When The Unthinkable Happens
“The search for a
scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the course of things, there are instances when
communities find themselves faced with horrors of loss or cruelty that we can’t
understand, even after all the investigations, criminal, civil, and treatment
options have run their course. These
become the circumstances burned into our collective hearts by which we measure
and judge our ultimate vulnerability as well as our resilience as individuals
and as a community.
Being faced with a situation that can’t be comprehended can
send individuals as well as groups of people into a frenzied search to identify
and highlight the differences between the “evil” of “the other guilty person”
and the “moral high ground” of our own familiar lives and values.
Scapegoating in various forms is a widely practiced solution
that effectively restores a sense of contentment and predictability to the
world when it seems overwhelmed by evil.
Unfortunately it stifles productive self reflection and does nothing to
heal the grief and anguish both individuals and the community rightfully feel
when innocence is horribly lost.
Reading down through the comments that follow articles about
these sorts of incidents, it is easy to interpret parts of the string as a
focused attempt to find someone to blame, to gloss over and trivialize their
struggles, their dreams and challenges, to dehumanize and marginalize
them. It leaves them to suffer judgments
they can’t even fathom, ultimately making sure someone pays for these sins
regardless of the degree to which they might be accountable.
With fictional user names, the comment section easily
becomes the modern equivalent of a masked mob, gathering in the night with
torches and pitchforks, looking to dehumanize and punish anyone upon whom they
can focus the sins of the day, anyone.
To blame without fully understanding a circumstance is
unsophisticated, unkind, unhelpful, and unnecessary. Human behavior is complicated and multiply
determined. Simple pronouncements of
either blame or blamelessness always do a disservice to the truth.
We empower our courts and our governmental agencies to sort
through the complexities of these situations and to do their best to come to a
resolution that preserves the order and values of our culture. They do this for us, as our representatives. For the rest of us, let’s try sitting with
not knowing, with grief and anguish for the layers of loss suffered by our
neighbors.
