Brookfield Basics

In my first post on the Virginia Tech. massacre (see below) I discussed what I believe to be the nature and cause of this incident. I would now like to discuss the aftermath of the massacre, and in particular, how the leaders of our national discourse have chosen to respond.

Some went to the easiest well first, and blamed the Federal Government. In what can only be described as a massive exercise in “hand-washing”, the head of the Virginia Tech. Student counseling center commented on the “inadequate funding for mental health services”. This was his cowardly prescription despite Cho’s long- standing and visibly established pattern of sociopathic behavior, all of which occurred within sight and sound of this gentleman’s office. This was his example of leadership to the young people in his charge.

Yeah – that’s it. More money to federally funded services would surely have stopped Cho!! I don’t think HE even believes that.

Some in Washington life spoke of it in the same sentences as global warming. HUH??!!

But without question, the most sickeningly egregious comment I saw came from member of Congress, who attempted to link Cho’s murderous spree to the recent Supreme Court ruling, which upheld the ban on partial birth abortions. Even after considering who proffered this drivel, I can scarcely believe the sheer contempt of the statement. When faced with the largest mass murder in our nations’ history, this puny politico chose to use it as a vehicle to vent their rage on the Court. It is one of the most wantonly irresponsible comments I have ever heard.

And now we turn to the talking heads – the people who work for the mainstream media. Brian Williams, the polished anchorman for the NBC nightly news, introduced Mr. Cho’s self-made video ravings with the comment, “these can only be described as a multi-media manifesto”.

WHAT??!!

Williams is a highly trained and presumably educated journalist, yet this is the only description he could summon it? A manifesto is a statement of deeply held beliefs or convictions. Mr. Cho’s videos were the disembodied ravings of an evil and deeply disturbed soul. How about we describe it like THAT, Brian? Instead, Cho was presented to us as some kind of troubled guerilla warrior turned vigilante who went on one last wild ride.

The responsible thing to do would have been to suppress the tapes, lest they serve as encouragement to others who inhabit the dark fringes Cho’s world. But then I suppose Mr. Williams and his associates have to consider their self-defined “journalistic responsibilities”.

It is time for us to not only sort through the actions of Sueng-Hui Cho, but to also give serious consideration to what is being served up as fodder for our national discourse on this incident. This is critical because it will go a long way towards shaping our memory of this ordeal, and of shaping policy related responses to it.

In fairness, it is not the job of the people I mention to make sense of this for us or to somehow “make it right”. That is an individual responsibility we all must shoulder for ourselves.

But shaping such events in our national consciousness, and providing a format for them to be seriously addressed is one of the primary responsibilities of those holding high public office. This responsibility is to be equally shared by members of the media.

Is that expecting so much?

I don’t think it is.

And we should tell them so.

In The Inferno, Dante wrote “the definition of hell is to say – I belong to myself”.

I believe that the most fundamental explanation of what happened at Virginia Tech. can be seen in this statement. Surely Seung-Hui Cho could have accurately said, “I am my own”.

I am no expert in the areas of medicine, psychiatry or the human mind. But surely the roots of psychosis lie in personal isolation. Cho’s isolation was so complete that it bred an alternative and utterly dark reality. He lived without any kind of wholesome, positive, or restraining influence. His thought life had no objectively established points of reference, and lacking these, his mind became a dark and swirling eddy-pool; an endless labyrinth wound ever more tightly upon itself, the ultimate result of which was an inward implosion and an outward explosion.

But while it is appropriate to consider the prescriptions and content of modern psychology, these things by themselves are inadequate. What are we to make of what he did? To whom do we pose our questions? Where are we to put our anger and stunned mortification? What does it mean for us to say of Mr. Cho that, “he was his own”?

I don’t believe the answer to these questions can be given without the consideration of the word “evil”. Today we don’t like that word. It is too edgy, too definitive; and it smacks of absolutes that make us uncomfortable. But I don’t believe modern psychology alone is enough to tell us what happened on that campus.

We live in a world where evil exists. The evidence of this seems indisputable to me, and if we can agree to that, then the next question is “where does it exist”?

We all have the potential for great good and great evil, and the battle between these alternatives is waged in the human heart.

