Complicity of Silence
When Reuters reported the story of the man shooting up the North Carolina nursing home last month, they couched it as the third recent occurrence of such violence in the American southeast. There was the rampage in Alabama where a man shot ten people, and then a Cuban emigré in Miami killed five.
Subsequently, four Oakland cops were killed by a parolee. A man in Santa Clara killed five relatives including three children and then himself. And in Binghamton, New York, a man killed 13 people at an immigration center before shooting himself. Some of these killings were done in the moment, some were premeditated.
What is it about our culture that allows and/or enables such sociopathy? Is it the cowboy shoot first and-don’t bother to ask questions later style epitomized by the Bush-Cheney regime? Is it the hyper-individualism de Tocqueville wrote of a few decades after our nation was born? Is it the ridiculous plethora of guns that if they don’t invite slaughter certainly make it easier?
No, this isn’t a rant for gun control. Though I would suggest that Mr. Obama sit down with the NRA and ask them how we might keep guns out of the hands of criminals and wing-nuts. It’s not that I think they have an answer, but it would be quite proper to reveal that they are, as they always have been, all mouth and no brain. Of course, they could surprise us.
But surely some of the responsibility for killers running amok has to be with those people who knew them.
There had to have been signs that these individuals were coming apart at the seams and about to blow. Every one of these murderers had family, friends and/or co-workers, and some of them must have seen or heard something that indicated a problem. But they failed to act. Their complicity of silence deserves opprobrium...at the very least.
©2009 SetonnoteS
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