Fixed in a universe of pure hatred...

[elfs]

I am certainly not in the habit of quoting C.S. Lewis, mostly because I found his apologetics in The Problem of Pain to be slipshod, often founded on contradicting assumptions based upon whatever argument he's making in any given chapter. But this quote, from Mere Christianity, has some bearing today:

The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything— God and our friends and ourselves included— as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

I thought of this quote today because, for the second time this week, a news story came out about a horrific murder where, after a week of rampant blog-driven speculation, it turned out the truth was far more mundane and banal.

In the first case, a Coptic Christian family, the father of whom was known in his community for his virulent anti-Islamic positions, was found murdered in their homes. For weeks, the blogosphere was alive with rumours about revenge killings and dhimmitude. It was a robbery, plain and simple. The neighbor, who was in debt (to mobsters, one story goes), knew the Armanious family kept cash in the house. Greed, simple and banal.

In the second case, Judge Joan Lefkow came home one night to find her husband and mother murdered in their homes. The blogosphere exploded again with rumors about white supremacists on the march because Lefkow had ruled against Matt Hale in a relatively trivial civil case and Hale had sought a hired killer to "take care" of Judge Lefkow.

Now, it seems, that an unstable man who had lost a civil case against his doctors about his cancer treatments may have committed the murder all by himself. Mundane revenge, with no ideology involved.

I don't want to suggest that there are no monsters, that race and religious extremists are harmless. But I'll be happier when the blogosphere follows every frission of recrimination with a confession of contrition every time the theory du jour turns out to be less that a Tom Clancy or John Grisham plot, and more like real life.

Comments

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Ah, now, didn't I say I was leery about the Judge Lefkow case being about supremacists just because she'd ruled against Hale and he'd made a threat? When that first came up, I told Elf that when a person(s) is found murdered, the police start with friends and family of the victim(s), then move on to those with some close personal ties with the victims. In this case, through the judge, the victims had close personal ties with literally hundreds of disgruntled people, many of whom probably had sent some kind of angry letters, phone calls, or emails to her or her family. But everyone wanted to focus on only one...the white supremacists.

News coverage

[genericjoe.livejournal.com]

I wonder sometimes how often we miss the real explanation of things. We see the news about some awful thing that happened, for horrible reasons, and it flies through our consciousness -- whether by blogging or by office gossip -- and when the 'real truth' comes out, it's on page 3 of the paper, misses the nightly news entirely and the blogsphere is off on some other tangent.

We never get to hear that our fellow men, while sometimes monsters, are not as monstrous as we fear. This has always bothered me about news coverage, and the way information is disseminated

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

One thing I try to do is followups.... I think they're just as important as the main story. I *try* to get it right the first time, but if I don't, IMNASHO the truth is more important than my ego, particularly when it comes to journalism.

Besides. Fronting up and saying "I screwed up" and making the effort to do better where folks can see it builds respect. This is the currency of true journalism. What passes for news these days is dirt poor using that particular accounting method.... blogosphere or mainstream media.

[grendelkhan.livejournal.com]

So... would it be darker if Giuliana Sgrena was the victim of an attempted assassination by American troops, or if the Americans were trying to teach the Italians a lesson after the Italians paid off her kidnappers, or if the whole thing is a big Commie frame-up of the poor beleaguered American troops?