How Will The Story End?

#13, May 5, 1999

It was nearing bedtime, and I was looking forward to storytime with my son. We were on the last book of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy, when Theoden, King of the Mark, leads the Riders of Rohan into war against the hateful hordes of the dark lord Sauron.

But the radio reminded me again of the day’s grim news. Twenty some school kids blown away. I looked at my child, snug in bed. The news story finally pierced my shell, and I wanted to weep, and rage. How do people get so detached from their fellow human beings? Before I could answer, the news turned to the Yugoslavia story, where the bombing continued into its fourth week…

There is a profound connection between the events in Kosovo and Colorado. It's all about war.

War certainly has changed since the days of knights in armor. The crusading king of old had to put his life on the front line. His army’s weapons required meeting the enemy face to face. Wars were fought among soldiers; wantonly killing civilians was taboo (though subsequent enslavement was not.)

Today, not only can the commander-in-chief avoid the battlefield, but he needn't have ever tasted battle. Modern weapons, like the cruise missiles piloted by kamikaze silicon chips, make it possible to fight a war without even seeing the enemy. Not only is the bomb is mightier than the sword, it’s also far less selective of who gets disemboweled: soldier or civilian, man, woman, or child snug in bed.

Mindful that the citizens who must fund this expensive warfare are born with a natural aversion to bloodshed, the state now uses TV to sanitize the bloody story. They've learned the lesson of Vietnam, where unfettered television journalism brought home the horror of war (and our eventual opposition to it). Now we see "surgical" strikes by "smart" bombs, not accidental destruction of hospitals or schools. War looks more like a video game. Meanwhile, real video games, television, and films immerse screen-watchers in a world of consequence-free violence.

Thus, warfare has trended steadily toward more destruction with greater physical and psychological detachment. As you read this, technicians could be munching fries in an air-conditioned bunker after launching a ICBM off to fry half the population of California. (The Cold War may be over, but until the mentality and institutions that created it are transformed, it's eventual re-emergence is a certainty. In fact, U.S. arms spending has not significantly declined since its end, and the Administration wants billions to build Star Wars and a new nuclear bomb facility.)

Detached destruction-- that could have been the motto of the Dark Duo of Columbine High, as they Duke Nukem'd their classmates. It's ironic that such savagery probably would have been rewarded by the colonels of Milosevic or Saddam or any of the US-financed and trained death-squad dictators. A cynic might say the Colorado boys were merely fighting the wrong war.

There will always be conflicts, between nations and especially between teenagers. But when the culture celebrates hatred (e.g. talk radio) and violence, and the arms dealers large and small are always at hand to make the sale, we can expect more stories like Kosovo and Littleton, and worse. Some say we should arm the KLA and Colorado's high school janitors, but someone will someday find a way to outgun them.

We have another choice, if we have courage to change our story. Courage it was, that made the little hobbits and their comrades victorious over Mordor. Courage brought Luke Skywalker to reject the power of the Dark Side, drop his saber, and pull Darth Vader into the light. It will take courage to challenge the hydra-headed violence industry, and to battle the fear and hatred in our own hearts. But that's the only story with any chance of a happy ending. What better way to honor the fallen?