Should We Cheer On the Lone Ranger?

 

[Quick note: This was published this morning prior to reports a suspect had been found and detained in Altoona, PA. Some answers may be forthcoming.]

I've been thinking a lot about the unsettling murder of Brian Thompson. It is a murder and it unsettles me because I only have guesses, and they aren't very reliable ones, for its cause. Putting aside the possibility that it was done with no connection to what he did for a living (!), should we be comfortable with a murder done on a person whose fortune came from essentially deciding who lives and who dies? (The words inscribed on the bullet casings imply Thompson was killed because of his work, but we've all watched mysteries where such clues are red herrings.)

That is, when you come right down to it, the job of every insurance executive. Their decisions are based on what will generate the most money for their stockholders, and that isn't damning in itself, because that is the reason companies like United Health exist. The rules they operate under, admittedly mostly self-defined, are often Byzantine and designed for profit rather than an individual's health, and that is how capitalism works. Whether that's justifiable is a different topic.

This is the world we are in and we need to maneuver in it, preferably keeping our sense of right and wrong intact. So I guess the question is, How should we react to a murder possibly done for vengeance? 

The overwhelming consensus expressed online is that the act is understandable, if not justified. That assumes a lot of background that we might find is wrong. But let's say all these guesses are true: That the murderer lost a loved one due, at least in part, to the unthinking juggernaut of the capitalist healthcare system, and he is acting, in the best Levitical tradition, on the basis of an eye for an eye. In this way he's acting as a stand in for justice, and I've seen him compared to the Lone Ranger or the Equalizer. 

The Equalizer deaths are gorier and nastier than a quick bullet to the back, so let's say he's acting like the more romantic Lone Ranger, albeit with the caveat he shot Thompson in the back. The Lone Ranger, of course, never shot anyone in the back. In fact, according to canon, the Ranger never killed anybody, always aiming to disarm, sometimes by wounding. 

But again, we're in the world in which guns are used more often to kill than to wound. We might not even be having this conversation if Thompson had only been wounded. There might have been a news blip, a short unsuccessful search for the shooter, and we'd hear no more about it. Presumably, executives would rest easier and there would be a lingering question whether their own insurance claims cover being shot, but in the end nothing more. 

Instead we have what Aja Romano and Sigal Samuel in Vox call "people [who are] posting vitriolic comments about Thompson feel justified in being smug about the death of this human in particular." There are some funny ones, I won't deny it--the "thoughts and prayers" and "my empathy is out of network" memes being two of the most clever if also the easiest--but the overall response by many people I'd consider comrades is exactly that, a smug assertion that Thompson got what he deserved. 

Here's why that gives me pause. Romano and Samuel recognize "The humanity we show each other is a complicated thing." Their solution suggests we expand our compassion so that we align with both Thompson's family and those families affected by his decisions, and that's one way to accept it. But in that rationale there's no reason to change anything, it's a "tut tut, isn't that terrible" response, and it's like saying everyone is responsible and no one is responsible. 

Part of the reason I'd consider many of these smug posters comrades is because we reacted together in horror at the fact that Donald Trump won the popular vote (yes, I accept it), that a majority of people accept and relish his view that people they don't like need to be brought to justice in some way, that laws need to change to make them pay, either by exile or prison, fines at the very least. 

Trump, on the other hand, was found guilty in a court of law of at least 34 felonies, and there might have been more had he not won the election and will definitely negate his convictions and trials to the extent he can, whether through Constitutional means or not. Trump is the opposite of what Lincoln called "the angels of our better nature." He has voiced his primary desire (and many of his supporters echo this) as vengeance on his perceived enemies, the people who would hold him to the laws. 

To cheer on Thompson's killer is to join sides with Trump, only changing the list of the deserving punished from right-wing enemies to left-wing enemies. Do not join his side. The urge to punish, poetically justifiable or no, sits in the cavern of our hearts where anger and frustration and hatred reside. They are angels of our baser nature and we must have the courage to refuse to give in to them.

Audrey and Aiden and Chambers

 I remember my first time driving into Nashville. It was 1988 and I was coming from the west. I  crested a big hill and suddenly, there it was, a beautiful shining city in a valley ringed by a haze visible in the early light. It must have been about 5 or 6 in the morning, and the haze was the residue of tobacco smoke I could clearly smell through my open window. I saw the Cumberland River snake through the city, and I heard faint hints of music on the wind, although that was really the radio station I had on. 

I haven't spent appreciable time in Nashville since then, a quick drive=through skirting the city on my way somewhere else, so I don't know what it's like there. But my reading has given me some indication that, like most big cities, it has citizens who love and cherish it and would protect its people from their fears. For some, that's the easy accessibility of guns, and for others, it's the life-altering identities their children can access. 

I fear the proliferation of guns, myself, and I try to understand the fears of the opposite side. Usually that's a moot debate but a week ago the two fears collided in the person of Audrey Elizabeth Hale, born a woman and often seen dressed and acting like a younger kid, but also identifying as Aiden and using male pronouns. Audrey had attended the Covenant School as a child, leaving for middle school in 2006, but why Aiden went there with guns and shot three adults and three 9 year-olds, we don't know.

I'll admit to being conflicted, because I want to honor Aiden's choice and use male pronouns. But I don't want to honor what Aiden did. I'm uninterested in the rationales school shooters tell themselves and I don't want to start now. But I don't want to lend ammunition to haters telling us it was Audrey's opting to be Aiden that somehow caused the "quiet, shy girl", as Audrey is described by nearly everyone who knew her, to purchase seven (!) guns, all legally despite being treated by a doctor for an "undisclosed emotional disorder.
They try to lay Audrey/Aiden's possible use of medication containing testosterone as having been responsible for the shooting. Per experts, there's anecdotal evidence that high testosterone levels can lead to more aggressive behavior than usual. I don't know if Audrey or Aiden took testosterone in any form but I know any doctor trusted with a patient's well-being monitors both dosage and behavior. closely I also know the desire to kill strangers is not a side effect of taking too much. Testosterone is no more responsible for this horror than it is for other male public shooters. 

So how do I deal with this conflict? Do I mourn Audrey and condemn Aiden? That may be one solution. As possible as it is to hold two conflicting thoughts in your head, it's possible to celebrate one person's life and disdain a part of the same person. If there's a model for this, it's my former friend Chambers. 

Chambers was a good man who was a road dog of mine. We traveled many places together, visited Rainbow Gatherings together, sometimes worked together. I went across country to start a new life and eventually heard from another good friend he had murdered a woman. There were probably signs most of us ignored or were blind to, but Chambers had become a dealer, and while there is much more to this story, the upshot is that one early evening he broke into another dealer's home, was surprised by her, and beat both her and her dog to death. It was neither drugs nor testosterone that gave him the impetus to kill someone, it was simple greed.

None of us knows what caused Aiden to dress in camo, take two long guns and a handgun -and shoot his way into the school, and then shoot six random people including three 9 year-olds but he left a "manifesto". Once it's read and its contents reported, we may have an idea what prompted his action. 

Meanwhile, we have a situation different from and yet too-similar to other mass shootings. A person undergoing treatment legally purchased a number of guns and then shot several vulnerable people. Despite other information we also know, it comes to that.