The End of Innocence by Lisa Downing

The search for answers to the enigma of the child who kills continues unabated. About the demonizing media treatment of Thompson and Venables, Blake Morrison wrote: “Evil is no answer.  That’s the one of the lessons of the Bulger case .  .  . Time to grow up. Evil won’t do.”  Similarly, if rejection of one-dimensional explanations is in order, it is also the case that the presumption of innocence as the default character of children simply will not do either.

Childhood as a construct needs to be freed from the specter of its regressive Victorian framing that conceptualizes children as a class whose nature is defined – and constrained – by their innocence.  Children need to emerge as people.

Thirdly, I would contend that it will  simply not do to continue unquestioningly to assume the positive influence of the institution of “the family,” if enacted in its current, culturally ideal, nuclear form.  The cause of violent behavior in young people is repeatedly laid at the feet of families who fall short of the normative ideal, especially divorced, single-parent, alcoholic, abusive, or economically deprived families.  While there may be causative links between abuse and delinquency, this is not the whole picture.  Such a charge is proven to be patently inaccurate in the cases of the Columbine school shooters Harris and Klebold, who both had educated, boundary-setting, financially comfortable, happily married parents –the very opposite of the stereotype of the family that would produce a young killer.

It may be worth considering instead the proposal that the nuclear family itself is a problematic institution, based as it is on the paradigm of hierarchy and dominance, and indeed of ownership. (The common perception that children belong to and with their mothers as a matter of both nature and right accounted for Mary Bell’s extended family leaving the little girl in her mother’s charge, despite their serious worries over the suspicion that, on at least four occasions, Betty Bell had tried to kill Mary.)

 Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone made the liberation of children from ownership by parents one of the central tenets of her imagined postpatriarchal utopia.  In a chapter entitled “Down with Childhood,” she describes how the “cult of childhood” is not in the interest of children’s well-being, as we like to imagine, but rather in the service of shoring up small, self-centered family units in which children are important because they are the “product of that unit, the reason for its maintenance” and the guarantors of the hierarchy on which it rests, since they are by definition at the very bottom of the heap.  She further argues, in an audacious move that resonates particularly powerfully with our discussion of kids who kill, that children are so trapped, so oppressed by the wishful fantasies that adults project onto them, and so powerless to resist them owing to their physical weakness and lack of full citizen status, that “childhood is hell” and “the result is the insecure and therefore aggressive/defensive, often obnoxious little person we call a child.”

For Firestone, the nature of the bond that ties woman and child so closely together “is no more than shared oppression,” and oppression, moreover, that is all the more devastating and hard to rebut for being couched in the phraseology of ‘cute,’ the very projected characteristic that accounts for the excessive vilification of those child and woman killers who fail –or refuse – to live up to it.

The so common as to be clichéd “what about the children? Or “think of the children” rhetoric beloved of the tabloid press, which made intelligible the discourses about James Bulger as the archetype of “ideal child” and ideal victim, does not benefit actual living young people, but serves instead to shore up conservative beliefs about what society should look like and what childhood means, as queer theorist Lee Edelman has devastatingly argued.

What “The Child” signifies, according to Edelman, is a cipher for the preservation of the Anglo-American conservative order. It encourages compulsory heterosexuality and a pro-reproductive social imperative; it ensures homophobia, as discourses of gay male sexuality so often collapse onto discourses of pedophilia; and it perpetuates misogyny, promoting the narrow idea about woman’s social roles and the biological and cultural “rightness” of maternity.

The cases discussed in this chapter show up the necessity to deconstruct and rethink both the category of “the child” with regard to the question of agency, individuality, violence, and citizenship, and the category of “the murderer.” As has been seen throughout this book, the myth of the exceptional individual exculpates society and scapegoats the individual in the case of male adult murderers, obviating the need for class-based analysis.  Feminists have repeatedly pointed this out, claiming that male perpetrated murders are in fact extreme symptoms of a mainstream violence/rape culture.  Looking at the treatment of woman killers and of kids who kill alongside the representation of male adult murderers, as I have been doing, throws into relief and instance of colossal cultural hypocrisy.

 .  .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

The question of the original and the copy in the case of high school killings (in the 10 years following Columbine there were more than 80 in the U.S.)  is one of the themes explored in the acclaimed novel by Lionel Shriver We Need To Talk About Kevin (2003). The novel is narrated from the point of view of Eva, the mother of the eponymous high school mass killer. The novel is referential of real-life school killings and shows a familiarity with media discourses and psychological theories surrounding child-killers. It interrogates, and fails to provide an answer to, the question of why the figure of the high school killer came into vogue.

