An Attack on a Liberal Religious Congregation
Chris Lowe
On Sunday a man attacked a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville Tennessee with a shotgun, during a children's performance or presentation of some sort, killing at two adult parishioners and sending seven others to the hospital, five in critical or serious (i.e. life-threatening) condition. Thankfully no children were harmed physically. It is hard to image the carnage and harder to ponder the emotional and psychological effects, particularly on the children. Today follow-up news reports state that the attacker, who was stopped and restrained by people at the church and then arrested, had written a four page letter making clear that the attack had made the congregation a deliberate target. In a sound clip, a police spokesman boils the motives stated in the letter down to the man being distraught over his inability to find work, and his hatred of "the liberal movement."
This news has resonated for me. That's partly because the last organized religious body with which I was affiliated was the First Parish Church (UU) in my old home town in Massachusetts. It was a church which had provided a haven for me when I found I could not affirm the beliefs required of me for confirmation into the Episcopalian denomination into which I had been baptized, including most particularly the doctrine that God reserves His forgiveness and salvation from sin only for those who believe certain things in certain ways about Jesus of Nazareth, and condemns all others to eternal damnation. The universalism of my Unitarian church's views and explorations (rather than teachings) allowed me scope for grappling with some of those issues through informal comparative thinking.
It was also a church whose youth fellowship provided me a welcoming context for working out some of the struggles of my adolescence, and a group of friends in the endeavor to whom I still think back frequently, though I have lost touch with them. It was a church and a group of friends that reinforced the values of my family concerning volunteering and the connection between morality, ethics and struggling for social justice.
Among the things we did in our youth group, formally the Harris Union (named for a church leader some decades before, or possibly a street in town associated with the church, or perhaps a street named after the man) but called by us the Harris Onion, was to take charge of the church service one Sunday a year, allowing us to give voice to our youthful perspectives and gropings for coherent outlooks on matters spiritual, in all their unevenness, and to invite adult sharing. Likewise I remember services in which younger Sunday School classes featured in some role as the focus.
The powerful emotional effect that the news from Knoxville has had on me partly comes from visualizing it, anachronistically and in displace topography, occurring in the sanctuary of our 1830s-built New England meeting house.
The resonance comes as well from more recent experiences: The First Unitarian Church in Portland, and members of People of Faith for Peace associated with First Unitarian, have been mainstays of the local peace and anti-war movement, especially the PDX Peace Coalition in which I have worked, along with members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and the American Friends Service Committee. The church itself has provided us a physical home at times in which to meet. The kindness and ethical commitments of these people remind me of what I liked best about my old church -- it is hard and painful to imagine them, and the people I am sure are like them in Knoxville, as the focus of such a horrifying, terrifying attack.
Their activity fits with my longer term experience of faith-based activism in various peace & justice movements, which for me have often particularly focused on Africa, whether it be the anti-apartheid movement, advocacy for improved U.S. Africa policy, the global Jubilee debt cancellation movement, or the global movement to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, in which trinitarian Christian groups, both Protestant and Catholic, and sometimes Jewish groups, have played significant roles. Particularly with respect to Africa, religious peace and justice groups have rejected conventional U.S. media stereotypes about "the continent," many of them dating back to the 19th century, others influenced by various racialized discourses of more recent vintage, but generally concatenating to grossly inaccurate and misleading depictions.
Religious bodies often have particular ties to African people in particular places, as well as commitments to the universal dignity and worth of persons, that cut profoundly against the more general anti-African dimensions of U.S. culture. It also seems to be true that faith motivations often provide a steadfastness and consistency of engagement that I sometimes have envied, sometimes felt almost parasitic upon, and always recognized with gratitude, in my own less consistent efforts.
Finally, thinking of Unitarians in Knoxville has brought to mind the family of one of my brothers, who live in Louisville, Kentucky, and who have been members of one of the liberal mainline Protestant churches there (not Unitarian Universalist). That congregation's social justice work has included work in continuing struggles over racial equality, education and the role of police in the community, and also participation in a movement called simply "Fairness" in engaging with LGBTQ rights issues locally (I believe they also are a "welcoming congregation"). They do this in a context where history and the present make those struggles tougher, but by the same token perhaps consequential in a different way, than in Portland -- though perhaps not unlike struggles in some other parts of Oregon. Given the generally greater religiosity of the Southeast, compared to unusually unchurched Oregon, it seems likely to me, and not surprising, that in the Upper South, and perhaps elsewhere in the "Bible belt," liberal religious congregations are key centers where people seeking humane progressive change find one another, find and build community, and work together.
And in that respect, the attack in Knoxville also gives me chills, making me wonder if I should fear for my brother and sister-in-law and her mother and my nephews.
This news in one sense is a variant of a kind of horror with which we have become familiar -- mass killings and woundings at schools, at universities, at current or former workplaces, at shopping malls or fast food restaurants, at an Olympic park. In another sense it fits with patterns of attacks on churches, usually in the form of arson, which often have specifically been aimed at African American churches with apparent racial motivations, but also have included substantial numbers of mainly white churches, either out of hostility to religion or sheer destructiveness, as well as racist and religiously bigoted arson or other vandalism against Jewish synagogues and Muslim mosques.
The Knoxville attack's political dimension invokes memories of politicized right-wing violence such as the murders of doctors who provided abortions, or the attack on the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Boston in which an isolated, emotionally disturbed anti-abortion man killed a receptionist, including also memories of the previously mentioned Olympic attack by right-wing extremist Eric Rudolph and the Oklahoma City bombing, and fears raised by the organized "militia" movement of the 1990s. In a more abstract way, one wonders how or whether the Knoxville news relates to phenomena such as the purging of relatively more liberal theologians and believers from the Southern Baptist and Southern Methodist denominations and their seminaries; to the (re)emergence on the other hand of more broadly social justice oriented forms of Protestant evangelicalism; and to the heartfelt struggles on both sides over social liberalization in matters of gender and sexuality being played out in one immediately present example in the Lambeth Conference of the world Anglican Communion in England.
Measured across the vastness of the country, the tens of thousands of cities and towns, and across a population of three hundred million persons, the episodes of intense local violence are relatively rare and happen to a tiny proportion of us. But mass media mean that perceptually they happen everywhere and in a sense to all of us. The resultant difficulties of keeping them in perspective and proportion contribute to the dynamics of fear in our culture, which have political effects both in policy and in social psychology. There is perhaps a good side of this, in extending our ability to feel connection and empathy. But such events also become part of the myriad matters to which we feel connected and by which we feel affected, yet unable even much to influence, much less to control.
And, we know, the mass mediation of such events to some extent generates copycat actions. Hence my chills.
These reflections and ruminations have no particular argument. They represent an effort to name and situate my emotional reactions as a non-religious person. The habits of my youth call to mind an impulse to prayer, though I don't now believe in the efficacy of prayer, and would not now know to whom or what I was praying. "Sending positive thoughts" seems merely a denatured variant.
In calling forth my admiration of the people of faith with whom I sometimes toil, the attack also calls forth my ambivalence toward religion in general. It reminds me of my difficulty knowing even what I think of using languages of spirit and soul that are so profoundly evocative, when I don't clearly believe in them as phenomena. It reminds me how that reluctance is tied to what may be a perverse sort of respect or reverence that makes it matter somehow, despite my unbelief or lack of faith, not to be a hypocrite in such matters, if I am to respect the beliefs of others. It reminds me of my recently developed insight that in an odd way my father's escape from a cramped and bigoted form of Calvinism practiced by his mother and her family still left him psychologically scarred, and that I have inherited some of that damage myself. Since Unitarianism was in part, and especially in New England, a break from the dour "angry God" Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards and the first Great Awakening, retrospectively it may make a kind of sense that it held a kind of attraction to me in my youth.
