Title:WHY? MAYBE IT'S A BLESSING NOT TO KNOW.(VIEWPOINTS).
Author(s):Leonard Pitts.
April 27, 1999
Byline: LEONARD PITTS - Miami Herald
Why?
It is the most urgent question of the moment, the only one that seems to matter as we stand gasping in the silence of aftermath.
Seems we've been asking it a lot lately. Asked it after shootings at schools in Pearl, Miss., and West Paducah, Ky. After Jonesboro, Ark.; Edinboro, Pa., and Springfield, Ore. Now we ask it after Littleton, Colo., the site of the worst school shooting in American history. Littleton, henceforth to be recalled as the place a nightmare was born and innocence -- the notion that there's a safe place beyond the reach of terror -- was once again killed. Along with 15 human beings.
Why? Ph.Ds and heads of impressive-sounding institutions confront the question on TV news forums. The rest of us meet at the water cooler or the dinner table. And all of us promulgate answers. This one says the tragedy happened because we took prayer out of the schools. The other one argues that the lesson is that parents are too removed from the lives of their children. This one over here blames the gun culture. The one over there condemns the media's almost pornographic obsession with violence.
All of it explains. None of it truly answers the question that burns like fire and haunts like spirits: Why?
Why did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold take explosives and guns onto the campus of Columbine High last Tuesday? Why did they shoot at least 29 people? And, for God's sake, why did they laugh and joke as they did it?
"How many did you get?" one asked the other. Like it was a video game and they were comparing scores.
Why? By now, the question is reflex, but no less important for that. This is how we cope with wrenching pain. We ponder why, make an earnest effort to figure out what went wrong, what needs improving, what bill can be passed or policy implemented. The thinking seems to be that if we can just find The Lesson we were meant to learn, then we might just wrench something good from this awful thing.
And I'm trying, I really am.
I've combed through what's been revealed about the lives of these two individuals, but the information is frustrating and fragmentary. We know they had a penchant for violent video games. That they bore a grudge against blacks, Hispanics and jocks. That they were fascinated by grim, Gothic themes. That they banded together in a community of outsiders, the so-called Trench Coat Mafia. That they got bullied a lot.
You pick gingerly through those meager clues, thinking that if you're just smart enough and careful enough, the answer to "Why?" will jump out at you. But the profile we are offered of Harris and Klebold is one that could fit many lonely, disaffected kids. The rest of them will grow up and get on with life. Harris and Klebold took life instead -- killed others with joy and saved their last bullets for themselves.
Why? The urge to slap a label upon this horror, to box it up and store it away, is strong.
But ultimately, what happened in Littleton is larger and more monstrous than easy answers allow for. In the meticulousness of the planning, in the viciousness of the attack, in the giddy "gladness" with which the mission was carried out, it seems to mock our attempts to understand.
Indeed, it strikes me that to lay this obscenity off to some mitigating factor, no matter how worthy, is to make the crime smaller than it is and offer rationalizations that insult the sufferers.
Meaning that I don't care what video games these wretches played. Don't give a damn if they were picked on by other kids. It makes no difference.
This was a special category of evil. It was a singular wickedness, a distinctive depravity. And it reinforces in me a belief that some human spirits are simply, inherently, defective, diseased and vile.
Why? I don't know. Maybe I can't. Maybe that's a blessing.
Source Citation:Pitts, Leonard. "WHY? MAYBE IT'S A BLESSING NOT TO KNOW." The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY) (April 27, 1999)
