"This Ain't No Foolin' Around"
"This Ain't No Foolin' Around"
Yes yes YES, we live in an "unprecedented" time. "Norms" don't matter the way they used to. So let's accept it, internalize it, and recalculate next steps so we can do the right thing.
I know, it’s complicated.
That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far in researching for this newsletter/column/bulletin/blog/whatever-you-wanna-call-it: there are so many layers to so many of the modern problems of the 21st century.
It’s easy to complain about ‘em. But if you don’t have solutions, you should keep the complaining to a minimum.
Which is why, since I don’t have any solutions for the following problems quite yet, I’m going to try to speak softly and carry a wee-tiny twig for the time being.
THE BIG(-ish) IDEA: We need to stop being shocked that persons in power—and certainly persons with no power—don’t respect norms and institutions anymore. Saying we were caught off guard, and dragged our feet because the circumstances were “unprecedented” is no longer tolerable. Life’s too short for needless red tape and an overabundance of caution when the stakes are this high.
It sounds like the University of Virginia shooting that killed three Cavaliers football players Sunday night could’ve been prevented. Or at least more could have been done, and sooner, to prevent it.
Back in September, UVA was investigating a hazing. It came up that a student tied to the incident, the one who would go on to commit this shooting a couple months later, might have a gun. Then it was found he had a misdemeanor weapons charge on his record that had been settled not long ago.
When the school tried to talk with this kid about not having disclosed his weapons conviction as required by university policy, “Mr. Jones repeatedly refused to cooperate with University officials who were seeking additional information about the claims that he had a firearm and about his failure to disclose the previous misdemeanor conviction.”
More than a month later, “the Threat Assessment Team escalated his case for disciplinary action.” Which led to the UVA judicial council taking up the case. The results of their investigation are “pending,” according to the university’s police chief.
Pending.
Turns out, the weapons charge was one of several misdemeanor charges that were brought against Jones over the course of the last few years.
So…you “escalated” the case? The results are “pending?” Pending till when? Two full months passed between the beginning of the school’s hazing investigation and the shooting.
I’m sure this whole thing is not just complicated. I’m sure it’s extraordinarily, infuriatingly complicated. More so than I’ll ever know or understand. And I’m nobody, I don’t need to understand. I just hope what happened behind the scenes here can be explained to the families of the victims, who are each being hailed as exceptional young men by a torrent of friends and family members.
We live in a country (I almost said a “world,” but that’s not true) where violent behavior amongst young men with guns is obscenely common. The boys who commit mass shootings—and this Virginia event technically counts as a mass shooting—have often been, or believe they have been, disrespected, overlooked, taken advantage of, made fun of.
The school’s “pending” judicial inquiry came about because of a hazing incident. We don’t know who was perpetrating and who was receiving the hazing, or if there even was any hazing. But the shooter told his father he was having a rough time at school. The kid was not only believed to be in possession of a gun, but had multiple misdemeanor charges on his record, including one that was a weapons charge.
I have less than zero experience disciplining college students. I can’t discipline myself to do the laundry till I’m wearing my last pair of clean underwear.
[SIDE NOTE: I get why it’s called a “pair” of pants, even though “pants,” plural, constitutes a single garment. But why is it a “pair” of underwear? I wear boxer-briefs, which at least have two legs involved. What if you’re wearing tighty-whiteys?? I say anyone who considers tighty-whiteys a “pair” of underwear doesn’t have a leg to stand on…]
But anyway. Why was the case of a disgruntled student with a gun, who may have been involved in some hazing, and had at least one weapons charge not made a priority? Why wasn’t the case “escalated” all the way to the top of the disciplinary food chain as soon as this probably-armed kid with a record refused to cooperate?
Refusing to cooperate under circumstances like this should have triggered swift, decisive action. May school protocols be damned.
Similar failures were apparently at play in the case of the St. Louis school shooting I wrote about that went down three weeks ago. Here was a kid exhibiting mental health problems severe enough that his mother called the cops to take his AR-15 from him. But since he was (supposedly) legally allowed to have it, the police compromised and gave it to a family friend “for safekeeping.” It can be assumed (well, I’m assuming) the kid simply went and got it from the family friend and did the shooting soon thereafter.