But above all, the attack has made me sad: Sad to think of that congregation of people who have tried to come together to share an appreciation of life, of spirit and the divine, as they see those things according to their own lights, in a community that tries to open itself to many or even all such lights (in the Universalist ambition); sad that such a group of people of good will should find themselves the focus of such a vicious attack.
Sad too to think particularly that this should have happened at an occasion for children, in which rather than as (probably) usual they were often in their own spaces doing children's things, they were with the main congregation, and exposed to the full horror of the violence to parents and relatives and friends and acquaintances. Sad and wondering at how their surviving parents and relatives and friends can possibly help them.
And sad, and angry, and fearful, about how the cultural demonization of liberalism may have contributed to this violence, such that a man who felt "hatred for the liberal movement" and apparently connected that hatred to his own personal woes, should come to focus it in this manner on those people.
I don't know yet how else I will respond, or how others in Portland and Oregon and Washington may be responding. Perhaps if I find out more about concrete actions, I will write more on that. Meanwhile, thank you for your forbearance in allowing me to share these thoughts. If others have been reacting to this news in some way, I invite and would value your reflections on those responses.
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3:55 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
According to Police Chief David Owen, the shooter specifically singled out "liberal movement" support for gays as a reason for murder.
3:59 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
The Unitarian Universalist Association, the national UU group, has posted a few things. The national UU Trauma Team is on the ground in Knoxville.
As a Unitarian, and as a human, I am deeply saddened by the loss of fellow humans and that our church's love and acceptance of others drove someone to hate so much.
Jul 28, '08
He should be executed for his murderous rampage - but liberal policies will probably not let that happen.
4:30 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
Yet again another example that the hate being taught (from ANY quarter) has real-life consequences somewhare. It is more than rhetoric to someone, someplace.
Jul 28, '08
Violent, mentally unstable people aren't unique to any particular political ideology.
As an unabashed progressive, I hope most resist the temptation to link this tragic behavior to those with whom we might disagree politically.
Reasonable people of all political stripes condemn this despicable act and mourn for the victims.
4:39 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
Thanks Evan.
JAD, it's funny how "victims rights" count if the victims seek greater punitiveness or to make justice more like vengeance, but not if the victims favor more "liberal" appraches, say if they oppose the death penalty.
Actually I'd be surprised if Tennessee has a particularly "liberal" set of laws on murder sentencing.
It will be interesting to see how the survivors and their families, and the families of those killed, and how the congregation as community, which in that form was also a victim, I submit, approach the question of how this man should be punished for his crimes. Should they oppose a death sentence, as they well might, would you support their victims' rights to have that view given great weight by the justice system?
Jul 28, '08
Yes, JAD, killing him will make everything better.
Jul 28, '08
As someone quite familiar with UU (some relatives were Unitarians, some were Universalists before the merger) I found this very sad.
What is particularly sad is that children were performing in a sanctuary invaded by a gunman. But I'm not sure the death penalty is the best punishment. Life in prison would be better, especially in a prison where anyone who forced children to watch killing was shunned. And in the sentencing phase, the killer should be forced to listen to everyone who wants to make a statement about what he did. Does he really think those kids will grow up to be conservative Republicans? More likely, he was an unstable person who just wasn't thinking.
Where is Newt Gingrich (who once said Susan Smith drowned her kids because of liberal social policies) or the others who talk about conservative family values or "people of faith"? In an election year, do they really want to say one denomination is better than another?
Years ago, at a meeting where the death penalty was being debated, someone with experience of criminal prosecution said some prisoners would rather be executed than spend decades in prison. So let's not get into a debate about "soft on crime". This was murder. Period. Anyone who doesn't speak out against this crime is condoning murder.
Jul 28, '08
Publius, while all reasonable people will condemn the actions at work here, it is important to note the pervasive political messages that brought this sad, unstable person to this end.
Conservatives have made an art out of campaigning based on fear. Measure 49 wasn't simply about building rights; it was about liberals taking your home! Senate Bill 2007 wasn't just about GLTB rights; it was about liberals teaching your children how to be gay!
The conservative talking points are, at this point, more or less pulled out of thin air and designed specifically to scare people. And this fear is meant to result in votes... but now it has resulted in umitigated tragedy.
Conservatives have been throwing matches at barrels of gunpowder, and one of them blew up. And now their response will be "Well, that wasn't our gunpowder. We only used matches."
My heart goes out to that congregation. They will be in my prayers today.
5:49 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
Reasonable people of all political stripes condemn this despicable act and mourn for the victims.
As a minimum standard for reasonableness, this seems like a low bar.
It will be interesting to see who fails to meet it.
Jul 28, '08
According to reports in the "Knoxville News," on a search of the gunman's house they found among other right wing hate publications, books by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.
Since Bill blamed Marilyn Manson for the Columbine shootings, I wonder if he'll take credit for this one.
Even more, I wonder if this little tidbit of information will make it into the MSM? Doubt it.
Jul 28, '08
"An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire at a Unitarian church, killing two people, left behind a note suggesting that he targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal policies..."
Followed by: "Adkisson, a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps..."
Perhaps the assailant confused Unitarian with Libertarian.
Jul 28, '08
This was a terrorist act by a religious extremist. Why is the media not calling it what it is? Is it because he attacked "liberals", because he didn't use a bomb, or because he's white? Timothy McVeigh was a Republican, too.
It's time the media started calling it like it is, rather than covering for the right.
And the left should put this right in the R's faces.
Jul 28, '08
What’s truly sad is seeing so many people try to spin this tragedy as a way to advance their own personal political agenda, whether it’s censorship, gun control, gay marriage or whatever.
You insult the memories of the victims whose lives were lost with such tawdry grandstanding.
Does anyone really think a killer deranged enough to commit an act this heinous did so out of well considered, thoughtful deliberation concerning the church’s various political stands? This was the act of a sick mind and should be recognized as such.
8:27 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
"We think of faith as a source of comfort and understanding but find our expressions of faith sowing division; we belive ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them, and drives us farther apart."
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p. 23.
I'm a happy Unitarian -- one of my favorite moments came when our pastor said something about God and then she said, "Now, don't get hung up on that God concept."
I'm deeply sickened today.
8:59 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
Buckman Res,
Not sure if you are referring to responses elsewhere as well, but I have to say that very few of the responses to my overly long post seem to be described in any fairness as grandstanding. I don't think any of them actually address any of the "issues" you raise.
As you say, it was the act of a human being with a sick mind, who also expressed his sickness in a four-page (hand-written I think) letter. He was sick, he was angry, he was hurting in more ways than one, including economically. He had a sickness that let him or made him act out with great and horrible and sickening violence.
Yet he chose a particular target, for reasons that he stated. There is no reason not to pay attention to that.
The congregation he attacked for the reasons he said had particular characteristics of liberal goodwill toward fellow human beings that made them a target.
It is not an insult to the memory of those killed or the hurt of those wounded, physically and psychically, to acknowledge that they were targeted for their goodwill, twistedly misinterpreted. On the contrary, it would be an insult not to acknowledge that they were targeted for their efforts to do the good, as they understand it.
They didn't deserve it because no one deserves this, as you say. But they also didn't deserve it for the reasons the killer said he did it. And I firmly believe that his sick mind focused in on them because of the demonization of liberalism so rife in our culture.
Jul 28, '08
You know, as a UU myself, I have to point out that the shooter was less successful than he intended because of his own prejudices. He wanted to kill everyone there and thought he wouldn't get any resistance from the peace-loving UUs. Two people died, which is tragic, of course. What prevented him from killing more people, however, was the fact that he was rapidly attacked and disarmed by the congregation, including a woman with martial arts training. While UUs may advocate for peace, that doesn't mean we're not effective when the situation calls for violence in self-defense.
