Summary: Fifty are dead and a like number are injured in the worst mass shooting in American history, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. At this stage, we are still too early in the process to have a definitive idea what happened. The shooter may, but we don’t know, have had some of allegiance to Daesh, the Islamic death cult known in this country as ISIS or ISIL. Naturally, assholes like Donald Trump and the Westboro Baptist Church have weighed in, and the usual political food fight is just ginning up. But at this stage, it really is too early to draw definitive conclusions. Instead, it’s time for a considerate silence as we try to figure out what do we think? What do we know? What can we prove?
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When the news hit concerning the mass shooting in at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which left fifty dead and a like number injured, my immediate frame of reference for comparison was the Sandy Hook school shooting and the events in Tucson which led to the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the death of United States Chief District Judge John McCarthy Roll. But, even before that, my very first reaction was the almost invariable one of invoking the Deity.
Oh, my God.
My second reaction, equally ineluctable, was to ask who has done this and why.
The immediate temptation under such circumstances is to begin pointing fingers and assigning blame. Certainly, the last 12 hours have seen a veritable feeding frenzy, as commentators, pundits, and others on both sides of the political divide lob verbal broadsides at one another, as Donald Trump tries to make political capital, as Hillary Clinton and President Obama do the adult thing, the right thing, trying to calm a shocked nation, and as the rest of us try to make sense of the worst mass shooting in American history.
At some point, however, we must allow ourselves to be moved, if not by the better angels of our nature, at least by a sense of personal and professional responsibility to step back, putting our emotions aside and seeking truth from facts.
In short, we need to ask some basic questions: what do we know? what do we think? What can we prove?
At the moment, what we know is that fifty are dead and a like number have been wounded. We know that a suspected shooter is dead, shot by the police. We know that the suspected shooter has posted a series of homophobic Web tidbits and that he apparently professed some sort of allegiance to Daesh, and perhaps more importantly, he was a known domestic abuser. Leaving aside the claim of allegiance to Daesh, which at this point appears to be more a red herring than a serious profession of allegiance to the Islamic death cult, we do know that he was apparently moved to murderous rage by the spectacle of two gay men kissing one another. Just about any queer person can tell you that such behavior screams “closet case.” We should not be surprised, in coming days, to find that the alleged shooter was himself a closeted homosexual. “I want to fuck you, but I’ve got so many hangups that instead of getting naked with you and making love, I prefer to kill you.”
What we think is a more problematic issue. From this morning’s events, politicians, activists, commentators, pundits, and plain old bomb throwers have drawn whatever conclusions suit their own agenda and confirmation bias. Certainly, Donald Trump has seen this incident as a godsend to restore the hopes of his failing campaign. Meanwhile, the Westboro Baptist Church, which can always be depended upon to say something outrageous in such circumstances, let fly with its usual hateful tweets. About the only conclusion that seems to enjoy any support at all across both sides of the aisle is that perhaps we need as a country to take a timeout, to think long and hard about the extent to which the tone of our political dialogue has served to enable extremists who prefer bullets to ballots.
Winston Churchill once famously defined a fanatic as someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. By Winston’s definition, there may be a disturbingly large number of fanatics abroad in the land. Fanaticism is in many ways an infantile disorder; many of us have passed through phases in life in which we have been tempted to treat every difference of opinion as irreconcilable, and every issue as a matter of unalterable principle, but for most of us, the operative word is “phase.”
What separates the fanatic from the well-adjusted person is that the fanatic remains stuck in that infantile phase. The fanatic cannot, or will not, acknowledge the possibility that reasonable minds may differ, even on contentious issues. Moreover, the fanatic, by forever misapplying first principles to trifles, will inevitably convince himself (and most of the great fanatics of history have been men) that not only does he possess truth with a capital T, but that those who disagree with him are in error to such an extent that they cannot be suffered to live.
Fanaticism of that kind, with its stark rejection of any view not absolutely accordant with its own, and with its sense of exclusive custodianship of the Truth (with that capital T), and its concomitant insistence that those with other views are not merely to be silenced, but eliminated, invariably arises in contexts in which disputes and controversies tend to become inflamed.
No one would argue that the downturn in our American economy has left many Americans of all political stripes fearful, fretful, and frustrated. Difficult times have a way of fraying the fabric of civility which is -- or ought to be -- one of the critical components of a successfully functioning democracy. When people are angry and afraid, extremism becomes not merely easy, but tempting.
Thus, when shocking events occur, such as those which transpired in Orlando early this morning, the first and greatest challenge is to take a metaphorical deep breath, to wait before rushing in with theories, allegations, or accusations. As Donald Rumsfeld might have put it, we have very few known knowns at this point. There are far more known unknowns, such as the true motivations of the shooter, or whether he had assistance, or whether there were in fact others involved.
In the days to come, the situation will develop further; more information will presumably become available about the shooter, his motives, whether there are accomplices, and whether this morning’s events were an isolated occurrence or part of something larger and more ominous. At the moment, however, none of these facts have been developed; the evidence is too thin to justify drawing any significant conclusions, as much as we may be tempted to do so.
In short, we know very little, we think -- perhaps -- too much, and at the moment we don’t know what, if anything, we can prove.
Nonetheless, whether this morning’s shooting was a political act, or merely the random crime of an unbalanced individual, to the extent it may have arisen from the embittered tone of our political dialogue, it should still be a warning to us that when we lose the ability to disagree agreeably, we put our democracy at risk.
So today, let our thoughts and prayers be with who were injured for their recovery, as well for the repose of the souls of the fifty victims whose lives were so tragically cut short. Tomorrow, and on the days that follow, it will be time again to ask what do we know? What do we think? What can we prove?
For now, we should observe a principled and considerate time of silence, leaving off with partisan rhetoric and poisoned comments. A decent respect for the dead and the injured should demand no less of us.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City, California, where he practices law. He served two terms on the Cathedral City city Council from 2002-2010. The views expressed herein are exclusively his own. This post is adapted from the one he wrote when Congresswoman Giffords was shot and U.S. Chief District Judge John McCarthy Roll was assassinated. Like President Obama, Mr. Marchand is sick and tired of having to rework the same comments every few months.
NOTE: comments on this post will be much more strictly moderated than might otherwise be the case. Comments containing any personal attack will not be published, nor will comments that, in the view of the author, are intended to shed more heat than light.