(As of this writing, they apparently still don’t know exactly how he got the gun back, but it has come out that he failed an FBI background check when initially trying to purchase it. So he just bought it from a private seller. Great.)
The St. Louis shooter said he did it because he had no friends, had never had a girlfriend, and the mental health professionals working with him weren’t taking his problems seriously.
This weekend’s Virginia shooter told his dad he was having a rough go of it. Other students were “picking on him.” He was one of the subjects of a school hazing investigation. He also had been a football player on the Cavaliers team, for a year, before injuries permanently sidelined him. So a dashed college football career must’ve weighed on his troubled mind, too.
I know that, again, in the context of this case, I am a moron. But I still feel compelled to say:
In certain dire cases, by-the-book police protocols should be tossed out. Sometimes regimented school policies should be superseded. The common-sense reaction to both these cases would have been to track down these kids, confiscate their guns for the time being, talk to them, and take the situation deadly seriously—right away, regardless of the red tape.
Because we have enough information now to know that these are the kinds of scenarios that lead to young American men snapping, and killing.
If there’s any question, especially when potentially troubled young men and guns are involved, why can’t we make the judgment call more often to separate them from their machine guns and get them real help?
The frustration level for me is way up there on this. It’s like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment, when she’s trying to get her dying daughter some pain relief and the nurses are saying they have to follow protocol.
“GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOOOOOTTTT!!!!!”
Screw protocol when the stakes are this high! We have gotten to a point where protocol, norms, institutions, and precedent must no longer dictate whether we pursue 21st century justice. Laws, yes. Rules…sure, unless it’s life or death and the rules are getting in the way.
Guidelines? If the object is to create order under non-life-threatening circumstances, then yes, of course. But certainly not when there are scarlet-red flags like there appear to have been in this Virginia shooter’s case.
“TAKE THESE TROUBLED KIDS’ GUNNNNS!! GET THEM SOME HELLLLLPPP!!! NOW!!!!! RIGHT NOWWWWW!!!!!!!!
I’ve really, really (really) been trying to make these posts shorter. (Too late.) So to close, here’s the other scenario that makes me crazy when considering that norms and precedent might factor into whether it’s addressed.
I understand how complicated the decision on indicting Trump must be for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whether it be for the stolen docs or for the coup. It will be seen by some as a partisan attempt to cripple Trump’s inevitable 2024 White House aspirations, thus tarnishing the impartial reputation of the Justice Department. There could be violence in the streets. And Trump could be acquitted, which would be a disaster for myriad reasons.
But, note to Congress: You compelled Trump to testify about January 6 with a subpoena. He ignored it. Open and shut case. Hold him in contempt.
Why can’t you? Like, right now? You think it “could be an option,” you say? I’m pretty sure it is already 100% an option. It is quite literally a thing you can do, making it an option by definition.
So what are you really waiting for? It seems like it’s just such a big decision—dare I say (*sigh*), such an unprecedented decision—that you don’t think you can go into it lightly.
This attitude is what has to get on up outta here.
There will never be a right time to do something as unprecedented as holding a former president in contempt of Congress. It will cause some headaches for a lot of people, I know. And yes, far worse than headaches, the closer Trump gets to accountability the more likely there might be violence. But I’d argue that Trump is at his weakest point ever after Trumpism failed so miserably in the midterms. Now might be the best time to test out holding him to account for something. (Anything!)
In the 21st century, we’ve got to stop deciding against taking vital action because it’d be “unprecedented.” We should have known to scrub that word from our vocabulary as soon as Donald Trump—yes, 20th century readers who are time traveling right now, that Donald Trump—was sent to the White House on Election Night 2016.
As I am writing this, right this second, Trump has officially announced his candidacy for 2024, the bulletin just popped up on my screen.
So look. I, too, want the towering American institutions and steadfast norms held dear by old-school traditionalists like Merrick Garland to hold. But many of them might not. Some of them already aren’t. Let’s wrap our minds around that fact, recalibrate, and not let it delay justice when the country sorely needs it.
Yes, it is a fact, Mr. Attorney General. It would be an unprecedented pursuit of justice to indict a former president. But justice is justice. Right is right.
“MAKE THIS MAN ACCOUNTABBBBLLLLLE!!!!!”
Yours,
~Dean