Jul 28, '08
Hello. I just had to comment because I live in Knoxville. The shoooter is obviously a conservative nutjob with which we are filled with here in East TN., but I think some responsibilty has to go to the right-wing press: Limbaugh, etc. I hate to be a "liberal elitist" but some people are just stupid or crazy or both. Espousing the sort of hatred that is put forth on AM radio everyday (for great profit!) is reprehensible. People actually think it's for real and unstable people act on their impulses. I am deeply saddened that this tragedy occurred but I'm not that surprised. Ignorance and intolerance is rampant and people are armed to the teeth in the South. I am a born and raised southerner and I live in what I see as one of the most beautiful places in the world but this incident scares me. It's crappy enough to know the vote I faithfully punch in every election cycle doesn't really count and now I have to consider that some crazy asshole will shoot me for my political views. That's my two cents. I still love where I live and I'm used to being a liberal in a conservative place. Most of those "stupid" people I speak of are just people who are struggling and need some sort of solace. It's complicated.
11:56 p.m.
Jul 28, '08
It's easy to go immediately to the "sickness" explanation in cases like this but quite likely inaccurate.
It may be that the shooter in this case really is mentally ill and deserves our sympathy as much as the victims do.
However, the heinous nature of his actions is not proof of that.
Most people who commit terrorist acts based on religion or politics are not mentally ill.
Remeber Abu Ghraib and a "few sick individuals?" Our understanding of how human beings function indicates otherwise.
It's understandable that we don't want to think that perfectly ordinary people who are not mentally ill could do such horrible things. Several people here are clearly expressing that but some are exploiting that aversion to explicitly attempt to shut down any further discussion of the possible causes of this behavior.
I think letting them get away with that would be the real disrespect to the vicitms.
12:01 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
Doretta is exactly right. We'll find out soon enough if this person was mentally ill.
If not, however, then it's terrorism. Pure and simple.
Just like Tim McVeigh and Eric Rudolph.
Jul 29, '08
Chris,
Thanks for a beautifully written commentary.
Jul 29, '08
According to local news reports the shooter's ex-wife is a former member of the church and he had threatened to kill her and then himself prior to the divorce. Local news also reported that he stated that his plan was to kill people in the church and be shot and killed by the police. That does not sound like terrorism to me but instead like a sad and deranged death-wish.
12:50 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
How is that any different than a suicide bomber?
8:09 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
Echo Kari's question. I don't see an appreciable difference between that and suicide bombing. In both cases the intent is to die and take a bunch of innocent people with you in the process.
Jul 29, '08
Publius, nobody -- insane or not -- exists in a vacuum. We all are shaped by the culture around us. If this guy spent eight hours a day listening to the hate-spewers on right-wing talk radio, don't you think that might have had some influence on his attitudes -- and actions? People like Michael Weiner ("Savage") and Ann Coulter have openly expressed the wish to see liberals die. Is it so hard to believe that a few loonies out there in loony-land might take them at their word?
Jul 29, '08
It's not terrorism or a mental illness - it is pure ignorance. This shooter is clearly blaming others than blaming himself for his problems. His problems are of his own making. It just seems that the less education one has about life and other people, the more violent their "resolution" of their "problems" are. This has all the earmarks of an attempted suicide by cop - nothing more, nothing less.
9:32 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
This has all the earmarks of an attempted suicide by cop - nothing more, nothing less.
Amazing what a blinding force denial can be, isn't it?
This guy didn't walk into a precinct and start waving a gun. He didn't call the police and say "I've got a gun, come get me." He didn't start acting in a randomly antisocial manner to draw attention to himself and then pull out a gun when the coppers arrived. You could legitimately argue "nothing more, nothing less" in any of those cases.
A "four-page manifesto" accusing a church of being a "bastion of liberalism", however, is not an earmark of an attempted suicide by cop. Ditto taking a gun and dozens of rounds of ammo into a church. Ditto opening fire in the middle of a children's play. Ditto spewing hate speech while in the act.
We are quick to blame Imams and madrassas for Muslim terrorists but when a Tim McVeigh or Eric Rudolph or Jim Adkisson violently acts out his political beliefs we rush to dismiss it as the isolated act of a deranged individual. Jim Adkisson may yet prove to be a deranged individual but even should that prove to be true we can't escape the fact that this was not a random, isolated act. He chose to act out his personal frustrations in that particular way for specific reasons--reasons rooted, fertilized and grown in a particular American political culture.
9:57 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
At the nut of the discussion here is whether the shooter represented an extreme form of a prevalent view or was just mentally ill. Although I think the language has gotten overheated (Buckman Res, for example), I tend to agree that this is a false dichotomy. The shooter might not be mentally ill and not represent an extreme form of a prevalent view. (Although if you were looking for a definition of mental illness, I don't see how you could improve on shooting children in Sunday school--is there any definition of mental wellbeing in which this is regarded as not horribly abberent?)
There's a trap we fall into when we judge a religion or congregation by the acts of the parishioners. In the political context, we see the fault of judging a party by the acts or views of its registered members: there are a lot of cranks out there, and some of them register Dem. Why should religion be any different?
Chris, I think there are some consequences of the US's Calvinist heritage to which you allude. These manifest in our narrow moralism and tendency to judge and demonize the unfortunate. I think we can even hold certain religious denominations responsible for forwarding this view and introducing it into society and politics. Where I get off the boat is in making a connection between these tendencies and the radical acts of a single individual.
10:08 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
There's a trap we fall into when we judge a religion or congregation by the acts of the parishioners.
Jeff, I think you're exactly right. But what Doretta and I are doing is flipping the right-wing logic right back at them. I certainly don't believe in smearing an entire religion or entire political movement with the actions of one violent member.
But that's exactly what they do all the time when it comes to Muslims, environmentalists, and more.
So, I'll keep asking - why isn't this ideological terrorism? - as a way of trying to get the righties to confront their own behavior.
Doretta nails it. I couldn't have said it better:
Jul 29, '08
The sad and unnerving event in a Knoxville TN church on a Sunday morning is a true tragedy filled with overlapping social themes.
Yes this may have been "suicide-by-cop" by a deranged and sick person. But to say that is all it amounts to is naive.
This is a hate crime and hate crimes are acts of deliberate terror. Regardless of the individual motive for committing such a reprehensible act, the effect is to strike fear in a class of people.
This act is yet another example of the current increase in the number hate crimes in the United States.
"The commission said 111 hate crimes based on sexual orientation were reported, a 9 percent increase from 2006; more than 90 percent were against gay men. The report said another 105 hate crimes were based on religion — a 17 percent increase — and nearly three-quarters of them were anti-Jewish."
10:22 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
Chris, I think there are some consequences of the US's Calvinist heritage to which you allude. These manifest in our narrow moralism and tendency to judge and demonize the unfortunate. I think we can even hold certain religious denominations responsible for forwarding this view and introducing it into society and politics. Where I get off the boat is in making a connection between these tendencies and the radical acts of a single individual.
Why can't it be somewhere inbetween?
Yes, Calvinist heritage plays a definite role (and not just American Calvinism either. Read up on the history of the Calvinists v. Arminians in Switzerland and France. Jihad in every sense of the word!). But that doesn't mean that all Calvinists arrive at the same conclussions. President Carter would seem to be a classic example.
10:53 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
So, I'll keep asking - why isn't this ideological terrorism? - as a way of trying to get the righties to confront their own behavior.
A friend and I discussed this issue yesterday, from a different angle.
