Showing posts with label Wyethville post office. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wyethville post office. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Update on the Post Office Standoff: What is the Definition of Terrorism?
The standoff at the post office in Wytheville, Virginia ended peacefully late last night. The gunman was taken into custody, and the three hostages (not five, as had been reported) were released. The gunman was arraigned today and is now awaiting a psychiatric evaluation. Former hostages and law enforcement authorities report that the man was upset at the government because his son had died in Afghanistan, his truck was being repossessed, and he thought the government was taxing citizens too highly and was taking away the right to bear arms.
There are two ways you can look at this situation. You could say that a mentally imbalanced, disabled man who has suffered some tremendous loss acted out in a crazy way. That's probably the way most people are inclined to see it. Alternately, you could say that an anti-government extremist commited an act of terrorism. That's an entirely different ballgame.
Does how we frame this incident matter? I think it does. How we choose to tell the story of incidents such as this affects how we see ourselves in relationship to them. If this is a crazy man acting in a crazy way, then it is random. We know that crazy people are out there, and when we allow ourselves to think about that it makes us pretty uneasy. But we also know that they are few and far between, and are not particularly looking for "us" when they act out. If we frame this as an act of terrorism, on the other hand, we -- all of us -- instantly become targets. Now, there are people out there who hate our government and want to harm our citizens. As citizens, we ourselves are on their list. While they may not be coming after us by name, they are coming after us.
You can see how the terrorism framework instantly transforms this from an issue of random danger to one of "us vs. them." But the gunman in this incident is an American. He may be a veteran, and he almost certainly is the father of a serviceman killed in action. That makes it very hard to frame this as us vs. them, because "they" are actually "us." This explains why people recoil at descriptions of "far right violent extremists." It's not only a political issue, it is one of self-preservation. If the "other side" is right here, then anyone around us could be a member, and any one of us could be in danger.
At the same time, however, we aren't being very consistent. An American Citizen, connected with the military, walks into a public place, motivated by anger at the United States, and starts shooting. Is he a terrorist or a crazy person? In the story we tell ourselves in this country, the thing that makes the difference isn't motive, it's identity. If the gunman is Muslim, as at Fort Hood, it's a terrorist attack. If the gunman is Christian, as he was yesterday, he's crazy. That distinction may be real in many of our minds, but if you take a step back, it's hard to say whether there really is any difference.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Reality Check: Hostages Taken at Virginia Post Office
A man in a wheelchair is, as I write this, holding at least 5 people hostage in the Wytheville, Virginia Post Office. We know he has a gun, and he has what he claims is 5 pounds of C-4 explosive strapped to his chest. The only demand he has made thus far, at least as far as police have reported, is for pizza.
This story especially caught my eye because I have been joking around all afternoon, giving people my latest "hot tip" -- on December 23, do not attempt to mail a package at the Inman Square Post Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As you might guess, I myself attempted this feat this morning. The post office in question is very small, and it was very busy this morning, as were, probably, most post offices in the United States, including the one in Wytheville.
Wytheville has a population of just 8,500 people. This is not a bustling metropolis, nor is it a place anyone would pick as a high profile terrorist target. I bring this up, because most of us, rightly or wrongly, have an idea in the back of our minds that, because terrorists with major government agendas tend to pick very public, large places to attack, that no one ever attacks small towns.
This is, if you think about it, obviously false. While it may be true that people with grandiose agendas pick places like the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Fort Hood, or even the Holocaust Museum, there are numerous examples of people with smaller agendas, or just pure mental illness and no agenda at all, who strike in much more random places. Those places are often small.
I often write about how trauma affects us, even from a distance, because we can make a personal connection to something about the event. Certain types of incidents, locations, motives, or any number of factors that can make us identify just that little bit more it takes to go from thinking an event is horrible to really taking it personally. For me, today, it is knowing that I mailed a package in a crowded post office today, and knowing that it is just random chance that there wasn't a gunman in a wheelchair with explosives coming after me.
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Meet the Quarterback
- Naomi Zikmund-Fisher
- is a clinical social worker, former school Principal and a Crisis Consultant for schools and community organizations. You can learn more about her at www.SchoolCrisisConsultant.com
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