Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
My Thoughts and Prayers Are With the Victims
Yes, perhaps the phrase deserves the mockery. It’s a cliché, and rarely does a cliché have the power to comfort. To reach for it suggests that the victims weren’t even worthy of a few moments of a good speechwriter’s thought. It’s the wrong response.
But what’s the right response to a well-planned, murderous attack on a center for the developmentally disabled? What could the right response be? The French have recently taken to saying, “On ira les buter jusque dans les chiottes,” as Putin said before the second Chechen war. I won’t translate it, because it’s vulgar, and because Americans don’t need speechwriting or statecraft lessons from Vladimir Putin. But it does sound more honest, at least, than a prim, pursed-lipped recitation of the phrase “our thoughts and prayers are with the victims.”
The victims were people who spend their days caring for the developmentally disabled. I don’t know much about the center, but I know the most common developmental disabilities are conditions like Down Syndrome, mental retardation, and cerebral palsy. The type of American who does work like that is one I admire more than any other. I’m thinking of the hospice worker who cared for my mom when she was dying. She called my mom “Miss Toby,” which was a lovely and, in her case, instinctive way to show respect to a woman of my mother’s generation without being cold. That’s not the kind of work you do for the glamor or the easy money, and you sure don’t do it because it’s an adrenaline rush and a thrill. I imagine the Inland Regional Center’s filled with humble, gentle, patient people who feel a calling to help the vulnerable. These monsters attacked a place where good, decent people provided housing, work, and therapy to 30,000 people with developmental disabilities, and killed them.
The motive has not yet been formally ascertained. The murderers were apparently the parents of a six-month old child. I can’t imagine anything going deeper against the grain of human nature than a mother abandoning her six-month-old child to commit mass murder. Maybe you don’t believe in the devil, but if your theory of the workings of the human soul can explain that by appeal to some other concept, I’d bet — when you get right down to it — that you’re just using a synonym.
I’m finding the reporting on this maddening. Half of America has decided already that the story is Narrative A: Our relationship with guns is sick and we’ve got to do something to fix this. The other half is determined that it’s Narrative B: Jihad. And few are willing to wait to find out if the facts really support the narrative.
Maybe it’s both. It’s hardly implausible that this was a planned, organized jihadi terrorist attack. But, then again, we do manage to slaughter each other in such numbers and on a sufficiently regular basis that Narrative A could even be true. Maybe these weren’t poorly-assimilated Muslims, but really well-assimilated Muslims — so well-assimilated, and so profoundly Americanized, that they adopted one of the most demonic aspects of modern American culture: From time to time, we shoot people en masse for no reason.
It’s breathtaking to think we may have been attacked by ISIS, or by Islamists “inspired” by them, but we don’t even know yet, really — because this sort of thing happens all the time. That shouldn’t make sense, but it does.
That we don’t yet know their motives isn’t owed to a conspiracy to cover up the truth, but to the decency of our system of law enforcement system, which still prioritizes examining the evidence before announcing what happened. That’s how it should be. It’s not surprising that it takes more than a few minutes to do that.
The law seems to be doing its job as it should, although from overseas, it’s hard to tell. You’ve probably seen this video already, and even if you have, it’s worth watching twice. It may not be proof of the existence of God, but it’s certainly proof of the existence of goodness. We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds, but this shows we don’t live in the worst of all possible ones, either.
The officer is keeping count of the workers at the center who are fighting back panic and tears. His voice is calm and warm. “Go. Go. Keep your hands where I can see them.” But he remembers to say, “Please,” and “Thank you.” “Thank you, thank you. Try to relax, try to relax.” He’s still keeping count. “I’ll take a bullet before you do, that’s for damned sure,” he says to the terrified people he’s serving and protecting. And it’s obvious from his tone that he means it. “Just be cool, okay?”
If you want evidence that God hasn’t abandoned the human race, watch and listen to that video. He didn’t rehearse that line — I’m sure he didn’t wake up thinking, “What should I say, if such a thing happens, to make myself look like a hero?” It just came to him spontaneously. The people he was protecting, people so frightened they could barely breathe — you can hear how ragged their breath is — must have known he meant it.
My thoughts have been with the victims since I saw the news. My thoughts aren’t all that important. But I’m sure every American watching the news was thinking of them, devastated for them, outraged for them, sickened for them. Even the responses that offended everyone on Twitter because they didn’t meet the right narrative (whatever it’s supposed to be) showed that people were thinking, in their ways, of the victims of a vile, depraved, diabolical crime. The words they used to express their thoughts may have been clumsy and artless; their political views confused or wrong; but their thoughts, at least, were with the victims.
And so are mine.
And my prayers are with them, too. Because sometimes a cliché is all you’ve got.
Published in General, Guns, Policing
Otlc,
Your comments are on target. However, I think Dr. Pipe’s nostrum “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” reveals a weakness in Western intellectual thought. Western intellectuals almost always discount the importance of religious faith. They don’t see how deeply it is part of human identity. That this Muslim suddenly became Jihadist is a failure to recognize that Jihad is part of the Muslim faith. When people feel under extreme secular social pressure they often become more religious to counteract the pressure. As long as Jihad is allowed to be preached any Muslim or Muslim convert is susceptible. By continuing the lie that Jihad is a strange ideology that has nothing to do with Islam, we remain in total denial and at risk.
Regards,
Jim
To me it was shocking that anyone would criticize those offering prayers. When I offer prayers I fully expect God to consider the request (He may not go with it, He’s got a greater view than my parochial) or offer a Blessing which will aid the recipients in some spiritual way. Prayers are serious things.
My prayers to the victims and their families. May God give them strength and bless them.