My friend believes that this act of ideological terrorism is one of others sure to come. He believes that the highlighting of this act is exactly what the Ann Coulters and Michael Savages want..because it will strike fear in the hearts of liberals--and fear is the weapon best suited for controlling people. In the end, that's what this is all about: control.
My friend also believes that lefty bloggers are likely targets for such acts as well...and that its only a matter of time before one of these people murders one of us.
I don't know that I agree per se, but I do understand where he's going with this. Having been the target of threats by rightwingers before, I understand why they do it. Its scary as hell. But for me--it only reinforced the idea that I had to continue to speak up and write my truth.
Which is why I view my friend's outlook with a healthy dose of skepticism...however realizing that perhaps I am the exception that proves the rule.
People are often easily manipulated and ruled by fear. If Coulter, Savage and the like are looking for a way to leverage that fear--this act could potentially give them an opening.
11:16 a.m.
Jul 29, '08
So, I'll keep asking - why isn't this ideological terrorism? - as a way of trying to get the righties to confront their own behavior.
It is my left-wing, pacifist view that much terrorism is a symptom of mental illness (my view is, in America, regularly regarded as more dangerous than the terrorism itself--and it's on this point I can sympathize with Chris). I don't relate to labeling an act of madness as "terrorism." I don't think it provides any useful context or meaning to label this shooter--or Tim McVeigh, for that matter--a terrorist. It radicalizes the discussion and credits the view I don't hold--it objectifies the "terrorist" as something beneath human dignity, as something irredeemable. I don't find that frame useful in the Muslim context nor do I find it useful in this one.
If you want to require an admission that the shooter here is equivalent to Hamas terrorists from those who do find the label "terrorist" meaningful, that's fair, but I can't sign on.
Jul 29, '08
Jim Adkisson, the 58 year old man being held in a Knoxville, Tennessee jail on murder charges stemming from a shooting during a children's musical at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday, is said to have had a array of right-wing political books in his home, along with brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes, and a handgun discovered by police who searched his home.
A report from the local Knoxville news details the findings from Adkisson's home, along with key statements from a document written by Adkisson related to an apparent motive behind the violent attack that rocked the suburban community:
"Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, 'because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.'
Now where do you suppose he might have gotten THOSE ideas?
The right-wing hate-spewers have poisoned the political atmosphere in this country. Expect to see more episodes like this one as the right wing gets further marginalized and the hate-spewers ratchet up the level of rhetoric.
12:03 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
Now where do you suppose he might have gotten THOSE ideas?
"Inside the (shooter's) house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly." - Knoxville News
12:11 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
The UU church is near and dear to my heart for many reasons, one of which is that my great-great (many greats) grandfather, Winthrop Sargent, was taken with early Universalist writings from England and started the first Universalist congregation on this side of the pond in his Gloucester, Mass. living room. He later donated a chunk of his land for the nation's first Universalist church and married his daughter off to a prominent Universalist preacher whose ship had pretty much run aground on its way to NJ.
Long story short: I'm going to claim ancestral rank here and guess that the man who brought violence into the church was probably a victim of right-wing ding-dong-hood from go. Mental health care, anyone? Food stamps running out? Sounds like a Republican success story to me.
BTW, by the time I came along, my branch of the family tree had fallen into working in the mills and fields of rural Maine. But that's another story. Back to regularly scheduled programming...
12:48 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
Knoxville police are investigating the attack as a hate crime. The Knoxville News-Sentinel quotes a search warrant obtained by WBIR TV giving a police summary of reports of statements Adkisson made about why he attacked the congregation:
The paper also quotes the widely reported statement by a police spoksman that the unrealeased four page document found in Adkisson's truck stated stated his
"hatred of the liberal movement ... Liberals in general, as well as gays."
As a hate crime it clearly involves homophobic hate. The somewhat more novel element is the state desires to kill "the leaders of the liberal movement" and "all liberals," and his attack on these liberal religious folks, perhaps not exclusively, but substantially because they acted as LGBT allies and supporters of such allies, both as a welcoming congregation and a local promoter and supporter of PFLAG.
A commenter on a website set up by the national Unitarian Universalist Association for expressions of sympathy, love and support made this further comment,
The fantasy, enacted all too often, of a man killing his wife/partner and sometimes children and them himself, is a regular feature of U.S. culture (or maybe white Anglo culture) -- also too of Afrikaner culture in South Africa. To my mind it is a kind of cultural psychopathology, rooted in conservative patriarchal ideas often associated with fundamentalist religion.
I've called that a kind of psychopathology, and I agree with Jeff in thinking that committing mass murder also has to involve a kind of psychopathology and a form of mental illness. That is not to say it is the kind of organic mental illness like schizophrenia or others in which people really do not know what they are doing or understand the consequences of their acts. It might or might not be related to other kinds of partly organic (in terms of individual propensity or vulnerability) mental illnesses like depression or anxiety that can vary in the same individual over time in relation to stresses and other factors. I think pathological cultural (social-psychological) patterns can channel responses to such mental illnesses in particular ways.
This doesn't contradict Doretta's point about general human capacities, nor those of several people about what I would call the mobilization of hatred. Another commenter on the UUA site, a pastor, blamed hate radio in particular as a poisoner of culture, and drew analogies to the role of hate radio in Rwanda and the ex-Yugoslavian wars in mobilizing genocides.
There is some truth to that, and the News-Sentinel also reports that
Yet it does seem to me significant that Adkisson was isolated. I don't mean in the "isolated case/bad apple" wish-it-away sense. Rather, he acted alone because there wasn't a concerted group with whom he could act. There have been times and places in the South where a liberal congregation like this would have been attacked with concerted social violence, or perhaps its minister in particular (though this church seems to have been active in Civil Rights as far back as the 1950s).
It is a bit less clear, but reports also suggest to me that he may have been socially isolated as well from potential restraining forces -- a kind of isolation that can contribute to turning relatively minor mental health problems into more pathological forms.
Anyway, as a result of all this Adkisson looks to me like an individual who could form the raw material of terrorism, and it looks to me like the irresponsible hate-spewing of a section of right-wing mass culture provides ideological fodder that could sustain terrorism, but there is an element of social or group organization that makes me see this not as terrorism.
Timothy McVeigh was part of a group and movement, at a time when the ultra right was organizing armed militias, and white supremacist and separatist groups were promoting small cell "leaderless resistance" to "the Zionist Occupation Government" -- McVeigh's actions fit in the milieu. Eric Rudolph had strong Christian Identity Movement associations and may have been involved with the Phineas Priesthood or the Army of the Lord or both.
1:55 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
The indoctrination is starting younger than ever. Check out this kids book, "Help! Mom!: There Are Liberals Under My Bed!"
It's billed (not by Powells, but by the publisher) as "a fun way to teach kids about conervativism" and features nasty-looking Hillary and Ted Kennedy monsters lurking under the kid's bed.
A reasonable commenter on the book's Amazon page wrote, "My God, what are people teaching their kids these days? To fear and hate people different from them? I would never teach my child to fear a conservative. Heck, I would never talk politics to my child EVER! Kids should be reading about sharing, kindness to others, and acceptance. Not discrimination. As far as I'm concerned, this book might as well be about burning crosses on people's lawns. If this were written 50 years ago it would be titled "Help! Mom! There are Blacks Under my Bed!" This is a hate filled book and I feel sorry for the child that is stuck with the parent reading this trash to them."
Jul 29, '08
The concept of legal insanity allows deviation from legal sanctions in cases where society would not be comfortable with the prescribed punishment of a deranged perpetrator. Truth is we are all less than completely mentally healthy. People do things to themselves and loved ones every day that they would not do if they understood reality and themselves and could control their actions. In most folks' thinking, those who "did not understand what they were doing" are excused, that is, unless they suffered recreational drug induced psychosis, in which case they are thought responsible for crimes committed under the influence.
