The Warning Signs

Today marks yet another day of failure among Americans. Joe Stack, who was mad at the government, the IRS in particular, flew his plane into an IRS building in Texas, killing himself, injuring several, and perhaps killing one other (who is currently unaccounted for). He had apparently written a note on a website about his plans. Here is what the NY Times had to say about the man and his internet note:

It ended with passages strongly suggesting that its author expected to die on Thursday, including a reference to Feb. 18, 2010, as his date of death.

“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different,” the note concluded. “I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

Source: NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19crash.html?ref=global-home

This attack comes while two other similar instances are fresh on our minds. Just yesterday I heard a report on Amy Bishop, the angry woman who killed several colleagues at the University of Alabama at Huntsville recently. And only back in November, Major Hasan went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, killing many of our nation’s best.

In all of these cases we managed to “miss the warning signs” of aggression. In retrospect, they seem so clear. Hasan had been in contact with radical clerics and had a history of psychological issues. Interviewed students had clearly noticed anger and social problems with Amy Bishop. And Joe Stack left us a note on his website openly saying (apparently) what he intended.

When such things come to pass, we feel that not only is the perpetrator guilty of a crime, but so is the person who failed to prevent the event from occuring in the first place. As humans, we have a sickening desire to pin the blame on someone, and the media feed off of this desire, pushing into every dark corner, turning over every scrap of information until someone is guilty. We say it is about justice, but really it is about revenge. Holding someone accountable for his own actions and rendering recompense to those afflicted is justice. But in these instances, we seek to hold one person responsible for someone else’s actions, even if the connection is tenuous. We are unable to accept the fact that sometimes people do crazy things, and we simply cannot stop the world from containing these people.

But once these events have occurred, it is important to prevent them from reocurring. And that, many will say, is why we ask about missing the warning signs. And yet, the country we live in places high value on the right to express ourselves freely. The note Joe Stack wrote on his website could be described in two ways up until today: an angry rant that would amount to nothing and the active promotion of free speech in a great nation. But when the insane aspect of Joe Stack decided to act on his rant, it became a missed warning sign.

And this is nearly always the case. The observance of our rights today becomes the obvious omen in retrospect. Our rights of free speech are in direct conflict with our notion that someone was wrong for missing the warning signs. Take Amy Bishop as the next example. If you were a college dean, considering her for a position on the faculty, what would you say when you notice she is a little odd, that she doesn’t make eye contact with you, but that her credentials are appropriate and her criminal background check turns up clean? You would probably say that, like the majority of professors, she was simply eccentric, and you would hire her. Despite the fact that the deepest background checks, like those for caretakers of children, would have turned up a few suspicious items, the depth used for this type of job did not. Just like in Mr. Stack’s case, until the day Amy Bishop turned violent, her eccentricity was merely part of her personality, and she, like the rest of us, had the right to be eccentric.

I do not pretend to know how to solve this problem. It has always existed, and it probably always will. But there is one important thing to glean: life is not fair. It’s one of the most unfortunate truths around, but we with access to internet and free time to read blogs cannot say life has been unfair to us. When, on occasion, though, the fact that life is not fair is brought back into our wealthy, secure laps, we seem to be unable to handle it and cast around for scapegoats. On this account we have something to learn from the child with AIDS who, despite the fact that he could easily and justifiably blame his illness on his parents, does not. No, most such children quietly lead their unhappy lives until death, never blaming. The same can be said of many others among the malnourished and impoverished masses around the world. We who have been so fortunate as to be born in the West should learn to accept the unfairness of life when it so happens to brush us by.

Many years ago our nation decided that free speech tends to make life more “fair” than “unfair.” It leads to progress and reform, the expansion of liberty to those who lack it, the protection of the minority against the domination of a majority. Those nations that have practiced censorship may not have as many crazed shootings, but they often end up trading them for secret police raids in the night and coerced confessions. History has shown us that this often leads to even more death and “unfairness” than we have otherwise.

So it is a trade-off. Recently we have seen the downsides of our freedom in these events, but we have only to look to the room around us to see its upsides.