Asking the unanswerable about the unthinkable

If Friday wasn’t an emotional day for you and those close to you, you weren’t paying attention. And that just might have been a better path to take, all things considered.

There’s no way anyone was indifferent about the awful events in Newton, Conn. The very idea, the mental image of innocent children felled by a madman’s bullets in their rural classroom, less than 2 weeks before Christmas, stokes every type of negative emotion known to man.

As moderator, ringleader, babysitter and bite-my-tongue occasional commenter on KTVZ.COM’s online comments, years of experience gave me a good sense where the comments would go — human nature being what it is.

But as the guy who sometimes castigates those who seem to champion one extreme or the other in the Blame Society of today (2 bumper sticker slogans of mine: ‘To BLAME is to B-LAME,’ or ‘Blame the Blamers — Hate the Haters’) — the rekindled gun control debate, I can understand.

The notion that it’s ‘the media’s fault’ for paying too much attention to the event or for ‘glorifying’ the perpetrator, thus ensuring more such incidents, isn’t just a simple answer — but a simplistic one that fails to hold water when one examines the options as expressed.

So of course I had to ask someone who voiced that view what he would have us media folks do? Ignore such a mass tragedy? Report everything but who did it and his or her background? Really?

The response was a suggestion of leaving that part of the story blank, as the Tour de France list of winners will be forever more for the races won by Lance Armstrong before he was stripped of his titles in that doping scandal.

But talk about apples and oranges! Armstrong is still a household name – rightly famous to his stalwart fans, now infamous to those not so close to the matter who figure where there’s so much smoke…

That’s not the same as “un-covering” (censoring?) a key part of a tremendously awful story that grips the nation’s attention. We search for clues in the madman’s past, in hopes that there will be a clue that can prevent future tragedies  (knowing the odds of finding such magical clues are slim at best). And yes, for some, the details satisfy some morbid curiosity in the celeb-fame world of today. Just try putting THAT genie back in the bottle!

Madmen (and women) have existed since practically when we stepped out of the Garden of Eden. Long before guns, many died on the battlefields, and elsewhere. We have no corner on insanity, but for some reason we have cloaked the Five Stages of Grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — in the dubious twin cloaks of ‘who can we blame?’ and its corollary, ‘how can we prevent it from ever happening again (or so much)?”

And if we can’t solve/fix it, today, then we must blame … the gun, the reporter (don’t shoot the messenger?), somebody! I really, truly believe that most of us know better, but lashing out or trying to “fix” the problem, striking when the iron’s hot, feels too good to resist.

I spent much of my younger life trying to “fix” a broken family, foolishly (hey, born on April Fool’s Day). I’m lucky I don’t have an ulcer to show for it (though my older brother did;-/

The answers, I’m afraid, are, there’s really only one person to blame — and he’s dead — and there’s only so much society can do to prevent such tragedies. (Metal detectors in every school? Police in every hallway? Schools turned into what airports have become? Really?)

I do fear today’s more-connected, yet less-connected at the same time society leaves more people feeling alone than in the days of nuclear families and neighbors you knew. But again, to look for some sweeping movement, law, policy or groupthink that could reverse that trend is a fool’s game — and again, wouldn’t ‘fix’ the problem, prevent the tragedies.

The extremes and those who live there play us, the truth-, solution- and peace-seeking folks in the middle, and all too often we go along and get spun (or just simply disengage, give up on the debate out of frustration).

Anyone who dares suggest that maybe it should be a bit harder to get a gun is quickly branded by some as an unpatriotic rube who wants to rip every firearm out of Americans’ hands so the jack-booted thugs can have their way with us.

And those who believe, for example, that the answer is more people with guns in public places, or having every youngster learn responsible use of a firearm — again, those would seem to be simple, even simplistic answers that seem at best unworkable, at worst ludicrous. If only because a sizable chunk of parents would rebel at the very notion. But the notion of “doing away with the NRA”) (or unions, or the party you don’t like) also feels like spleen-venting rather than actual workable proposals or a starting point for rational discussion.

I think those who believe we don’t direct enough attention and dollars toward mental health treatment are on a far more promising tack — though again, there’s no such thing as a 100 percent “solution” to the mind that can snap, without any signs of it before to the outside world. (Not unless we enter a world of “Minority Report” pre-cognition and enlist folks to prevent crimes before they happen. A horror film come to life.)

I bet most reporters involved in covering Friday’s awful events were conflicted — the adrenaline pumps over “the big story,” but I seriously doubt any of the people involved ever expected to be interviewing children — at their parents’ sides, of course — about “bullets whizzing by.” No mind can insulate itself fully from the sick feeling at the pit of one’s stomach over not just the awful events, but how familiar — even, ugh, routine — they have become.

We take daily routines and life for granted because we are a resilient species and most of us don’t, thank God, spend every day of our lives fighting for survival — though with my wife still seeking work, at what’s supposed to be a joyous time of year, I also know how the economic woes we have fallen into remove much of the … lubrication from the gears of society, causing them to grind, spark and occasionally burst into flame.

(Speaking of the economy and tight, tough times, the fiscal cliff — now there’s something to “fix” that shows just how hard it can be to “fix” obvious problems, when the best “solution” to those directly involved is to never give in and blame the other side for being childish, stubborn and 100 percent wrong. Sigh.)

So the “how many children have to die before we…(fill in the blank)” crowd can be seen as using an awful tragedy to make their point, in a way that frustrates all but probably sways few if any minds troubled by the horrifying events.

In my job as a reporter, I often tell people I rarely if ever have the answers — I just try very hard to come up with the right questions — and to know who to ask. (I also tell folks I have no memory, only Google and archives – and they only go so far. But that’s a topic for a different, happier day.)

But on days like this, I believe we should excuse each other for asking the chief unanswerable question — why?? — because that’s what we imperfect humans do.

And when we watch and read the heart-wrenching tales of heroes and lives cut short, not to mention reams of analysis that are no doubt coming our way in coming days about the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, it seems to me the best way we can honor, respect and salute the innocent children lost, and the bereaved parents, families and friends, is to think before we vent or blame, to resist those who would use this tragedy for their own political ends, to better balance the pain in our hearts with the logic in our heads that says grasping at simple answers in the frustration-born, all too human desire to “do something!” is a shortcoming that really, deep down inside … we know is never, ever that simple.