 One theory proposed in the novel is that the badge of “high school killer” offers self-definition to those at a notoriously difficult life stage. Shriver has Eva write: “He’s found himself, as they said in my day. Now he doesn’t have to worry about whether he’s a freak or a geek, a grind or a jock or a nerd. He doesn’t have to worry if he’s gay. He’s a murderer.” The idea is thereby raised that the subjective identity contained in the label of “murderer” has become an option for children, as well as for adults, in the context of the high school killing trend. And, in a culture of peer-regulated obsession with “coolness,” the role of murderer is “cooler” than any other of the available roles:

Every time Kevin takes another bow as Evil Incarnate, he swells a little larger. Each slander slewed in his direction –nihilistic, morally destitute, depraved, degenerate, or debased – bulks his scrawny frame better than my cheese sandwiches ever did.

School massacres are so shocking, at least in part, because of the idealized notion to which culture clings that school is a safe, protective, nurturing environment. In fact, schools are hothouses of power struggles, iniquities, and class divisions, pretty much mirroring those of culture at large, but with immature and disenfranchised players. Shriver’s book does not shy away from challenging our comfortable assumptions about the institutions of childhood, maternity, paternity, and school. It allows for a reading that suggests that questioning the innate benevolence of these institutions may be a more productive endeavor than continuing to attempt to “solve” the secret riddle of the making of the individual aberrant killer.

.   .   .   .   .

The reduction of complexity in the case of the murdering subject is a tendency identified in discourses about all the murders discussed in this book. The artist-killer, the sex-beast, the unnatural child-hating woman, the “random” serial killer: these are archetypes in the history of discourses about the murderer that are seldom challenged, and that function to make the persona of a given murderer fixed, singular, and one dimensional. On the one hand many the murderers discussed are exceptional. Civil servants and trade union activists are not usually prolific homicidal necrophiles, as Dennis Nilsen was. Woman who do sex work do not usually commit the kinds of killings that Wuornos did. Most children do not set out to  murder other children. However, focusing on this exceptionality as proof of an incomprehensible “other” is a red herring. So too is focusing on the unfathomable nature of the crimes as reflections of the nineteenth-century “pure act,” often translated into the twentieth-century discourse of “randomness” ascribed to the serial killer and the psychopath. (I have argued that the attempt to ensure the label of “serial killer” for Wournos was designed to render her acts meaningless and obviate the necessity to speak truth to power and consider her crimes in the light of her justifiable anger (at being raped) and her social disenfranchisement..) The insistence upon these subjectifying stereotypes is thus a way of obviating what is really exceptional about these cases – that they are aberrant reactions to, and symptoms of, normative and normalizing culture, not the acts of wholly incomprehensible monsters, madmen/madwomen, or geniuses. To borrow a term from Jacques Lacan, the murderer may be best understood as an example of “extimacy.” That is, as the kernel of otherness that is interior to – at the heart of- our own culture, intimate but necessarily disavowed in order to maintain a semblance of decency.

I close ,  with the assertion of my solemn and sobering belief that we all, whatever our gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, or economic class, could, in some circumstances, ourselves become murderers. It is also my conviction that, in such an extreme situation, we could find ourselves treated very differently depending upon our particular status within those hierarchical categories. Both of these propositions, however, are ones that “civilized” culture, which shores up its unassailable rectitude by the creation of abjected ‘others,’ refuses absolutely to own.

The Iran Problem by David Crist

An Iranian antiship missle is launched during an exercise near the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran has developed an unorthodox military force capable of inflicting significant damage to the U.S. Navy in the event of a new war in the Persian Gulf.

The Iran problem is an enduring constant in American foreign policy.  Over the decades, every administration has had its moments with Iran.  The country has been too strategically important to ignore.  Various administrations have tried to woo it back into the Western fold, or talk of replacing the Islamic Republic with one more to Washington’s liking but - usually following the narrow focus of a one-way lecture on American demands- the results have been miserable.  In the final analysis, Iran simply rejects any vision of the Middle East as imposed by the will of the United States. A famous quote by Ayatollah Khomeini puts it succinctly: “We will resist America until our last breath.”

