A VIEW FROM HERE
by deb weiss

A Good Town
August 12, 1999


Buford O'Neal Furrow. It's such an improbable name, somehow.

And such an improbable thing to have done. To walk into a hall full of children and start firing. Children, for pity's sake.

To see a man and slaughter him calmly, easily, the way you or I would swat a gnat.

True, I've detested people. Even hated some, I suppose. Every week in church, I confess my failure to love my neighbors as myself, and I mean it.

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Still, in my lifetime, I've seen a little bit of death and violence, and a little bit was more than enough for me. On my worst days, I doubt I could bring myself to hate enough to wield a gun in anger: or a knife, or a blunt instrument, or my own bare hands.

So for me (as for most of us) Buford Furrow is an enigma. Unimaginable. Scary. Outside the boundaries.

Which is what makes it so hard to understand what they're all saying -- the experts, the bright boys and girls -- not just about Buford Furrow, but about the rest of us.

Especially about the rest of us.

Americans, they assert, have this tendency toward violence. We're a violent people with a culture of violence. (They're saying this in the foreign press, too: in countries that have, in the last 100 years, spawned two world wars, and genocide, and bloody skirmishes and civil wars and terrorist outbreaks, with a body count topping 100 million.)

We Americans are preoccupied with guns, they say. With power. With maleness. With whiteness. It's all around us, in the air we breathe. We're natural-born killers.

I step out into my garden on this August evening. It's been perfect, since the heat-wave broke. Clear, brilliant days: nights so cool you need a sweater to sit outdoors after dark.

Tonight, there's a late summer melancholy in the darkness. You hear the sighing of trees, and distant laughter that ripples gently before falling and fading. At night, in my garden, the white flowers seem to rise up into the moonlight, while the greenery recedes into shadow. It's remarkably beautiful.

My neighborhood is a peaceful place. My neighbors are good people. This is a good town.

Once in a while, something awful happens here. Earlier this summer, teenagers on a spite-spree painted swastikas on some houses. There's been a murder here this summer. The first in years: a crime of passion. Last month, two kids died of heroin overdoses within days of each other. Nice kids, from nice homes.

These things frighten us. Waves of fear shiver through the town, and we can't help wondering: Is it true what they say, then, the experts, the pundits? Are we going to hell in a handbasket?

Have we become part of that whatever-it-is they claim is happening out there? That 'culture of violence'? That 'moral decay'? Do we need to be revised, fixed, cured, purged, transformed, legislated, purified?

Here, in this middle-sized town in the Middle West, life goes on 365 days a year. These are decent people here. They marry, and raise kids. They worship the Lord. They participate in school and civic activities. They paint their houses, and mow their lawns, and help their neighbors in times of trouble. They work very hard indeed.

Their hard work yields varying degrees of affluence. There are pleasant neighborhoods, like the one where we live. There are some poor, sad neighborhoods, where good people struggle stubbornly against the competing forces of drugs and booze and malignant indifference. (These good people refuse to give up or give in. Sometimes, they score small victories. They make a difference. They endure.)

There are gorgeous neighborhoods, too. Now and again, the girls and I drive down those splendid streets, sighing (from longing, not from envy), as we each pick 'our' house -- the one we'd live in if only we could.

This is not a violent town. Yes, bad things happen here sometimes: horrible, heartbreaking things. This is the turbulent human world we inhabit, not some heavenly hereafter. Still, it's good, here. We are not Buford O'Neal Furrow. We don't need to be revised, fixed, cured, purged, transformed, legislated, or purified.

We don't need Tom Brokaw and the New York Times to bemoan our 'innate' violence. We don't need sermonettes from the newspapers of Israel, or Northern Ireland, or Germany, or Bosnia. Mostly, we don't need to give in to this eerie self-loathing -- this all-American version of what the Red Chinese call 'criticism and self-criticism.'

What we need, instead, is to keep the faith, and persevere.

---

A VIEW FROM HERE archive

Singing The Praises Of Government News -- August 9, 1999

The First Couple's Chamber Pot -- August 5, 1999

Lifetime's Woman of the Year -- August 2, 1999

Thinking Over This Tax Cut Thing -- July 29, 1999

The John John Show -- July 26, 1999

America's One China, Two Alka Seltzer Policy -- July 22, 1999

The Politics of Speaking Ill of the Dead -- July 19, 1999

The Nasty Legacy -- July 15, 1999

All in a Slow News Week... -- July 12, 1999

Traps For The Young -- July 8, 1999

Remembering Michael Dukakis -- July 5, 1999

R.I.P., O.I.C. -- July 1, 1999

Mr. Clinton's Post-War Vengeance -- June 28, 1999

Guns, Cuisinarts and the Bill of Rights -- June 24, 1999

Attack of the Concerned Advocates -- June 21, 1999

FTC Nation -- June 17, 1999

The Very, Very Coincidental World of Bill and Hillary Clinton -- June 14, 1999

Water-boiling in Our Time -- June 10, 1999

Crisis and Peace -- June 7, 1999

Reinventing God -- June 3, 1999

On This Memorial Day -- May 31, 1999

The Un-McCarthy Era -- May 27, 1999

Unspeakable Spin -- May 25, 1999