GUNS AND ANGER

Today, as I was driving in Northern Virginia, listening to my radio, I heard that there had been a shooting at the Holocaust Museum. As the reports issued from several different people, one was immediately aware that things were sketchy. Apparently, two security guards had been shot by an intruder, who may well have had others in mind as targets. The intruder had been shot. He and a security guard were rushed to the same hospital. George Washington University Hospital. The reports indicated they both might be in critical condition. Further, the museum had been evacuated and closed to the public. A spokesperson announced that the museum would be opened again to the public on Wednesday, the 11th of June.

What is going on here? What could the motivation be?

A very singular aspect of this is that the intruding shooter was in his 80's. It is true that in eighty years one might develop some serious grudges, but this is a bit much. In listening to the reports, the identity of the man was known. He had been a "captain" of a PT-Boat during World War II. As far as I know, that probably means that he was an U.S. Navy officer fighting in the Pacific Ocean arena. He earned four medals for courage. He ended his service as a lieutenant. As far as I know, he may have know John F. Kennedy, who also served on a PT-Boat, when he served in the Pacific war zone, if, indeed, that is where he served.

Further, according to the radio news reports, this shooter had entered the grounds of the Federal Reserve facility on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., carrying some kind of firearm on one occasion. I cannot recall if this event was in the 70's or one of the flanking decades. It was viewed as a serious infraction. He was sentenced to prison, where he stayed as an inmate for seven years.

So, what do we know? He appears to be a warrior. He appears to be a man who will act upon a belief. He has suffered, has experienced death in wartime, and has spent a lengthy stretch in hard-time. [No one who takes a gun "after" the Federal Reserve will go to "Club Fed."] Prison wasn't likely to be an improving experience. It seems likely that whatever grudges he held against the Establishment generally and/or Jewry, particularly, could not have been ameliorated with incarceration. Why not? Was there no psychological help provided in seven years? Did not the experts perceive a man who might rightly be called a "time-bomb?" Isn't it strange how men such as this shooter are never perceived by these experts whose penal skills have undoubtedly been improved with F.B.I. "profiles" and "psychological analyses" of similar offenders?

Whether this man is married with family, I cannot say. He may be an altogether isolated individual. If the latter, he may have reached out "not wisely but too well." With no one willing, or even interested in, his "grudges" he found himself aligned with society's "costumed bizarre" elements. Unrealistic visions may have seemed more valid, where there were others to share the dream (whatever it is).

For an old, patriotic American who is coming to the end of his days, perhaps mostly alone, the news of ancient men being manacled and sent to Germany as criminals for "crimes" against humanity was too much. He saw men, who were gray, wizened and hunched, sandwiched between hulking "men in black," guarding lest he "make a break for it." He may have seen that these antique men had been accused of 36,000 infractions against humanity, while guarding inmates in a concentration camp, many of whom were Jews. He may have felt some unrealistic association with such men's fate.

How does an old warrior express himself at such times? If his vision was delusional, so were the visions of many another. American soldiers are said to be committing suicide at unprecedented rates in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is that basically what this shooter was doing? His actions seem entirely consistent with those of a warrior who knew that his mission would not ever allow him to return home again.

In the Theatre of the Absurd the unreality of the shooter's vision embraced the bete noir of Jewish delusion-incarnate. Insanely, it was the innocent who suffered most. In the madness many never saw the blood.

Outside, another unreality was forming, as newspeople from around the world hastened to the Holocaust Museum and/or George Washington University Hospital to begin weeks of neverending reportage, while a massive traffic jam had formed from the mall to the 14th Street Bridge past the Pentagon, past Shirlington, past Alexandria to the "mixing bowl" of Springfield.

Nothing could easily dislodge this event from Prime Time. As with the trial of Charley Manson, horror and entertainment will surely vie for the public's understanding of this events.