The Fantasy Killers

Last night's chilling tragedy in Aurora, Colorado brings to mind so many other similar tragedies--Columbine,  Fort Hood,  the Texas tower,  the massacre on the island in Norway.  No words can fully express the sadness these events caused to the people who experienced them, their families and their communities. 

But whenever these things happen,  a kind of nation-wide craziness ensues, as people, justifiably upset by the news, grasp onto any reason they can--as if craziness needs a reason.  Crazy people do horrible things,  not just now, but always.  Statistics do not bear out the premise that there are more irrational killings today than ever before.  In fact, the opposite may be true.    We forget about the Indian massacres,  slave executions,  frontier gunfights,  gang violence,  and race riots which have unfortunately dotted our history.  It should not be the irrational lone individual with a gun we fear most, but the rational,  vengeful actions of mobs and governments which have caused the most violence in our history.  Columbine was nothing compared to the Civil War, and last nights tragedy was small compared to 9-11.

But if we are going to look at the causes and solutions for such occurances, let me make three observations. 

1. The right to bear arms is all well and good, but does it really include semi-automatic weapons and gas grenades?  These are not weapons of personal protection but of mass destruction.  Last night's killer did not obtain them legally,  but he did obtain them easily.  Something is wrong  with our enforcement of the laws when insane killers may obtain any weapon they want. 
   Some will argue that more weapons in more people's hands would deter violence. It may--but not crazy violence.  These people want to be killed,  expect to be killed.  They just want to take as many as they can with them.
2. Why do we need to know all about these details?  Sometimes, crazy killers  are really not that crazy.  They just have a differing set of values than other people. More than anything, they want to be known.  The media willingly obliges them,  plastering every detail of their sad, pathetic lives over the screens of this country,  making celebrities out of nobodies.  To paraphrase Any Warhol--anyone can be famous in America for fifteen minutes, if you are willing to die and to kill for it.  These people use their killings to  send messages to the world, and the press obliges them. 
   Why don't we boycott the news for a while, and stop reading or talking about them?  Better yet, just because something happens, does the news have to report it?   Let's keep them anonymous, and focus on comfort to the grieving families, instead of satisfying the morbid curiosity of all the people who have no business knowing about  it. Maybe next time,  the crazies will think twice about going to an anonymous death.

3. Do we have too much fantasy in our lives?  When the Aurora killer was surrendered to the police,  he identified himself as "The Joker."   He wore a gas mask,  which much have looked similar to the villain in the current Batman film.   At Columbine,  the perpetrators wore long trench coats, similar to the coats worn in movies such as  The Matrix.  Recently there have been a spate of crazy individuals committing acts of assault and cannibalism, copying popular vampire and zombie movies.   These people identified themselves with characters from TV and movie fantasies. Clearly, it is no surprise that he attacked a Batman movie, or that he was able to enter the theater in costume at a midnight fan showing undetected. 
   The most frightening thing about modern America is not those few explosions of violence, but the general loss of reality.  Our lives today are not so much the product of either faith or reason, but imitations of fantasies.  We think we are entitled to the lives of celebrities, who become idols, the collective focus of our dreams and desires.  The fantasy world has become so large and so influential that it threatens to rob us of reality. 

The most frightening thing about the fantasy killers is not that we do not understand them, but that we do.  When the real world becomes too complicated and difficult, we retreat into our own dreams, which are sometimes erotic, sometimes violent,  sometimes, heroic,  but never real.  Then, when fantasy becomes more real than reality, we want to act out our fantasy in reality. For some few unbalanced souls,  that means turning a crowded theatre into a video game shoot-em-up. 

But it isn't fantasy.  It's reality.  In the end,  we all must face the judgment of the world, and the judgment of God.