“Yes, perhaps the phrase deserves the mockery. It’s a cliché, and rarely does a cliché have the power to comfort. To reach for it suggests that the victims weren’t even worthy of a few moments of a good speechwriter’s thought. It’s the wrong response.”
How can this paragraph be read as a criticism of the habitual, repetitive responses we utter when stunned by genuine trauma and irretrievable loss in our personal lives. Do imagine Claire was mocking bewildered fellow workers trying restore some moral sanity to their lives with commonplace reassurances.
It’s directed at people with speechwriters, our leaders, who often do speak with a poll-tested piousness. No need to descend to Putin’s outhouse oratory. A nice “We will pursue the unconscionable murderers and exterminate them and all their associates.”
Makes a much better NY Daily News front page as well.
I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes. How sweet to be viscerally connected to this brave man who was called to comfort his situational “flock.”
At the risk of over-psychologizing (for which I have no credentials), I think people jump to figure things out and spout off remedies, to be first, to be right; it is a way to avoid the fear and pain we experience at these times. Let’s see, would I rather feel my heart break over this devastation, or would I rather speculate on what’s going on. It takes courage to tap in, even for a moment, to the pain of the victims and their families.
Consider this: if I was a close personal friend of a senator or a billionaire, and I said that I was going to ask him to look into something and see if he could help you, I don’t think most people would consider that doing nothing.
A Christian believes God was so dedicated to having a close personal relationship with us that He sent His Son (and in a way Himself) to be executed and horribly punished in our place. A Christian also believes God possesses infinitely more power than any other being has possessed or will ever possess. This is power sufficient to cause the entire universe to come into existence. He is also supremely wise and able to see all of history at once, ensuring that He will do the right thing. (Sorry, gun control advocates, but you are a long way away from that)
For a Christian, prayer is the most powerful tool available. It would be insulting for a Christian to refuse to pray for the victims of an atrocity.
I think if you tell someone your thoughts and prayers are with them you should actually include them in your prayers. If you don’t ever pray then I do think it’s a weak cliche and you should just tell them your thoughts are with them or offer your condolences. If you aren’t particularly religious fine but please don’t act like you are.
But that’s just me…
People feel the need to say something so “thoughts and prayers” is what comes out of their mouths. I agree with Frozen Chosen – don’t say “prayers” unless you plan to pray. When we lost a child I realized people say lots of stuff, and lots of it wasn’t actually very helpful. It wasn’t hurtful and I knew they meant well. But if you plan to say something try to put a little thought into it or maybe just stay quiet.
It isn’t. But any phrase used over and over loses its power. I wish I had words that could convey something that felt less like a ritual incantation and more like the reality, which is true I’m sure for most of us — that all day long, I’ve been fighting back tears of despair, choking on nausea, almost unable to read the news but unwilling to stop because it feels as if I’m abandoning the victims if I don’t look squarely at what happened to them. And I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that way. I don’t want to look because it makes me unhappy — but my unhappiness is nothing compared to people who’ve learned they’ll never see their mother or daughter or friend again … so I feel I have to look; I have to at least know and recognize what happened to these innocent people whose days began like mine and ended in an indescribable nightmare. I wish I had words that really conveyed: You are not alone in your pain, even though I am not so arrogant as to say I fully understand it, only that I can imagine it only too well.
I think this is a good insight. We go into analytic overdrive and try to be amateur detectives, even though we can’t be — we’re not there, we aren’t qualified to do what the detectives are doing now — because it’s a way of warding off the pain. The pain of empathy. And it’s too painful to feel.
Maybe the right response is just to cry. But of course, a politician who did that would be seen as “weak” — even if that’s the most human response possible.
Americans. Not you, specifically, of course not. But like every culture, America has its pathologies, and the violence of our society is clearly one of them.
All the reason not to import more violence from the Muslim world.
Yep. I’m frankly dismissive of all the thoughts and prayers for the victims because they don’t help. They are not pro-active.
I want to hear a clear, concise plan to protect the American people and all Western peoples from jihad. Period.
It’s not cliche if you actually pray. And you actually believe in prayer.
Step 1 – Get yourself a weapon.
Step 2 – Get yourself trained in using that weapon to protect yourself and your family.
Step 3 – Get yourself a concealed carry license, so you can protect yourself and your family regardless of where you are.
Repeat the above steps for your spouse and any adult children you have.
The government ain’t going to protect you, Hoss.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. – John 15:13
I read your post early this morning and watched the first video link which made me cry. I had work to do and so I had to shut off the Internet – I felt like the Parisians felt just a few weeks ago – I could not fathom any of it – so I went about my day, glad to be working. I came home and made a pot of soup since it got “chilly” here in Florida and put a pumpkin pie in the oven – the one thing on Thanksgiving I didn’t get that I wanted. I put on the local jazz station playing Christmas tunes – and was thankful that none of my friends and loved ones got shot to death at a Christmas party…..
Glenn Beck’s comments to Obama sum up mine verbatim – there’s nothing more to say….
http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/12/03/glenns-message-to-the-president-screw-global-warming-it-is-about-islam/
Shorter:
See something, shoot something.
Even as an enthusiastic supporter of the second amendment, I don’t want to own a gun. I pay taxes and live in a country that is supposedly based upon the rule of law so why on earth should I have to do this? My job is to make the donuts to support our law enforcement agencies.
I only ask to be left alone to contribute my fair share to national security and would appreciate it if fellow Westerners would stop suggesting passivity as an any kind of defense against chaos and evil.
Got it, understand completely. But you live in the world in which you find yourself. “They” aren’t going to do anything to stop jihad. So you have to. And so do I.
Jonah Goldberg had a good bit on this today.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427962/san-bernardino-shooting-thoughts-prayers