Broken

This will not be an easy post to write, nor will it be an easy one to read. There are things that must be spoken that we would prefer not to hear; ghastly things that must be looked at that we would prefer not to see. Whistling in the dark will not banish what lies lurking in the shadows; hiding our heads in the sand only leaves us more vulnerable.

The Benghazi scandal seems forever doomed to be pushed from the headlines by other more compelling stories. Consider this week’s hearings with three whistleblowers who might turn out to be the collectively conglomerated equivalent of “Deepthroat” for Benghazi. It seemed at long last that the nation’s undivided attention might finally be focused on what actually happened last September. But then the perfect storm of news stories hit. Headlines, front pages, and lead stories had to accommodate some of the most compelling and outrageous news stories in months, and Benghazi was again overshadowed by other events.

The biggest story was the horrific kidnapping, imprisonment and repeated rape of three young women in Cleveland. Ten years. Hard to even fathom it. A decade of sexual assault, psychological intimidation, beatings, induced miscarriages. Day after day after day of bondage. Hidden in a busy city for ten years, yet no one knew, no one saw.

Another big story was the Jodi Arias trial and verdict. It’s a little easier to see an ugly middle aged man like Ariel Castro as a monster than this attractive young woman who stabbed her boyfriend in the shower twenty-seven times, shot him in the head, and slit his throat. Apparently the jury was able to see through Jodi’s disguise, and didn’t buy her claim of self-defense. She had friends, family, coworkers, neighbors… did any of them know that in the skin of this harmless looking girl next door hid a homicidal raging demon?

Then there was the slightly less publicized (probably for political reasons) trial of Dr. Gosnell in Philadelphia. Final arguments were given and jury deliberations begun in the case of this abortionist accused of not accepting birth as a boundary to abortion. Babies accidentally born during late term abortions; moving, breathing, moaning… routinely were snuffed out outside the womb by the insertion of scissors and a snip to sever their spinal columns, to stop the twitching, silence the screams. The details of the trial revealed even more atrocities; unsterilized instruments, infecting of women with venereal diseases, accidental deaths of patients, perforated uteruses… severed heads of fetuses, callous jokes about the butchered babies, dozens of jars of carefully preserved babies’ feet… God knows why. Gosnell has spent the last 40 years enriching himself at his clinic in West Philadelphia where the sheer number of abortions performed caused one employee to comment, “It would rain fetuses and blood”. Thousands of pedestrians walking past the shoddy clinic every day, while Josef Mengele style horrors were routinely occurring within. None stopped, none saw, none knew.

Evil exists on a continuum, and stories about monsters so wicked that we can’t wrap our minds around them are only slightly more disturbing than news of fiends closer to home, evil at a level nearer to our understanding. Lesser stories included the simple greed of New York State politicians and the release of a whole list of representatives under investigation; the IRS targeting conservative groups for increased scrutiny; the election of Mark Sanford in South Carolina showing that adultery is no more a fatal flaw for conservative Republicans than it is for Democrats; and, of course, the bungling, lying, and obfuscation of Benghazi.

The lesser evils we ignore, like the funny noise you hear from under the hood; no time, other things to worry about, the car’s still running so just turn up the radio, right? Small fires can ignite giant blazes; we have let things pass that should not have been tolerated, and now we have a real problem. Our nation is broken. Our people are broken. Like the pedestrians in Philadelphia, and the neighbors in Cleveland, things have been going on for years right under our noses… but we have been too involved with other things to take notice or action. We have moved beyond apathy; in our quest to demonstrate our sophistication and tolerance we have winked at ever increasing levels of moral failing. Geraldo Rivera last night explained the obfuscation surrounding Benghazi by saying that the President’s job was to get re-elected… and he was serious. The President’s job was to serve the American people, and to have kept them safe!

IMHO: There are things we tolerate from politicians, especially if they belong to our party. Lying to us is not one of those things. Surprisingly, despite the sadly stiff competition in the headlines this week, Benghazi is not being ignored. the whistle blowers and revelations I spoke of in previous blogs (see here, and also here) are difficult to ignore. The idea that the talking points were intentionally altered to hide information, that even the parents of the dead were lied to in order to promote political considerations of the President and Secretary Clinton, and that even the sympathetic press was misled, is just too much to be ignored. People weary easily of confusing stories, and up until now that is what Benghazi has been. With the clarification of the facts interest is extending beyond partisan critics.

We all have busy lives, and in the past we may have excused our failure to see, act, or educate ourselves by our preoccupation with other things. Multi-tasking, however, is a peculiarly human strength, and one we need to develop even further going forward. We can follow the frightening stories of the day without losing focus on the things that are right under our noses. We can attend to our families and jobs, police our own neighborhoods, and oversee what is occurring in our various levels of government all at one time. We must fix all that is broken, and much is. It is not an easy task, but a necessary one if our children are to inherit a nation worth having. Having fixed first ourselves, we must lend our hands and strong backs to the tasks at hand. At the end of the day we may be very tired, but we will sleep well.