And since most terror is committed by states, should we consider social insanity in defense of military action that kills and maims thousands, even millions?
Jul 29, '08
Dartagnan -
I'm unqualified to know whether or not the distasteful and ignorant views of the Coulter's and Savage's of the world were causal factors in the murderous rampage.
My claim was meant to focus on the reactions and words of liberals, progressives, and the left.
I was trying to make the argument that it's largely counterproductive to exploit this incident to paint most conservatives and right-wingers.
While we might strongly, passionately, and vehemently disagree with many right-wingers, there is clearly an important distinction to be made between a Sean Hannity spewing idiotic viewpoints, and somebody shooting innocent people.
How many of my fellow 1st amendment champions concur with those claiming that "video games caused Columbine"?
3:04 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
Bill Robinson, thanks for the kind words. Didn't mean it to be quite as long as it turned out :-).
Jeff Allworth, thanks for your last post. Your point about dehumanization is echoed by a number of UU people on the page for sending expressions of love and support.
If anyone wants to add something in that vein, the link is here There is one from a pastor in Washington Co. Oregon that I found particularly well-expressed.
There is also a Knoxville Relief Fund that the UUA has launched.
So far it does not appear that any kind of vigil or "service of support and remembrance" has be organized in Portland or Oregon, though there are now what appears to be hundreds listed around the country on the UUA site.
4:38 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
Carla,
This doesn't appear to me to be a conscious act or effort at intimidation & I think it is your friend rather than you who is likely to be in the minority. It does perhaps carry some risk of copycatting. Nonetheless I agree that we shouldn't let ourselves be intimidated.
So far, as far as I can tell, the main right-wing reaction is to treat discussions such as that about "ideological terrorism" here as "predictable conservative-bashing." I.e. a bit defensive, definitely denying, and moving quickly to a meta level. I will be more concerned if I start to see arguments along the lines of "well, what did they expect?" that come closer to justifying the attack. Haven't seen anything like that yet.
Perhaps the most interesting (and disingenuous) of the denial/meta reactions comes from Michelle Malkin, who tries to argue that Adkisson's real target was "Christians." Now there may a piece of something here worth paying attention to, but on any other day of the week, conservative Christians would reject the idea that Unitarian Universalism is Christian at all. Related to that is Adkisson's planned (at least a week) targeting specifically of the UU church, rather than say the Presbyterian church across the street.
Speaking of which, way up thread, Kevin is right to discriminate within the very broad U.S. Calvinist heritage. The children at the UU church were gotten out by quick-thinking adults and were sheltered at the Presbyterian church across the street. It appears that the two congregations (both in the UTK university district) apparently have close friendly relations. The UCC likewise has a Calvinist heritage. And as Kevin points out, even denominations with stronger "evangelical" and sometimes "fundamentalist" orientations of Calvinist heritage, e.g. Baptists, are not ideologically uniform.
9:27 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
While we might strongly, passionately, and vehemently disagree with many right-wingers, there is clearly an important distinction to be made between a Sean Hannity spewing idiotic viewpoints, and somebody shooting innocent people.
Of course, and no one here has argued otherwise. There have been no calls for arresting Sean Hannity or charging him with murder.
For a significant portion of his life, Adolf Hitler was just "a guy spewing idiotic viewpoints." Some idiotic viewpoints are harmless but some have lead to genocide.
Sharpening our ability to tell the difference and to notice where idiotic viewpoints are leading us is, I would argue, a worthwhile pursuit.
That there is a significant difference between what Sean Hannity does and what Jim Adkisson did does not give Sean Hannity a pass for what he does. That there is a significant difference between what Sean Hannity does and what Jim Adkisson did also does not mean those things are unrelated.
How they might be related is a perfectly legitimate topic of inquiry. How video games and Columbine might be related is an equally legitimate topic of inquiry.
Jul 29, '08
Related to what Doretta just said, this is why teachers and so many other adults declare "no put-down" zones. It is not just good manners, it is common sense.
Small town kids don't realize that in a big city using certain ethnic slurs could get them beat up, any more than a 3rd grader might not understand that insulting a mixed race child will not win friends or influence people.
Perhaps some people never totally grew up.
10:20 p.m.
Jul 29, '08
What Doretta said. Well and elegantly put. Thanks.
Jul 29, '08
I think it's interesting that several folks from all sides seem to agree that "he did something heinous" equals "he's mentally ill."
Now, I agree that "mentally ill" is a pretty big basket. And I'd wager a good guess that we all have some tinge or touch of that crazy old lady in our own basket. But that doesn't mean we shoot up a church.
It's like a study I remember reading about -- how most people presume that rapists are "crazy", when in fact most of them are no more crazy than you or I.
But we don’t want to think that because we REALLY don't want to know that these horrible things are done by people who are not crazy. Too scary. Could be your neighbor...
Actually, the craziest people I have personally known have been some of the most gentle.
The Coulters et all (while notably vicious but not certifiable as a group) have a huge debt and role in this. They give a megaphone voice and WOW Star power to a culture that says "just do it." Kill a liberal. Save the world. You'll be Tivoed.
You don't have to be crazy to follow them. Just stupid. And we "throw stupid" (ask a horse-person), in our species, sadly, too reliably.
Jul 30, '08
"Hitler and genocide...." Is this a high school debate round where everything leads to Nazi Germany or Nuclear War?
Arguing that expression leads to genocide, Hitler, and shooting rampages is a wondeful example of the slippery slope fallacy.
If the next shooter in the US was found to have been a Blue Oregon contributor/reader, or a Nation subscriber/reader, will Doretta and others be making the same logical leaps concerning causality?
Critical thinking anyone?
Jul 30, '08
If the next shooter in the US was found to have been a Blue Oregon contributor/reader, or a Nation subscriber/reader, will Doretta and others be making the same logical leaps concerning causality?
Well stated! Attempts by some bloggers here to link the works of particular authors or political commentators to this crime, along with clumsy characterizations of legitimate political criticism as “demonization” should be see for what they are, thinly veiled attempts at promoting censorship.
And that is something all progressives should oppose.
11:46 a.m.
Jul 30, '08
Ah yes, passing off the kneejerk "any mention of anything that happened between 1930 and 1945 ist verboten" as critical thinking. Like night follows day.
Maybe you should practice a little critical reading, Publius, since you don't seem quite ready for critical thinking. (I assume that given the inanity of your comment that you are not the ObWi contributor and your lack of originality extends even to your choice of pseudonym?)
Speaking of fallacies, you'll find a nice stuffed strawman in your assertion that I argued that "expression" leads to genocide or Hitler or nuclear war. Take it out in the garden to protect the strawberries, why don't you, it's not doing anything useful here.
If you're arguing that the ideas that people espouse and promote and adopt are irrelevant to people's actions and how a society functions, then you probably should find some other sandbox to play in as in that case a blog where people talk about politics is obviously utterly irrelevant.
11:58 a.m.
Jul 30, '08
Buckman Res, I suggest you and "Publius" start on your path to learning critical reading skills by buying a good dictionary.
Pointing out that people's words may well have consequences and discussing what those consequences might be is not "censorship", it's "expression".
