, it may not be as blameless the next time around and it is up to all of us to turn away from this kind of divisiveness and all the agents who encourage it and embrace all members of society. When I saw Michael Bradley lead the US soccer team onto the field wearing a rainbow armband, it was a thrilling moment that reminded me of everything that was great about America. Another awesome gesture was a local Chick-fil-A, once publicly identified with homophobia courtesy of their very religious founder and CEO, opening on Sunday to offer free meals to people lined up to donate blood for the injured of this attack (itself an exhilarating reaction on the part of the people of Orlando); how awesome would it be if that bakery in Albuquerque or that pizza place in Indianapolis were to offer their wares to the pride rallies this week, not as an acceptance of something that they do not countenance for religious reasons, but as a gesture that repudiates the hatred that would wreak violence on people simply because they are different. The best way to fight hatred of this kind is not with laws and polemics, but with simple gestures that show that whatever our differences, whatever our beliefs, we reject hate and stand united as a human brotherhood. Ultimately, whether this attack was driven by hatred of gays or America or an attempt to terrorize us or both, we will not allow him to script our response and that is the best way to defeat such attacks.






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