After Finding the Suspects, It’s Time for Soul-Searching

Why am I in some strange way relieved that the prime suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing are two white men?

It has nothing to do with my level of anger and sadness over the deaths; both are at the brim already. And yet, I have to admit to feeling some relief when the first arrest in the case appeared to point away from an international terrorist connection and, instead, to a domestic menace.

I suppose the feeling came as a counter-reaction to my first thoughts after hearing about the bombing. Like a lot of people, I jumped to the conclusion that the bombing was probably the work of a Middle East terrorist group. Maybe I had the 1993 World Trade Center bombing on the brain, or just the awareness that Middle East radicals claim to despise the United States and that bombings are part of their arsenal.

Holding that thought, it was a short hop to fearing that this could be the onset of a long battle with terrorism in the United States. That alone was a dreadful prospect, but it also raised the likelihood that such tension would drive a wedge between many Americans and many other Americans of Arab descent. Too much tension to handle.

So, when the Middle East scenario apparently dissipated Friday with the arrest of an American and a focus on others, I felt better.

Weird thought process, I know. It’s idiotic to feel even a tad better, based solely on the news that the violence may have been produced by an American instead of a foreigner. Who knows, maybe I subconsciously believe we can eventually understand the level of madness better if it’s perpetrated by one of our own.

But as I sit here on Friday, two days after the fact, I’m still without a clue.

No matter how much I try to understand an anti-government philosophy, the discussion starts and ends with the fact that someone set out to kill a few hundred people.

We all understand an anti-government mood, whether we agree with it or not. But we thought we were talking political debate, not mad bombing.

If this turns out to be the ultimate act of the hate-the-government movement that’s afoot these days, lots of people have soul-searching to do. What is the line between protesting the government and vilifying it? Protest is honorable, and even vilification is constitutionally protected, but where does the hatred come from?

No rational person can hate a government so much that he will blow up a federal building full of people as a protest. Yet, if you listen to enough talk radio, you know they’re out there. They claim to be merely anti-government, but pro-Constitution; instead, they verge dangerously close on being anarchists.

I went to the encyclopedia for a refresher on anarchism. The World Book says terrorist anarchism began in Russia during the 1860s. The anarchists believed in the destruction of the government by violence and terror. Revolution and assassination were acceptable forms of communication to anarchists, and President William McKinley was one of their successful targets.

All that sounds like something out of a long-forgotten age of European conspiracies and primitive weaponry. But as we watch the round-the-clock scene of the blown-out federal building, does it seem so distant anymore?

I’m not one of those types who looks for the “good” out of disaster. Good people and good things are always out there, disaster or not. But if nothing else, maybe this event will force us all to ponder the violence and anger in the rhetoric about government. If a federal building full of government workers is a symbol of someone’s contempt, we need to understand where that contempt comes from.

We’ve heard a lot in recent months about the anger of white men, much of it obliquely directed at the government. The syndrome has dotted magazine covers and served as everything from philosophical fodder on TV round-table discussions to comedy club punch lines.

If there’s even an iota of linkage of that sentiment to this bombing, it isn’t funny anymore.

And if the perpetrators are American, we can’t hide behind an excuse that we don’t understand the “culture” that produces them. It’s our culture. We produced them. Knowing these bombers are a small minority of the population would be comforting only if we knew they were the only ones.

But we know they aren’t. And now we’ve seen what they can do.

Gosh, my sense of relief didn’t last very long, did it?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.