Jul 30, '08
legitimate political criticism as “demonization” should be see for what they are, thinly veiled attempts at promoting censorship.
leaving aside for a moment the question of whether or not the filth that spews from the mouths and pens of these screaming heads qualifies as 'legitimate' in any way shape or form, please tell me, buckman res, how you think titles such as "how to talk to a liberal--if you must" and "liberalism is a mental health disorder" don't constitute demonization?
i haven't heard any talk of 'censorship'here, except perhaps for the ultimate form of censorship which is the murder of those whose voices one wants to silence. i've read this whole lengthy thread and haven't seen one post that called for censorship of any of the paranoid ragings that come from adkisson's favorite authors.
it's not talk of 'censorship' to realize that, mental health questions aside, this man's actions obviously have a direct correlation to the culture of hatred and bigotry that coulter, o'reilly, hannity and their ilk espouse and promote. i've no doubt that adkisson will become some sort of cult hero to these derranged far right wingers, the same folks who deify abortion clinic bombers and abortion provider murderers.
1:18 p.m.
Jul 30, '08
Publius: Arguing that expression leads to genocide, Hitler, and shooting rampages is a wondeful example of the slippery slope fallacy.
...
Critical thinking anyone?
Is that what passes for critical thinking in your world?
If nobody bought into Hitler's "expression" then there would have been no Third Reich, n'est pas? Thus, your "slippery slope" argument is, in fact, a classic strawman fallacy.
Had Doretta argued that expression NECESSARILY leads to genocide, Hitler and shooting rampages then you'd have a valid point. But she didn't and you don't.
4:47 p.m.
Jul 30, '08
Criticism is not censorship. If it were, then Coulter, Savage etc., etc., would be trying to censor "liberals." But if I were to claim they were doing that, you'd be howlingly derisive of me.
We are criticizing their writings and discussing their effects. That is not censorship.
4:52 p.m.
Jul 30, '08
please tell me, buckman res, how you think titles such as "how to talk to a liberal--if you must" and "liberalism is a mental health disorder" don't constitute demonization?
Oh, sure, PA, throw him the softballs. It would be much more entertaining to hear him explaing how books for children with pictures of Ted and Hillary hiding under the bed and looking, well, DEMONIC, don't constitute demonization.
Jul 30, '08
...how you think titles such as "how to talk to a liberal--if you must" and "liberalism is a mental health disorder" don't constitute demonization?
You’ve got a much looser definition of demonization than I do. Most people are sophisticated enough to recognize these outrageous book titles for what they are, using hyperbole to catch the eye of potential consumers in a crowded book market. Titles like these don’t advocate violence towards any group and are used by authors of all stripes in this genre (i.e. Al Franken’s books).
Would you suggest spending all passionate political discourse because some unhinged mind could go off the deep end?
...i've read this whole lengthy thread and haven't seen one post that called for censorship,
As I stated, many of the comments are “thinly veiled” attempts to promote censorship. To deny that would be to ignore the obvious.
10:26 p.m.
Jul 30, '08
Buckman Resident,
Please identify which comments you think are "thinly veiled attempts to promote censorship." I've read them all over and I just don't see anything that to my mind fits that description. I'm really not "ignoring the obvious." It isn't obvious to me.
I do see some comments, including some by me, that might be characterized fairly as something like attempts to encourage taking responsibility for one's words, i.e. promoting rhetorical self-restraint -- including among others the comments of Publius, btw -- along with others that merely note the lack of such self-restraint, and the fact that hateful rhetoric has consequences.
But censorship, in my world anyway, means use of authoritative power to prevent speech or expression or the circulation of printed words. I don't see any comment that remotely promotes anything of the sort.
<hr/>I suspect we may not be able to have a meeting of the minds here, since the demonization of liberalism in a lot of right-wing rhetoric is obvious to me but apparently not to you. It's not just the book titles in the published literature -- when Ann Coulter calls one of her books on liberalism Treason it isn't just the title, she carries through that spurious and vicious claim inside, and she is hardly alone in painting liberals as traitors and enemies within. And how do you treat traitors and enemies? With physically coercive punishment at minimum (lock them up) and ranging up to deadly violence. Or take the ponderously serious if also historically and intellectually vacuous effort by Jonah Goldberg Liberal Fascism. Not a joke title, even if a joke of a book.
And it's not just the published literature -- actually a lot more of it goes on in blogs and especially blog comments, and in various broadcast settings. Take the common occurrence of equating liberalism with communism because both are forms of "collectivism" or "leftism," ignoring such small issues as whether or not someone believes in violent revolution. But perhaps most of all what strikes me is not even the vast, smeary claims that elide all distinctions and absurdly mischaracterize positions, or take extreme positions held by very few, and at that often not liberal at all, and the attribution of those to all "liberals." It is in the absurd and unevidenced attributions of supposed motives to "liberals" that the demonization lies, the endless "You liberals want to ..." or, among the rightwingers themselves who engage in it "those liberals want to ..." followed by wild, scurrilous accusations that sometimes amount to charges of intentions of great and horrendous evil, without basis.
10:59 p.m.
Jul 30, '08
Anne Dufay, To some extent your comments resemble something Doretta said much earlier. But pretty much I agree with Jeff Allworth -- committing this kind of violence involves some kind of mental illness. It also almost certainly causes even more, if the perpetrator survives.
But that does not mean that I "REALLY don't want to know that these horrible things are done by people who are not crazy. Too scary. Could be your neighbor..."
On the contrary, for two reasons. One is that I see mental illness as pretty common in our society, at low levels. You yourself said something like this, although the way you use the word "crazy" seems to point to forms of insanity involving delusions, hallucinations, dissociative behavior, maybe manias and so on, where I am referring to a wider range of phenomena. But anyway, I expect that a fair number of my neighbors struggle to greater or lesser extents with forms of mental illness at least intermittently and situationally and a good many of those chronically if at low levels.
The other is that I think of mental illness as a capacity we pretty much all have, given the right circumstances, in the same way that we pretty much all could get Type II diabetes if we ate in certain ways. There are some of us who are more vulnerable to that, or at risk of it, because of inherited physiology, and the same is true in different ways of many forms of mental illness. But just as you can take a healthy body and make it sick, infectiously or in chronic diseases of systemic unbalance or multiple "insults" that trigger disease process (like smoking and lung cancer), as well as make it unwell through injury, so too with minds. You can make healthy people mentally ill, including "crazy," if you do the right (or wrong) things to them.
But as you noted, for most people, even if we/they are "a bit crazy" or have some kind of mental illness like depression or a phobia or anxiety or obsessive-compulsiveness or mild bipolar tendencies or irrational neuroses and so on, we/they don't manifest that with mass murderous violence. So when someone does that, it's not "normal." It is a crazy thing to do, it reflects some kind of mental illness.
How any given individual who does something like that got there probably varies a lot.
Anyway, that's how it looks to me.
Jul 31, '08
Highly ironic and amusing that Doretta resorts to ad hominem attacks. I await the response to my comments here as a threat to shoot me.
Because that's what it inevitably leads to doesn't it?
Unfortunately, ideologues - whether on the left or the right - cannot tolerate dissenting opinions.
Me thinks some of you need to cut back on your caffeine intake and go for a hike in the woods.
Jul 31, '08
Probably off-topic, probably more a musing than something to add to discussion, but, how do we discern to whom must we extend compassion?
As a society, it is painful to endure another attack upon another church. In part it is because this latest attack removes us from the comfort of merely considering the standard “innocent victim” we all can get behind, moving on to satisfying positional statements of righteousness in our progressive live and let live beliefs... In order to examine it in conversation, we labor to peel off our overlays and opinionations, mostly unsuccessfully. With the recent addition of an attack on a specifically-non-sectarian, pan-inclusionist institution, the dialog is exploded out of any set lines of posture and discourse. It’s not simple radical politics; it is not simple racist hostility; it is not some tortured molester soul now molesting little girls with guns to abate the horrors in his head. This is an attack on the most formless and free-wheeling house of prayful Progression. Part social reformer, part educational adovocate, part free the Earth and very much “we are family”, these folks are known for standing for whatever that particular churchhouse chooses to stand for! You can’t pin a conference-wide “unity” on them to save yourself!
