Predictable reactions to tragedy

Hours after the school shooting in Texas, I posted this on Facebook: “We all start with our humanity. Children, trailing clouds of glory, as Wordsworth wrote. Hopeful, and hope filled. We grow older, not always wiser, but less naive. We lose faith, we mistrust. We make enemies. But that humanity is still there, regardless of whether we acknowledge it.

“Today’s tragedy, as expected, brought out the convenient hatred. Validated those who divide.

“They couldn’t wait to point fingers, and yell. And those babies are returned to Heaven as the grown-ups posture for the crowds. The unbroken cycle of blame is a poor requiem for innocence lost.”

I woke up to comments that agreed with the sentiment that grief is not partisan and should not be used as a source of campaign slogans against the other side. Then, I checked my email and realized that my optimism was misplaced. There always will be, people who mine tragedy for their own partisan purposes.

The loss of children’s lives is a devastation that has no equal in this society. Until Tuesday afternoon, Newtown loomed as the greatest horror this country had experienced in modern times. Not even 9/11 matched it in the assault on our senses and our souls. Children are sacred, or at least, they should be. After Newtown, we promised not to let our elementary schools become a battlefield again.

But it keeps happening, and — bereft of creativity or decency — we pull out the usual scripts.

Gun control. NRA evil. Mental health. White supremacy. Illegal aliens and the border. A lack of respect for human life (except unborn life). All the usual tropes.

The right has its own weird and repellent default positions, like the one that the Latino shooter in Texas must have been an “illegal.” The fact is that his family had lived in the multicultural border areas for generations. The immediate suggestion by bigots that the killing was perpetrated by one of those disease-ridden gang members from across the border is a particular point of shame for the conservative movement, and must be immediately condemned.

But most of the finger-pointing is yet again coming from the left against the right. Again, we have the two senators from Connecticut blaming their Republican colleagues for supporting the murder of children. Again, we have the parents of murdered children in past school shootings brought on to the cable networks to criticize Texas Republicans. Again, we have people blaming guns. Again and again, and again.

I happen to be a conservative who is not deeply wedded to the Second Amendment, beyond its guarantee that I can protect myself. I have no problem with background checks, limits on the amount of guns you can buy, and other suggestions. I believe guns are a big

part of the problem. Guns, in fact, do kill people.

But to focus on that is to allow the left to lay all the blame at the feet of their conservative siblings, which they are inclined to do anyway. Imagine if a Republican got up on the floor of the Senate and blamed his Democratic colleagues of wanting to kill children because they supported abortion with little or no limitations. Imagine how cable news

networks would describe that. Imagine how Democrats running for state office would defame conservative legislators. Imagine the reaction on Twitter from the blue checks who are so devoted to the health and autonomy of women.

We all have this sense of ourselves as good and decent people. It’s the only way to justify our beliefs. We cannot function if we think our values are

wrong, our policies are misguided and our goals are dangerous. So I don’t blame the left for its consistent attempt to paint conservatives as evil. In order to validate your own positions, you need to vilify the opposition. And that means automatically conflating conservatives in general, and Republicans in particular, with nihilism.

In the wake of Newtown, I went to Harrisburg

and spoke before a legislative panel about mental health and its role in mass shootings. At that time, there was still some hope that both sides might focus on the problem and consider all the factors that lead to bloodshed and generational grief. I don’t think that’s possible anymore.

It’s become terribly predictable. If there is a shooting, and the victims are “of color,” the motive

will be racism, unless the perpetrator is also “of color.” If the victims and the victimizer are of the same race, we will focus on guns. And we will be told that the right does not care about human life.

And then, there will be protests in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices, because they might overturn a precedent that does not care about human life.

And on it goes.