Murder in Sutherland Springs- The Elusive Truth about Mass Killings
Why?
It seems to be the one thing that ties all mass killings together.
It is also the one thing on which we cannot seem to get a handle.
Why?
Every time a mass killing takes place- a killing in which the killer ends up dead- we are left with the question as to why the killer made the decision to deprive his victims of their own lives.
Oh, we can offer up “reasons” as to why these killings take place. Racism in all its forms (Charleston, Dallas), Islamic extremism (9-11, Fort Hood, San Bernardino, Orlando, and most recently, New York), and latent psychosis (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, most recently, Las Vegas and, now, Sutherland Springs) but, in all these instances, we still do not answer the fundamental question as to why these events occur.
Let’s face it. There are plenty of racists (among all races), plenty of Islamic extremists (around the world) and enough psychopaths (of all kinds) who DON’T go around killing people, so these “reasons” that are put forth cannot be the be-all and end-all when it comes to answering the question, “Why?”
We can blame the second amendment, we can blame the mental health system, we can blame the political atmosphere of late, we can the lay blame on all sorts of “bugaboos,” but doing so just leads us further away from the truth.
There is something deeper, more hideous, more malevolent dwelling within those who perpetrate mass killings, than within the rest of the “idioti” running around in the world. That “something” is the very something which psychiatrists and criminologists, and all of the expert analysts within and outside government, will never put their finger on because, at day’s end, that something is as intangible as an emotion, as irrational as a tantrum, and as old as man going back to the beginnings, when Cain slew Abel.
That something is “evil.”
If we as a people to not come to accept this fact, do not come to grips with the spirit of evil that ties all of this carnage together, and do not address this common denominator head on, then the killings will increase in number, in casualty and in frequency…
…and we will ask ourselves, “Why?”
-Drew Nickell, 6 November 2017
© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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