Alexander Solzhenitsen gave us a brilliant illustration of this in his classic work The Gulag Archipelago (which should be required reading in every high school in America). In an incredibly revealing and poignant passage, he tells if of a night of unimaginable distress as he lay in his cold, dark cell, on a bed of rotting straw. That night he came to understand the nature of evil. Evil, he realized, did not reside in the totalitarian regime that had imprisoned him, or in the sickening excesses of affluent democracies. “I came to understand that night that there was a thin line running down the middle of my own heart. On one side of that line lay evil - on the other good. The decision was mine on which side I would dwell”.

Mr. Solzhenitsen, despite suffering torments a thousand fold of Mr. Cho’s, chose the good. I believe that at some point in his life, Cho CHOSE evil. The origins of his choice may have been mistreatment and isolation. But I believe that at several key junctures he was presented with opportunities to move beyond the darkness of his isolation and into the light of civilized day. I believe he made choices that not only allowed evil to pour in, but also actually invited it. I believe even in the twisted and darkened maize that was his psyche, Cho knew that what he did was wrong. I believe that he knew what he did was evil.

It is entirely appropriate to wear clothing that represents Virginia Tech. University. These are outward and sincere expressions of our desire to stand with that community in its hour of anguish, and as such, are beneficial. And it is certainly appropriate to engage in discussions about what protections the civilized world should seek from such sociopaths. In fact, to not have these discussions would be irresponsible.

But before we engage in appropriate remedies for showing our compassion, and before we outline appropriate responses for the containment of such horrific action, we must do the hard work of wrestling with the NATURE and the SOURCE of such actions.

Evil exists in this world. Recognizing this reality and recognizing the place where it resides, is a beginning. To discount these things is to go into battle unarmed.

This recognition is not the end.

It is the starting point.

Edmund Ruffin, an artilleryman under the command of General Pierre Beauregard, pulled the lanyard on a 12-pound Parrott fieldpiece, and watched as the solid shot arched across the Charleston harbor towards Fort Sumter. The Fort he fired upon was home to the United States Army, and Ruffin’s act ushered in the bloodiest war in America’s history. So bloody that the casualties of all other wars combined still do not equal those of this conflict.

It was April 12th 1861, and the Civil War had begun.

The flashpoint issue and great moral imperative that ignited the war was, of course, slavery. But what brought Lincoln and Congress to authorize the invasion of the South was the question of secession. The Union declared war on the Confederacy with the primary and stated objective of preserving the Union. Over ninety percent of the men who would serve in the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia never owned a slave. They fought for what they perceived as their political rights and the protection of their homeland.

Militarily the war was a case of brains against brawn. Despite inferiority in men, horses, transport, supplies, weaponry, and any other material advantage one can have in war, the abilities of Robert Edward Lee and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson would befuddle and astound their northern counterparts. Lee’s strategic brilliance and audacious spirit, combined with Jackson’s ability to strike with unparalleled speed and fury, would keep the outcome very much in doubt for over two years.

The two dominant figures of the War were a soldier and a politician - Lee and Lincoln.

Like all of history’s immortal commanders, Lee was a man of great magnetism and towering intellect. Raised in the rich Virginian tradition of Presidents and horsemen, he was handsome, athletic, possessed of tremendous reservoirs of stamina and courage, and valedictorian of his class at West Point. He was widely recognized as the most capable commander in the Union Army, and as such was offered its command at the time of the war. But he could not raise his sword against his beloved Virginia. He declined the offer; taking instead a Generalship under the Confederacy, a decision he was convinced would banish him to historical oblivion. He is buried in the Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he served as its President in the post-war South. During his tenure there it was known only as Washington University, named after our first President. In fitting tribute to the man who was Washington’s equal, Lee’s name was added to the University’s upon his death. I came very close to attending that school, and toured the beautiful campus in the verdant Virginia April of 1976. I can well remember sitting quietly with my parents in the chapel as the morning light poured through the arched windows. I remember gazing at his sun-drenched tomb, absorbing the still quiet, and thinking about the manner of man he was.

Lincoln was the other side of the coin. Tall, gangly, homely; he possessed none of Lee’s easy, natural gifts. He was the product of the Illinois frontier and a grim, almost iron determination. Self-educated, he entered politics with about the same chance as a knife wielder in a gunfight. But the mark of destiny was upon him, and in the election of 1860 he became our 16th President. With the possible exception of Harry Truman, no other President has even approximated the crucible of awful decisions that faced Lincoln. One imagines him pacing the halls of the White House on those countless nights when sleep was a stranger. One tries to imagine the overwhelming, flattening pressure - the sheer weight of what he carried. One tries to imagine his anguish over the slaughter, and the hauntingly persistent question, “have I done the right thing”? One cannot.