Insanity defense. How do we distinguish between the insanity of homicidal rage against a vague indication of an idea, philosophy, concept -- and the insanity of an homicidal attack on easily-accessed little girls in an Amish school, or the children of social justice activists? When are social and political demons, (characterized as craziness for being out of step with the forgiving slippage of how we maintain the comfortable anomies of social fabric) accorded the same valence of value as personal and psychological demons, characterized as individualized?
Something sick in me wants to forgive something sick in that which is speaking to that which is sick in me.
Jul 31, '08
But censorship, in my world anyway, means use of authoritative power to prevent speech or expression or the circulation of printed words. I don't see any comment that remotely promotes anything of the sort.
Good to read you take such umbrage at any perceived accusations of promoting censorship and the implicit rejection of anything that would stifle spirited political discourse.
It appears your sensitivity to attacks on liberalism is equal to mine towards free speech.
2:03 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Good to read you take such umbrage at any perceived accusations of promoting censorship and the implicit rejection of anything that would stifle spirited political discourse.
Yes. Personally I find that there can be a tension between certain kinds of "spirited" political discourse that do little to advance understanding or challenge my assumptions in a way that forces me to think, and those where "spirited" involves a kind of commitment to ideas linked to wanting to render them persuasive or put them in their strongest form.
So, for instance, if I were to engage in statements like "all conservatives are a fascists," or if someone said something with which I disagreed, and I came back with a statement like, "well, that just shows what a fascist you are, and how come all conservatives hate poor people anyway?" and suchlike, that would be "spirited" in the sense of strong language and expression of strong feeling, but it would also be stupid political discourse.
t appears your sensitivity to attacks on liberalism is equal to mine towards free speech.
Perhaps so. I have tried to give you examples of what I mean, which you judge sensitive, and I infer oversensitive. I still would like to know which comments you think "promote censorship," so that I could think about the claim more specifically; even better would be if you would be willing to say something about why or in what way you think they promote censorship. But even if the latter's not possible, still, which ones?
Jul 31, '08
Chris Lowe,
First of all just a couple of quibbles - not everyone who eats too much sugar gets diabetes, or who smokes, gets cancer. Nor is everyone with some vague deviation from an almost non-existent normal mentally ill.
It may be that this perpetrator has some clear and overwhelming mental disorder, it may be that God told him to kill these evil creatures or that he thought they were aliens putting implants in his brain or who knows. In which case he will be found guilty except for insanity.
Or it may be that he is a far more dangerous outlier -- an early warning of the overheating of cultural resentment, anger and rhetoric that has historically led vast numbers of "average" human beings to do terrible things. Things they would not "normally" do.
It's just speculation at this point as to which basket this person falls in. But I think to assign such acts to the general tics and neuroses of average humanity is to miss the point. And that point is that in a certain context, with a certain level of "permission" and excuse the human species is repetitively, predictably capable of horrific excess against its own. As far as I am aware we are the only advanced species for whom such acts of mayhem are so common and usual as to be, in some ugly fashion, perhaps more "normal" than any of us would like to believe.
Mob hysteria is something we are it seems, hard-wired for. Ditto tribal identity and our fear of "others". So the stories we tell ourselves and each other do matter. Perhaps more than anything else we do -- they are the "truth" in which we live.
Jul 31, '08
Chris,
What Anne said.
There are grave issues with defining the tails of every normal curve as "abnormal" and even graver ones when you add "mental illness" to that label.
There was a time when the abnormality of being left-handed was considered a mental illness. There are plenty of people around today who can curl your hair with horror stories of the consequences of gay people having once been defined as "mentally ill".
Our understanding has progressed some since then but the progress obviously hasn't been uniform.
Important Note: the following comment contains references to things that happened in Germany between 1930 and 1945. If your neurons stop firing upon seeing such references, please skip to the next comment now.
Which Germans in NAZI Germany were "mentally ill"? Only Hitler? All of the SA? The SA and the SS? The people who informed on their Jewish neighbors? The people who looked the other way when their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and shipped out? The people who closed their windows when the ashes from the crematorium blew their way?
Does mass murder cease to be a symptom of "mental illness" if it becomes "normal"?
Jul 31, '08
Doretta: please cite the reference of that Nazi mention. Is that Hannah Arendt? Or, hopefully, Bob Lifton's seminal work? Interested in the context. Of course the parallels are not even close to perfect or appropriate if taken on the face, but, looking deeper into the sociopsychological aspects of Nazification, this could be an interesting thread...
9:18 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
"Publius",
Repetition will not turn your strawman into a real boy.
I love dissenting opinions, see my conversations with Chris for examples. However, your comments have not risen to the level of dissenting opinions. Dissent requires some attempt at understanding the idea being disagreed with. You have repeated the echoes in your own head in lieu of hearing what others are saying.
Concerning "ad hominem attacks", you can rest assured that should liberals/progressives begin to advocate shooting anyone who isn't good at critical thinking, I will be the first to rise to your defense.
11:43 p.m.
Jul 31, '08
Doretta wrote: Does mass murder cease to be a symptom of "mental illness" if it becomes "normal"?
Well, that's exactly what I'm asking Anne, and I guess you, with the emphasis the other way around.
Actually I agree with nearly all of what Anne wrote in her last post. We might or might not think the same way about "hard-wiredness," and I have some atypical views about the concept of "tribalism" that derive from being a historian of Africa, which would probably lead me to fall back on ideas like in-group/out-group instead. I don't think it's incompatible with what I wrote, or what I meant anyway, when I was trying to talk about mental illness as a socially conditioned and temporally variable process.
Likewise I agree with Doretta's comments about bell curves, so, e.g., it may be "normal" for a population to have people in it whom you could "diagnose" or label as "mentally ill" at various levels of severity using terms and categories from the DSM IV -- I say "may" only because of translation issues related to language, place and time -- including say "violent sociopaths."
What I particularly agree with that Anne wrote is this: And that point is that in a certain context, with a certain level of "permission" and excuse the human species is repetitively, predictably capable of horrific excess against its own. So in the sense of "normality" Doretta introduces in talking about normal curves, which has a great deal to due with probability and predictability, mass murder of various sorts is in the normal (predictable, expected, human natural) range of action or behavior. Note that this is true for Adkisson regardless of which of Anne's "baskets" we decide he falls into.
That context is particularly important for Anne's incisive question about what kind of "outlier" Jim D. Adkisson is or may be.
But that's neither here nor there as far as illness goes. Pretty much all illness is normal, in that sense of normality. Changing distributions of illness raise anxieties, hopes, and expectations about normality I suppose. I actually hesitated a long while before introducing the word "normal" into my previous post and perhaps it would have been better had I not -- the "outlier" question frames the issue better, perhaps.
The really central thing for me is what Anne refers to as "a certain level of 'permission' and excuse," and later "the stories we tell ourselves and others," and earlier
,
which also seem to me connected to the issues and questions Doretta raises about the term "mental illness" and the labeling of deviance (to paraphrase slightly), and the range of phenomena related to Nazi violence, mass murder and genocide in the context of German & Nazi-occupied societies.
One point about this is how the labeling of such acts as sick or crazy or mentally ill (either in a more literal sense that sees mental illness as in an expected range of human conditions but nonetheless unwell, or in the deviance-labeling sense the history of which Doretta points out), relates to story-telling and permission-giving.
