Do we get it now? The Joker isn’t a joke. The irony of the
Colorado Batman shootings has me stunned. Actually, staying up past midnight to
see a movie befuddles me in the first place. Taking small children along to do
that is baffling. Add James Holmes, hair dyed red, taking the part of the
Joker, complete with guns and armor, shooting 71 people, many of whom thought
it was part of the show, has my brain running around in circles trying to make
sense of it all.
How did we get to a cultural place where young people think
in terms of mass murder? How do they become so evil that they act on those
thoughts? And it’s becoming commonplace. Admit it, you were only half-shocked
when you heard the news.
Something is really out of whack. Not only do young adults
actually open fire on innocent people, but then other people, without even
missing a beat, use the event to press for less freedom for the people who
didn’t shoot anyone at all. I even had a conversation with someone who was –
drumbeat here – blaming Bush. This was not
a political event. It had nothing to do with government -- we have always
had laws against shooting people in cold blood. Why would a would-be criminal
obey a gun law if he has no intention of obeying one of the most ancient of
laws – “Thou shalt not kill.”? No – this is way beyond politics; this event is
an outgrowth of an evil we can barely understand.
What is evil? Evil is worse than the opposite of good. Evil,
you see, can look just like good. It can claim to have your best interests at
heart; it can be called “Honest Iago” until five good people are dead; it can
look like a doctor or a nurse or a teacher, or a tall, handsome grad student.
Evil does not have horns on its head, nor does it wear a red leotard. It looks
like us.
Even our heroes are starting to look a lot like our
caricature of evil. The stranger our villains get, the more twisted are the good
guys. Batman? Bats are blind and only
come out at night. Batman is called The Dark Knight. Why dark? Isn’t good
light? Are we getting so confused about good that our popular culture sees good
as shadowy and secretiv?
