Seeking the Soul of America: The Tucson Massacre.

Well. Certainly a fine example of homo sapiens Americanus at top, huh?  Note the look of keen intelligence on the face. Note the bats in the belfry.

Let me branch off here a little bit, even before the trunk is developed. I cannot help thinking about the massacre partly as a professional. I am a juris doctor not a medical doctor with a speciality in psychiatry, but I do not think one need be a shrink (perhaps it "helps" to be a lawyer) to come to an instant idea for a defense for Bats: insanity. (Oh, you have a better one?  Like "reasonable doubt?"  Mis-id, peut-etre? Go into dentistry.)

Americans are going through a familiar cycle of reactions today and have since mid-day Saturday.  First, there's shock. "Oh my God! No!"

Why should there be shock if it's a "familiar cycle?"

Then there's grief.

If human beings are, as I believe, a combination, pretty much in equal parts, of emotion and intellect, it is emotion that predominates in our species reaction to a massacre, whether it's a more familiar occurrence, as in America, or a less familiar one, as in other societies. As a homo sapiens, and one of the Americanus variety, I shared these two emotions, as I think is manifest in the writing in these pages since Saturday. I have a particular fondness for children and first the knowledge that a nine-year old child had been among the victims of our fellow citizen Mr. Bats-in-the-belfry, and then seeing little Christina Green's photograph, well, friends, countrymen, non-countrymen, enemies, as the part of Jim Croce's song Operator went, "Can't read the number that you just gave me...Something in my eyes, it happens every time..."

And then, to complete the cycle, of emotional reactions, there's retribution: "SOMEBODY'S GONNA PAY FOR THIS!"

And somebody probably will. Probably Bats, but...

So what does this say, if anything, about the Soul of America, or of my Seeking same, as I have so grandly titled this. Quite a lot, I think.

Let us quickly dispense with some familiar bromides: Yes, the massacre says America is an "edgy" society in which those who come by bats in their belfries naturally have a particularly difficult time "adjusting" to American life. America demands self-reliance more than most other societies. The phrase "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" is itself a bromide, quintessentially American, used frequently in all kinds of contexts by Americans, and is particularly challenging for those who struggle with even tying their bootstraps. Secondly, the edge to American society is often followed by violence. I say not "caused by,” but "followed by."

What other mind-numbing banalities can we dispatch with? Oh, too many guns, too many nuts on the streets. That's all the banalities I can think of right now.

Shock-Grief-Retribution. Is this cycle any different, in kind or degree, from that in, oh, to just pick a country at random, China?

It is.

Would Chinese not be shocked if this massacre happened in China?  They would. 

Would Chinese not feel grief?  That too.

Would there not be retribution?  Oooh, doggy.

The difference is that retribution, a natural emotional response tied to survival, is meaningfully mediated by the intellect in America. Bats will not be subject to a "struggle session" today, as he would have if he had committed a political (the massacre is deemed a politically-motivated crime so far) "crime" in China during the Cultural Revolution. He was not summarily executed, though for some Americans, and for this one when the worser angels of his soul get his ear, the heavens would not have darkened if that had resulted, as the heavans did not when Lee Harvey Oswald was summarily executed in 1963. 

No, Bats will not be struggled, he will not be summarily executed, he will be fed and clothed and housed, and perhaps medicated, courtesy of the American taxpayers, who will also provide him with a legal defense to his crimes.  He will be presumed innocent in the court of law funded by these same taxpayers, who will also pay the salaries of the judge, prosecutors, and perhaps defense attorneys who will conduct the trial. 

Another branch here. I believe Jared Loughner guilty of this massacre. I believe that with as much certainty as I believe in the presumption of innocence. Those last two sentences need explanation. As we defense attorneys are fond of saying when questioning prospective jurors, "When you're driving on the highway and you see a police officer leading a guy in handcuffs to the back of his patrol car, do you think, 'There is an innocent man?' " The answer to that is obviously no, we don't think that. We think the shackled fellow-citizen is guilty--of what we don't know, but guilty of something. The point is the presumption of innocence is an artificial legal construct that has applicability in one, and only one, setting--the courtroom. 

Americans put up with this sometimes exasperating trial business because too, in my opinion, they value human life highly, and because we value retribution not as much, and not as much as some other societies. Americans don't exact retribution on a citizen accused unless that Devil has been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in one of the afore-mentioned American courtrooms. All of this is to allow "cooler heads to prevail," to allow America as a society to think about what it is doing, before it punishes someone, that is it is to prevent struggle sessions and summary executions.

It is indeed curious. Americans put up with, hell they fight for, what they call "the right to bear arms."  That is, they fight for the right of Bats to walk into a meeting with an elected official with a loaded firearm. And when a massacre happens it's "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."  That's not a rationale that has proved persuasive in foreign hutongs, but it's part of Americans' freedoms and they take those very seriously too. In the same way, Americans put up with the mentally ill walking around the streets because they are reluctant to take away their freedoms also (Americans could do better than that). 

Thus Americans will never—never, never, never—fail to be shocked by massacres and to grieve for the loss of individual human life, no matter how drearily familiar massacres become. And Americans tolerate that messy trial thing, and extend the freedom of movement to the mentally ill, and to those already convicted of crimes (they could do better on that also), because, in my view, of the same reverence for human life and for the freedoms that they hold “self-evident,” and God-given. Americans will give up a species-wide, survival-fueled, emotional desire for retribution of an undeniably guilty murderer, for that, for those, for the intellectual...pause...to contemplate before punishing, as a society, an individual member of that society.

Americans owe, or can extend blame for, this reverence for life and justice, for justice is what it is, to their Judeo-Christian religious heritage which predominates in their lives, both private and civic, and animates their law.

And lest one, whether American or otherwise, thinks a trial for Bats will just be some charade, some foregone conclusion forestalled, let me recall the mind back to that day in March, 1981 when the President of the United States was shot by another who had bats in his belfry, and wounded two others. That Devil, John Hinckley, was found NOT GUILTY by reason of insanity of those crimes, which he manifestly committed. Citizen Hinckley was committed to an insane asylum for a period of time but is now allowed to go home for visits with his mommy. And he's allowed to get his driver license back.

Justice, Pilgrim. Justice. That's one difference between America and China. It is one of the better angels of our soul.