I see the concern about it as a form of story-telling that might be a strategy for distancing ourselves from Jim Adkisson in a way that might obscure the possibility that he's an "outlier" in a temporal sense, an early example of something that might become more common. And now I see, in a way I did not at the first posts each of you made on this point, how it relates particularly to the desire or impulse by some to say this was just sick, and had nothing to do with the political views Jim Adkisson says were central to what he did (and, perhaps, to the process of his mental illness, I would add). I apologize for my denseness, though would also point out that I opposed that particular kind of distancing from the start.
But it also seems to me to be a kind of story-telling that's in part about putting a brake on permission-giving. It might not be the best approach to such story-telling, and I'd be interested in ideas about other ways to telling the story that obstruct that permission-giving. Yet it also seems problematic simply to say this is normal, because of the commonplace uses of that term which don't mean "falls in the predictable or expected-based-on-past-experience range," but instead have a lot of overlap with "acceptable." Likewise to say simply "this isn't about mental illness" may be misinterpeted as saying "this is healthy."
I never interpreted either of you as saying either of those things. But my questioning has partly to do with resistance to the permission-giving implications of such misinterpretations based commonplace meanings.
The other part of how I am thinking about this bears on Anne's full comment about Jim Adkisson as an "outlier":
(It also is possible that Jim Adkisson will be an outlier who remains an outlier, which is not to say we shouldn't be concerned.)
My past thinking about this kind of psycho-social and cultural dynamic has related particularly to two things: processes of intra-African ethnic and communal violence mobilized by the old South African state against the anti-apartheid movement and the mobilization of genocide in Rwanda in 1994, on the one hand (closer to Anne's quote), and efforts to normalize racial slavery in the southern U.S., particularly after the revolutionary era, from ca. 1800, and their limits and failures, on the other (related in some ways to the range of Nazi questions Doretta raised.)
I'm getting too tired to continue with this; maybe will come back to it. But one common aspect of both of the above has been what I might call the reciprocality and recursive effects of personal violence, on perpetrators and those connected to them and on targets both, that build up a culture of violence that makes mental illness and further violence derived from it "more normal" in the sense of more frequent, as well as being predictable or expeected.
Which brings me back to Doretta's Nazi and Nazi-affected questions, where I think my answer to all them is "yes." At each step or category the forms of mental illness may have differed (and each probably both expressed and created more than one form), as well as the severity experienced or not experienced varying individually due to physiology, family histories and experiences, emotional and intellectual intelligence (capacities for empathy and understanding of different sorts), moral and ethical training, need for self-defense against own victimization or oppression, and probably other things.
My view of this is partly based on my own experience of relationship to illegitimate and immoral mass violence on the part of the U.S. state, going back to my childhood and adolescence in the later Vietnam era, and recurrently since then, especially since the Iraq War of 1991 with its 10,000 to 1 casualty ratio & mass civilian destruction, followed by a mass-murderous sanctions policy and recurrent bombing of civilian infrastructure, followed by the current aggression and occupation and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. Thinking about these things has caused and causes me personal unwellness, including stress, anxiety, depression, anger and life-choices in response to them that are irrational in terms of other needs (such as the time spent writing this).
This isn't in a vacuum or the only source of problems for me. Yet I also believe that if I repressed these reactions and tried to rationalize or justify the violence it would lead me into deeper participation in a sick culture of violence and illegitimate power that might well manifest itself in various forms of social and international hatred, nationalist self-righteousness, scapegoating and so on, and almost certainly greater tolerance or "permission" for them, that we see in the culture and that sometimes are given violent expression.
Other dimensions of violent culture in the U.S. are internal, and probably from what I see in news accounts may have more salience for understanding Jim Adkisson. But I see him in terms of social-cultural process and social psychology both as a product and a producer (of what exactly not yet clear), and if he is a matter of concern as possibly the sort of canary in a coal mine Anne suggests, it is not because he is not mentally ill, but because of the possibility that the processes of violent unwellness that drove him to mass personal violence with particular targets may affect others similarly, with his example added to the mix of influences.
Aug 1, '08
Please identify which comments you think are "thinly veiled attempts to promote censorship." I've read them all over and I just don't see anything that to my mind fits that description.
I’m finding that hard to believe. Try re-reading the posts previous to my first post, including your initial essay. If you can’t find a single passage that even remotely supports my position then I agree we probably won’t achieve a meeting of the minds.
10:10 a.m.
Aug 1, '08
Buckman Res,
Sorry you find it hard to believe,but it's true. For myself, categorically nothing I wrote was intended to promote censorship. I don't think any kind of censorship would be an appropriate response to the tragic violence in Knoxville.
Please note that your phrases "thinly veiled" and "promote" together do imply intention, so you've been going further than saying what I and others wrote might have a consequence of promoting censorship that might not be intended.
Consider this for a moment. Your argument here is a criticism of language, mine and others'. Are you trying to censor us? No. Are you trying to promote an idea that someone else should prevent people like us from saying the things to which you object, i.e. censor us? No. So you're not promoting censorship IMO.
Are you saying our language, ideas and inferences seem to you to go too far, and arguing that self restraint or voluntary choice not to express them or not in these forms would be preferable (or would have been preferable, since the genie is out of the bottle)? Yes.
I think that would be a reasonable interpretation, e.g. of this:
This was the act of a sick mind and should be recognized as such. (My emphasis)
Pretty clearly the recognition called for is called for as a substitute for the kinds of expressions you characterize and criticize antecedently in that first post.
Publius' As an unabashed progressive, I hope most resist the temptation to link this tragic behavior to those with whom we might disagree politically plainly advocates self-restraint in expression.
As far as I can see, nothing anyone has written, either prior to your first post, including me (the only specific or somewhat specific items you've identified), or since, does anything more than one or both of these same three things you have :
1) engage in criticism of rhetoric; and
2) suggest that rhetoric can have consequences (in your case, promoting censorship); and
3) suggest or imply that different rhetoric would be desirable, including self restraint or changing rhetoric on the part of those who have used the rhetoric criticized.
You actually go further, insofar as you impute the intention to promote censorship, whereas I certainly didn't impute an intention to promote murderous violence with what I see as demonizing rhetoric. Nor did anyone else.
Rhetorical criticism, meeting speech with more speech, expression with more expression, is not censorship but its opposite, even if it leads people to change their expressions.
Aug 1, '08
buckman,
it seems what's wanted on the part of those of us who don't see censorship here, and what's been asked for several times, are specific examples of passages that you consider an advocation of censorship.
in a somewhat elevated argument (kind of a surprise considering the name-calling and chest-thumping that so often occur here), it's not enough for you to say 'oh this post or this thread is full of them' and then ballyhoo those who can't find your 'obvious' examples.
one last time, i would like to ask you for specific examples of passages that advocate censorship. i don't know how to put it any clearer.
10:39 p.m.
Aug 1, '08
Likewise to say simply "this isn't about mental illness" may be misinterpeted as saying "this is healthy."
Yes, I see the concern with the normalization of slavery and death camps, etc., yet I think there are many other ways of describing bad ways of thinking and behaving that makes it clear they are bad without calling them "mental illness".
We're uncomfortable with notions like "sin" or "evil" so we replace them with "mental illness" as a catchall. There are good reasons for our discomfort, of course, but a significant problem with the notion of "mental illness" is that both individual and collective responsibility tends to get lost.
It seems to me that the recognition of the difference between, as you had it earlier, "organic" mental illness and behaviorally and/or culturally induced mental unwellness is useful and represents progress in our understanding of how human beings and human cultures operate. I see blurring the two as a distinct step backward.
If we say everyone is "mentally ill" doesn't that in itself tend to normalize everything we label as "mental illness?" Personally, I think it's entirely appropriate medically, legally and morally to treat someone who is schizophrenic very differently from someone who has devolved into what may be an equally unhealthy mental state because he's chosen to nurse a grudge.
6:24 p.m.
Aug 3, '08