Empathize Wide Shut

Last night the local news ran a jackleg report on a therapist who established a practice to rehabilitate convicted sex offenders…and, almost immediately, I envisioned a handful of utterly indignant viewers cursing this man to hell for “emboldening the rapists” or “comforting the enemy.” As I watched, I witnessed a beautiful act of withheld judgment. That’s not to say that convicted sex offenders deserve your stockpiles of pity, but you don’t always know shit about the crime. This therapist understood that these people who underwent the correctional process now bear the indelible stigma of the scarlet “s.” Not the chic Superman chest insignia, but the burden of knowing everyone will judge them by this ostensibly perverted indiscretion. For one, abuse of these laws is common in cases involving consensual sex between two young adults, one 16, one 18. And, naturally, there are those who truly deserve the cold, steel fist-to-the-face of justice to correct a gross aberration. Obviously, violent sex offenders, particularly those who prey on children, deserve nothing but the hardest anal pounding/beating from the baddest life-sentenced Aryan or Panther in Cell Block Nine. But, all of this aside, forgiveness and an anchor are requisite for those humans who earnestly seek rectitude.

There’s a somewhat ironic lesson gleaned from the Errol Morris documentary “The Fog of War,” in which a major architect of the Vietnam War, Robert Strange McNamara, underscores the need to “empathize with your enemy.” This is such a ubiquitously relevant lesson that it pains me to see it so flagrantly ignored. The simple idea is to really, REALLY see your opponents/enemies/pariahs as human beings capable of some iota of rationality. No one ever said it was easy, but neither is learning to use to the can in front of someone. When you understand that there is cause behind effect, you have the insight to more effectively counter the perceived disdain. In the case of the therapist, he chose to treat those most in need to reduce their recidivism rate, because, as history has shown, perpetual excoriation will breed more contempt, and, subsequently, more destruction.

For the man convicted, who desires to put this behind him as he flays himself, how will he find work when his reticence and fear are on full display during the pivotal moment in a job interview? What are his options when he can’t find a home? Suicide, prison, indigence? What good is the correctional process without forgiveness?

My focus on the perpetrator is in no way a denigration of the pain of the victim, but an examination/realization that this world isn’t fucking black-and-white, no matter what the talking head shills and bloviating jackasses spew on their paid programs.

Much the same as Lou Dobbs will always find a story about an illegal immigrant murdering an AMERICAN, there will always be unrepentant deviants, chimeras who, for some reason or another, distorted or discarded the line between right and wrong ages ago; but, we cannot allow these anomalies to usurp our judgment…

…which invariably leads me to our “War on Terror.” Am I allowed to denounce and renounce and reject and eschew and disavow the statement that they “hate our freedom”? Or, if you’re going to describe our enemies with such a banal phrase, at least insert another clause or two: they hate our freedom…because while we’re merrily encouraged to go shopping at home, their country is orbiting the event horizon. Again, to black-and-white-world viewers, I’m not blaming our military. They were given orders and are simply protecting their brothers until they leave this clusterfuck behind, all with the hope of victory. Upper management screwed the pooch on this one by completing ignoring reality, and…[drum roll]… not EMPATHIZING WITH THE ENEMY – thank you, Mr. Strange McNamara. By neglecting or dismissing the root cause of homegrown Iraqi terrorism this administration continues on a warpath bound to create more abject youth who are primed with enough enmity to execute the big boom theory. When their homes, villages, and shops are so depredated, dilapidated, and desecrated where else do they turn? Suicide, indigence, martyrdom? If your family is killed by “collateral damage,” your place of work demolished by a rival suicide bomber, your streets filled with sewage, your electricity available for one hour per day, would you wake up the next morning eager to start the job hunt, or settle for the ounce of familial security offered by martyrdom? These humans are not as “foreign” as they’ve been presented because they have been conflated with those who made the grievous mistake of attacking us at home.

I may have disowned my Christianity, but I cannot abandon the diamond virtues buried in that mountain of coal.