What has happened, is happening and will happen in Kenosha is a national tragedy. Sadly, it seems that we have lost the ability to see it as such.
Some want to cast Jacob Blake as the innocent hero and victim with Rusten Sheskey as the racist villain.Others have cast the roles in reverse, echoing the longstanding American conviction that anyone with a criminal record or a warrant must have deserved it. They see a police officer dishing out justice while a villainous criminal was gunned down.
Some want to cast Kyle Rittenhouse as a heroic vigilante, answering the call to defend his community when no one else would act. They say that his victims must have deserved it. It was self-defense. Neither he, nor his parents, nor the police deserve any blame because he is a hero. Meanwhile Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber just got what they deserved. Or maybe it was Joseph and Anthony who were heroically protesting racial injustice while a racist, pro-Trump conspiracy theorist went out looking to shoot someone and is a first degree murderer.
But it has to be one way or the other,doesn't it? Our stories demand heroes and villains so if there are two sides in conflict we have to figure out which one is which.
But in a tragedy there are no heroes and villains. Only victims of larger fates and circumstances beyond anyone's individual control. And that is scary because it means we could become those victims ourselves. Or worse, we might be part of the larger circumstances that pushed people toward these tragic outcomes. So it is easier to cast heroes and villains in order to assuage our fears and absolve our consciences.
In the archetypal tragedy, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, the title character ends up killing his father and marrying his mother. He never intended to do so. In fact, everyone in the play tries to avoid it but it happens anyway. It was his fate. Oedipus is not a hero or a villain. He's just a man, caught up in circumstances far beyond his control. We can feel sympathy for him without condoning patricide and incest. No one wanted this to happen but it happened anyway and the consequences are tragic.
Are we capable of telling this kind of story today?
I don't understand how anyone could not have at least some sympathy for Jacob Blake and his family.Regardless of your political leanings, the man's kids were sitting just inches away as they saw their father gunned down in the back. Seven shots would be enough to traumatize them even if they were fired in the air, yet alone into their dad. A man who was incredibly unlikely to be a lethal threat to anybody is paralyzed for the rest of his life. His kids are traumatized for the rest of his life. No family deserves to have that happen to them. But I see many people attempting to demonize Jacob Blake because they don't want to demonize the police officer who shot him and our current narrative tells them that those are the only two options.
But we don't have to demonize the officer, either. In fact, I think all of us should acknowledge our own role in how and why shootings like this happen. When you look at the way police officers are trained to have a kill or be killed warrior mentality, how can we blame the individual officer who basically does what he's been trained to do? When we fail to enact any kind of meaningful gun control legislation, how can we expect officers not to suspect that anyone they come into contact with might be reaching for a gun? And how can we not blame ourselves when we elect and re-elect prosecutors and politicians who allow for no-knock warrants, fail to prosecute or remove violent officers and who in some cases prevent people from becoming police officers because they're too smart.
Even as I write these words I can hear people complaining that to have compassion for one of these people automatically lessens the compassion you can have for the other. But compassion doesn't work like that. It's not zero sum. In giving it away we actually create more.
And now let me turn to Kyle Rittenhouse. I disagree with his political leanings. I am shocked and appalled that he shot three people. But he's seventeen years old. If the police had found him on the corner with a beer in his hand instead of an assault rifle, they would have given him a citation and told him to go home. Think about that. Someone who looks that young has a beer and we card them. Maybe cite and arrest them. Have a gun? Here's some bottled water. And in our strange, warped legal reasoning about responsibility, if someone a few years older than him had sex with him, it would totally be on the older person. It would be a crime for which Kyle would bear no responsibility because he lacks the reason to consent. But under the same law of Wisconsin, a murder charge means he will automatically be tried as an adult. Fully, individually responsible for the death of others.
But where did he get the gun? The ammunition? Who let him stand there with it? Who thanked him for being out there? Who passed open carry laws that let people display a weapon of war in a volatile situation? Again, I think it is insane that this kid and all of our kids have grown up in a world where his having a beer or having sex would be treated more seriously than his having a weapon of war out in public, past curfew in a very tense situation. And he is STILL getting the message that he is a hero. People are raising money for his legal defense and Tucker Carlson says what else can you expect when the “Democrat Party” won't protect us?
He is most certainly not a hero. But that doesn't make him a villain. He is caught up in a tragic situation where even all the way up to the presidency we have people stoking division and provoking violence.
I am deeply saddened that far too many conservatives seem incapable of naming this as a tragedy. Why does a kid have an assault rifle and ammunition? Why is he out in public with it? Why the hell didn't those officers tell him, if things are so dangerous out there, to go the hell home where he would be safe? I get it that they may not want to condemn Kyle, especially when their own rhetoric is partly to blame for what happened. But that doesn’t mean you can’t speak out against what happened. It should sadden and sicken any human being.
In a country full of compassionate people we would recognize this as tragedy and look for ways to avoid situations like this in the future. We wouldn’t look to pin blame on one “side” or the other. We certainly wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking all of this can be pinned on a few “bad apples”. We have deep, systemic problems around race, policing, guns and violence. We should be working to solve these together instead of throwing up our hands and pointing our fingers.
And it makes me so sad to know that he ended the lives of two people younger than me. Young people who care enough to stand up and take action. I don't know much about them or their motives. The second person who was shot was trying to subdue someone who just shot someone else. Maybe that was brave. Maybe it was foolish. Maybe it was both. But it wasn't villainous. No one exercising their right to protest should face the use of lethal force. Hell, no one committing property damage or even arson deserves to be put to death for it. Kent State shocked a whole nation. This...this just seems to polarize us further.
I fear it is rapidly becoming too late to call for compassion for all people. I fear even as I write this that my desire to have compassion for everyone involved in these terrible events in Wisconsin will cause some to accuse me of being against someone else. But it's what the great faiths of the world call on all of us to do. Somehow. Even though it is hard.
I was reminded of this today at church because yes, progressive Democrats go to church sometimes. St. Paul may have been writing to first century Romans, but across the ages it felt as though he were writing to all of us tragically caught up herein 21st century America:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty,but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you,live peaceably with all.
And it reminded me of a poem by a Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh who wrote about the same hard and painful truths:
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.
And so I try to remind myself to open the door of compassion. I try to make my hear big enough to hold Jacob Blake, Rusten Sheskey, Kyle Rittenhouse, Anthony Huber, and Joseph Rosenbaum all within it. They are all Americans. We are all of them and they are all of us.
Are we a country still capable of that kind of openness? Or are walls and weapons of war all we have left?
I pray that it's not too late for words of wisdom and compassion to heal a nation. But even as I do so a president who spent four days stoking fear and division is on his way to Wisconsin on Tuesday. Sadly, I doubt he will ask us to call him by our true names. I doubt he will bless his enemies or those he believes are trying to persecute him. But I pray that even he might be able to open his heart, too.
And so tonight I will weep with those who weep. And pray for a better tomorrow.
Amen.