Unfortunately, Washington has helped perpetuate the animosity. The United States has displayed a callous disregard for Iranian grievances and security concerns.  Giving a medal to a ship’s captain who just inadvertently killed 290 civilians and then wondering why Iran might harbor resentment is just the most obvious example of American obtuseness.  An ill-conceived intervention in the Lebanese Civil War against the Shia, while at the same time backing Iraq, threatened the new Iranian government.  Tehran’s response, to level a building full of marines and to take American hostages, still colors American thinking, equally understandably.  Washington invariably took the wrong course with Iran. When diplomatic openings appeared, hardliners refused to talk and advocated overthrowing the Islamic Republic.  When Iran killed U.S. soldiers and marines in Lebanon and Iraq, successive administrations showed timidity when hard-liners called for retribution.

Glimmers of optimism invariably give way to the smell of cordite and talk of war. In 2012, the prospects for conflict peaked again.  Seasoned, pragmatic Iran watchers called for tougher sanctions to punish Iranian intransigence regarding its nuclear program. But punishing Iran for its intransigence  also hardens Iranian Iranian leaders and justifies in their minds the need for a nuclear program, both for increased self-sufficiency and as a deterrent against Western aggression.  Within the U.S. Administration, discussions in the White House Situation Room turned to the possibility of pressing for sanctions against Iran’s central bank.  As this is the means by which Iran receives payment for its oil exports, this would be a radical act, tantamount to an embargo of Iranian oil. “Iran could see it as a de facto act of war,” said one senior Obama administration representative.

Unfortunately, now neither side has much desire to work to bridge their differences. Distrust permeates the relationship. Three decades of twilight war have hardened both sides. When someone within the fractured governing class in Tehran reached out to the American president, the United States was unwilling to accept anything but capitulation. When President Obama made a heartfelt opening, a smug Iranian leadership viewed it as a ruse or the gesture of a weak leader. Iran spurned him. Obama fell back on sanctions and CENTCOM; Iran fell back into its comfortable bed of terrorism and war-mongering.  Soon it may no longer be twilight; the light is dimming,  fog is rolling in, the night is approaching.

Fugitive Days by Bill Ayers

We built a bonfire on the Diag at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1968) and hundreds of us –anarchists and street people, radicals and rockers –stayed up singing  and talking. Ron St. Ron appeared in a cloud of smoke and passed around joints the size of Havana cigars. Ron St. Ron wasn’t his real name, of course, but like a lot of young people, including his roommate, Roger Vanilla, he was in transition, and for him the process of reinvention included a rechristening. He’d gone from Ron Sinclair to Ron St. Claire, and now this.

First, he said, I feel like saying my name twice, Ron, Ron, and second, I like the sound of it –Ron St. Ron.  It reminds me of Bond, James Bond./ He paused, took a deep toke, and spoke the rest rapidly in a thin voice at the top of his breath: Plus I want to be a saint someday but I don’t want to wait till I’m dead because there might not be any fucking allowed after you’re dead – who knows? – and not only do I like fucking but I think many, many girls might like the idea of fucking a saint. He exhaled loudly, took another hit and smiled sweetly, his expansive face the color of a delicious apple.

Ron was our local dealer and he did have many saintly qualities.  He was exclusively a marijuana man, herb of the gods he believed. Whenever he came by to deliver the goods – a dime bag, perhaps, fished from his fragrant backpack – he insisted on giving a free sample to whoever happened to be at home at the time.  With great ceremony he would clean and sift, measure and roll, and finally light the swollen thing up and smile benevolently, encouraging evaluative comments and positive vibes as it orbited the room.  Ron was a generous soul, it’s true – he didn’t mind sharing, and the quality of his dope was always prime.  He lasted less than a year as an independent in the business; when the sharks moved in, Ron was pushed roughly aside.

I tell you, man, he’d say in those innocent early days, his watery eyes simmering with evangelical fire, if enough people were smoking dope, everybody’d be in a better mood.  The big wars would come to an end automatically then, man, but so would all our little squabbles.  He believed it.

Marijuana was available everywhere – every party, every gathering, every meeting. We simply called it dope, because it was the only drug in our world, and while we didn’t think of it as hard or addictive or dangerous, we knew it was illegal and on the edge and that in some other worlds we were considered demonic dope fiends.