But as you read the transcendent beauty of his prose in philippics such as the Gettysburg Address, and as you contemplate the magnitude of his vision and his will, one can only give silent homage to and gratitude for such a man. Surely the hand of Providence was upon him. Surely his contemporaries could say of him that he was put here “for such a time as this”.

Today the Civil War, like most of our history, is trivialized, discounted, and worst, slowly allowed to recede in our historical rear view mirrors.

Lincoln and Lee still have much to tell us if we would but listen.

In September of 2005, three weeks after Katrina had descended upon the Gulf coast, I traveled to Mississippi with a group of fifteen people from our church.

We spent one day in Biloxi - right on the Gulf, and I will never forget the scenes of ruin and devastation, the scope of which is beyond the power of words to convey. Refrigerators in treetops, large commercial fishing vessels laying keel up in the middle of what were once busy streets. Bare cement foundations where houses once rested, as if some giant scythe had descended from the sky and neatly severed the homes from their foundations.

But most of our time was spent in the countrified setting of Pine, Louisiana, where we set up base camp at a local church. We spent eight days traveling form home to home, repairing roofs, hauling garbage, hooking up fresh water supply, and cutting endless amounts of trees and limbs. But more than that we just listened to people tell us of the things they had seen and experienced. Words fail you at such moments, not because you can’t think of anything to say, but because we quickly understood that they didn’t want us to say anything. They just wanted us to listen, and to put a hand on their shoulder while we prayed with them.

The rural, deep South is a different place. Even in late September the heat was oppressive. The outdoors was little more than a giant convection oven; an invisible woolen glove pressed down insistently upon our shoulders. The people of this region carry the imprint of the land; their personas shaped in the twin crucibles of the heat and the soil. They are different than you and I. Most were less educated, but carried that foundational wisdom which results from growing up on the land. And they were tough - tough with a capital “T”. But despite their unspeakable loss, their generosity matched their toughness.

So many images and people are planted in my memory from that week, but none more so than Miss Molly.

Miss Molly was tiny – about 5’ 1”; and I am sure she never looked left to see the “100” on her scale. I guessed her to be about sixty; she was as quiet as she was small. A church mouse would have considered her a raucous neighbor. I met her one morning as we were finishing breakfast and preparing to head out for the day’s work. I approached her and introduced myself, and I can still hear her reply. “My name is Molly - but folks here call me Miss Molly”.

We talked for a bit, and then she screwed up her courage to ask for help – a request as foreign to her nature as we were to that land. “I’ve heard about your group” she said, “and was wondering if y’all could come by and help me. You see – I’m all alone”.

As we spoke I learned that she had children, but they were long grown and gone. I later learned from her Pastor that after years of abuse from an alcoholic husband, she had summoned the courage to divorce him and live alone on their “spread”.

So we scheduled a day later in the week to visit Miss Molly’s, and spent that day cleaning, hauling, and cutting. As we packed up our equipment to leave, she could barely speak. She only murmured, “God Bless you” as she embraced us one by one.

She came back to the church a few days later and sought me out, insisting that she be allowed to express her gratitude to the group. I can see her standing there in that little kitchen, quietly insisting that she be of some service to us. So we agreed, and I and asked her if she could do some laundry for us. “Why heavens sake sure” she said, and the next day we had fresh clothes to pack up for the long drive home.

So why do I write about her after all this time? We recently had our hearts broken with some horrific news. We learned that her estranged husband came back, and in a psychotic, alcohol fueled rage, put three bullets in her heard. She was found in a crumpled little ball, her dried blood caked and hardened on the wooden floor of her kitchen.

Why is it that some people have the hardship of ten lifetimes crammed into one? Why is it that this demure and kindly jewel was mowed down as if she was no more than a steer on the slaughterhouse floor?

I don’t know the answer to that any more than you do.

But some things I do know………

I know that Miss Molly was the REAL DEAL. I know that despite her size she was a giant; a lion whose courage roared louder than mine ever will. All of Katrina’s fury could not quell her spirit. Amidst the greatest devastation I have ever witnessed, she was concerned about doing my laundry.

Why?

I doubt Miss Molly would have given much thought to that question. It’s just who she was. And if I had asked her “why” I suspect she would have said something like, “You got to help people when they need it. It’s just what folks around here do”.

I don’t have a picture of Miss Molly. Somehow in the rush of things I never made the time to get one. That was a big mistake. I would give a lot to have