Each year on our annual pilgrimage to Maine, we pass the sign for Newtown, CT on I-84. For many years, it was simply another Connecticut town, east of Danbury and south of the Bent of the River Sanctuary. That changed on December 14, 2012 when Adam Lanza fatally shot his mother, went to the nearby elementary school, and slaughtered twenty young children and six school personnel.
Prior to the shooting, violent crime was rare in Newtown, a town similar in size to Ashland, with only one homicide in the previous ten years. Within five minutes on a December morning, the lives of twenty-seven families were shattered, and the face of Newtown, CT changed forever. To this day, the motive for Lanza’s actions is unknown. As forensic psychologist James Knoll suggests, his final act conveyed a stark message: “I carry profound hurt – I’ll go ballistic and transfer it onto you.”
I don’t think about Sandy Hook very often, just as the Covert Court killings in Ashland have faded from my consciousness. Lanza killed himself, and Grate is behind bars, convicted and sentenced for his crime. It wasn’t our child, our sister, our mother, so we begin to forget.
But from time to time, we’re forced to remember. Because of heavy traffic, our faithful GPS directed us to leave the interstate and trust her seductive voice on our path to the ocean. As a result, we drove through Newtown, passing the site of Sandy Hook Elementary School, the replacement building for the facility with so many chilling memories. We didn’t stop, but Larry and I were both sickened by the memory of that day, as are Ashland residents who travel past the now empty lots on Covert Place (thanks, Mayor Matt Miller and Simonson Construction, for demolishing the houses).
On another front, radio host Alex Jones is upset this week because Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube have banned his Infowars posts and broadcasts. Facebook believes they are “glorifying violence . . . and using dehumanizing language,” while Spotify notes that Infowars “expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence . . .”
What’s the connection? This conspiracy theorist claims the moon landing was staged, the US government was behind 9-11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Sandy Hook massacre was “completely fake” and a “giant hoax.” He has accused the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook of being actors and incited threats to many of the families.
Jones’ Infowars website gets as many as ten million visits a month. Let that sink in for a minute. Twenty families lost their six or seven-year-old children to a vicious murder, and the host of this site has stirred up enough hatred towards these grief-stricken people that they get threats against their own lives, even forced to relocate to keep their remaining family safe. What is wrong with this picture?
In the days since our detour into Newtown, I’ve thought about friends who have buried a child, lost to cancer, suicide, heart disease, or violence. While loss is present in the lives of all people, those who’ve lost a child suffer deeply, and Jones’ venomous campaign against the Sandy Hook families infuriates me. Surely Jones doesn’t have a right to make up anything he wants about them, does he? The courts will ultimately sort out the legalities, but the moral answer is “no.”
In “The Message” paraphrase of Romans 14, Paul writes: “. . . don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is.” It may be a bit out of context for my biblical scholar friends, but it’s a vital rule of thumb for living in community – don’t make life more difficult for each other, especially for those who suffer. Whether motivated by profound hurt or profound hatred, we cannot accept the response, “I’ll go ballistic and transfer it onto you,” from a troubled twenty-year-old, an Ohio drifter, or a self-described “thought criminal against Big Brother.” Jones and his disciples may think they have a right to say what they want, but we don’t have to listen. Enough is enough.
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