Like coffee or a beer, dope was offered as an icebreaker, neighborly gesture, or simply a sign of good manners and proper upbringing. Even the frat parties had dope, but the frat boys were all frivolous and idiotic in our minds now, a bunch of conformist fools going through the motions of hip.  Our parties by comparison were completely cool, absolutely righteous. I remember when Studs Terkel’s play Amazing Grace  opened in Ann Arbor we hosted a cast party where, along with the beer and the wine and the hips, dope was passing hand to hand. I offered a fat blazing joint to Studs who said he’d never tried it, but what the hell.  A cigar smoker, Studs held the thing between his thumb and first finger, took a puff  and then blew it out in a big cloud without inhaling.  Hey, he said, holding the fat thing aloft and admiring it like a connoisseur.  That’s pretty good stuff.  Sure –he smiled broadly – I felt something.

Ron St. Ron was a first-order philanthropist in his own mind, an entrepreneurial dharma bum on a spiritual mission of peace and harmony.  Just keep passing the weed, man, he’d encourager.  Things are definitely looking up.  Although the content and contexts variety wildly, Ron had a firm and unshakeable theory towards a better world a’coming, just like Marx and Mom and my English teacher Mr. Friend before him.

The sweet smoke drifted up and mingled with the smell of the bonfire and the embrace of a cool gentle fog, everyone feeling nice and talking low.  .  . 

The State Department sent two young fellows to the teach-in who spoke timidly about the spread of communism and U.S. responsibility to defend the free world against totalitarianism.

If Vietnam falls, said one, all of Indochina will follow in short order.

Yes, the other chimed in, and then Indonesia, the Philippines, and who knows? We’ll be fighting in Hawaii!

They were earnest and perhaps even sincere, but I dismissed  them as twerps. I couldn’t wait to hear one of us demolish them.

It’s a point, Stan countered, that runs entirely the other way. The U.S. conquers whatever it likes – Puerto Rico, Haiti, half of Mexico and, yes, Hawaii, too – and that’s the root of the problem.

I felt suddenly transported as I saw this vague and formless thing start to shape up and materialize, and putting one and two together realized with a jolt that I was at that moment standing in the middle of the elusive movement I’d been seeking. I leapt into the discussion, inflamed, hoping to give the moment its due.

What kind of a system is it that allows the U.S. to seize the destinies of the Vietnamese people?

What kind of system is it that disenfranchises Black people in the South, leaves millions upon millions impoverished and excluded all over the country, creates faceless and terrible dehumanizing bureaucracies and puts material values before human values – and still calls itself free and still finds itself fit to police the world?

I don’t remember much of what I said, but the feeling persists.  .  . and became embodied just a few months later in the Weatherman manifesto.

To all but those who became fully initiated into the sectarian battles of those days, the Weatherman paper is incomprehensible in large parts – a close reading of the lengthy, overwritten, single-spaced piece, it was said, could drive you blind or leave you gasping for air. But the thesis was simple: the world was on fire; masses of people throughout Africa and Asia and Latin America were standing up everywhere to demand independence and democracy and national liberation, leading a struggle that could transform the world into a more just, a more peaceful place; the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle had a counterpart inside the borders of the U.S. – the Black liberation movement; and the responsibility of mother country radicals here in the heartland of imperialism was to aid and abet the world struggle. That was  our line.

I woke up one day – hatched out of the hard, white protective shell of my privileged prep school upbringing – to a world in flames.  Mass demonstrations in the South, revolution in Latin America, upheaval across Asia, liberation in Africa, roiling tension in our cities, nuclear annihilation, and mass murder hanging precariously over our heads.  A world of trouble, a world in motion, a going world hurling towards some distant destination I could not make out.  Damaged and self-destructive, but alive with human possibility, filled with energy and contradiction, fantastic an fatal choices to make – my world. I threw my lot in with the rebels and the resistors, the anti-mob, the agnostics and the skeptics. The real damage in the world was not being done by them, but by the docile and obedient, the indifferent or the credulous

The revolution was at hand, the question of power in the air, and, along with the question of power, the question of armed struggle. We wondered how to develop an armed unit, a brigade or a legion of a division, how to build as force of clandestine militants with an advanced fighting capacity.  .   We wanted to break from the habitual and the mediocre, to step into history as subjects and not objects. We would combat the culture of compromise, rise up and act decisively on what the known demanded – we could think of no basis on which to defend inaction, and so our watchword was simple: Action! Action! Action!.