Duke is a good dog. Older now, he doesn’t run like he did as a pup, but spending most of the day alone, he can still get a little frisky when Jim’s pick-up pulls in the driveway. Today was one of those days. He had knocked over his water bowl early in the day, and when he heard Jim’s truck from a mile down the road, his ears perked up, and his tail wagged. Along with the excitement though, there was a strange sense of anxiety; something about the sound of Jim’s truck, a little more revving of the engine, a sense, an instinct, something he knew he should remember.
It was a bad day for Jim. His boss had scolded him for a mistake he had made that cost the company money. His credit card had been rejected at the drive-thru for lunch, and he had to scrape change from his car to have enough to pay for his lousy bacon cheeseburger. To top it all off, a cop got him in a speed trap on the way home doing 55 in a 40. All he wanted to do now was get home, get a beer, and turn off his brain in front of the TV. Pulling in the driveway, the first thing he saw was Duke, chain tangled around the tree, as always, and water bowl upside down. “Stupid dog”, Jim said under his breath, parked his truck and marched over to untangle Duke’s chain. “Stupid dog.”
Duke barked once, and then strained to get free to welcome Jim. He circled the tree once, but that just made it worse… it always did. Jim would fix it… he always did. Jim took the chain and pulled it back around the tree, a little harder than usual, but Duke didn’t mind… he tried to cooperate and help, but Jim seemed to get frustrated by everything he did. That sense of anxiety was growing in Duke. Finally Jim freed Duke and with a full length of chain the excited dog ran first a little away from his owner, and then back to him, jumping, his muddy paws planting right on Jim’s suit. Jim’s reaction was quick, he kicked Duke hard in the side of the head. Duke yelped, Jim’s dress shoe was not soft, the pain was real, but the surprise was worse. He ran behind the tree as Jim stormed into the house.
The psychological principle of displaced aggression is often typified by a man who has a bad day at work and comes home and kicks his dog. Sometimes it’s not the dog, but his wife or his kids, and of course, sometimes it’s not a man. The reason the aggression is there is plain, the reason it is displaced is because it can’t easily be targeted to the appropriate object. In our little story about Duke, Jim could not lash out against his boss, he would be fired. He couldn’t assault the credit card people, they aren’t even human. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do to the policeman, he would be arrested. That left Duke. Sometimes the displaced aggression comes not just from a bad day, but from a bad life. Emotions and feelings from events and people deep in a person’s past are transferred in a process appropriately called transference to objects in one’s present. Whether these mechanisms are healthy responses is dubious; certainly not for the dog.
After the shooting in San Bernardino, editors at The Daily News made the astonishing decision to run a front page that showed quotes from Republican presidential candidates offering thoughts and prayers for the families and people of San Bernardino. The headline read “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS”, and the accompanying article accused lawmakers who disagreed with the editorial opinion of the paper of hypocrisy, and their prayers as platitudes. Liberals predictably, but with surprising uniformity flocked to the internet to echo the sentiment. The subtext of the conversation of course is that prayers are pointless because God doesn’t fix things, people do, and if your fix doesn’t match ours, you are a horrible human being who should be ridiculed, insulted, mocked… and yes, kicked.
Kicking the conservative dog would seem to be a safer, if more cowardly strategy for The Daily News than the Charlie Hebdo approach. Upon news that the obvious Jihadist connection was in fact the case, The News doubled down with its subsequent front page, drawing moral equivalence from terrorists to psychotic (but caucasian!) shooters, and throwing NRA president Wayne Lapierre in with the group. How brave of The Daily News to go after incarcerated psychotics and the head of the NRA instead of the villains who might actually retaliate! Oh the moral compass of the left who remind us that disagreeing with their imperatives is a transgression equal to mass murder! Thoughts and prayers are apparently only meaningful if, like those of the President and the Attorney General, they are accompanied by allegiance to the cause of gun control; otherwise your prayers are platitudes, and your thoughts an insult. Right now, no one has an answer to what happened in Paris and in California. Some respond as men always have in the face of desolating circumstances; they reach out to comfort the victims and they cry out to their God. Others find no solace in a God who could allow these things, and are insulted by those who would trust more in the power of prayer than progressive wishful thinking. The gulf between the two has at it’s crux a grand philosophical controversy that has been debated and puzzled over for millennia. It is doubtful the geniuses at The Daily News have much to add to the conversation.
In a time when we seem as much repelled by racial profiling and religious intolerance as we are with mass murder and terrorism, where even our President resolutely maintains his “See something, Say nothing” attitude toward whatever euphemism he’s currently using instead of the word terrorism, it would rightly appall most if ever it was suggested that we employ “Islam Control”. With tongue in cheek I ask, what if we were to ask all practicing Muslims to register their beliefs with the government so we could keep track of them? We could charge a registration fee to cover administrative costs, have a background check to make sure dangerous or mentally ill people aren’t engaging in what apparently can become a risky set of beliefs. We could impose regulations on what type of Islamic beliefs they were permitted to hold, how many prayers they could say on any given day, or on the style or color of their burkas (black is scary). Of course this is nonsense, even though it might arguably have an effect, it’s not America, and thankfully, few have suggested we go down that road. Still, there are those who see the Bill of Rights as only one amendment long, who not only see the 2nd amendment as something less than sacrosanct, but also see the idea of “common sense gun control” as a “good start”; the ultimate goal, the only reasonable final destination if they could be momentarily honest, is making America basically one big gun free zone.
After Roe v Wade, pro-lifers warned that the profaning of human life would lead to a decay in society where life in general would be seen as less precious, less holy, less valued. When society sees the destruction of life as a viable alternative for planning parenthood, it is perhaps not a long leap for others to use death as a method for their own plots and plans. Oh, I can hear the moans and howls! But you need not agree with me to allow me my hypothesis, and we can engage in reasoned debate without descending to name calling and character assassination. What if every time there was a killing pro-lifers renewed the call for abortion controls, defunding Planned Parenthood, and overturning Roe v Wade? What if they further determined pro-choice politicians who offered prayers and thoughts to be hypocrites, and their sentiments insulting platitudes? What if in the wake of a San Bernardino type massacre, the front page showed pictures of pro-choice candidates and cast Cecile Richards in the lineup with murderers and psychotics? I don’t begrudge you your strongly held convictions, but time and place… time and place.
IMHO: I have gone to services at a mosque. I had to wait in the hall for my Islamic friends because I was not allowed to participate in the worship, but I did get to discuss religion with the Imam later, and met many of the members. It wasn’t for me, but many of the people were clearly good people, and I would not dream of rejecting their prayers for our nation because of our differences in theology, and I will not consider imposing on their rights as American citizens because of lunatics who superficially resemble them. I have liberal friends and family members. We disagree on politics but I do not proclaim their comfort for the grief stricken as hypocrisy, and I trust that God does not turn a deaf ear to their prayers for the hurting because they are misguided in their views. It is my Savior who prayed for those who crucified him, “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.” Forgive us then if we do not yet have the answer to this unspeakable terror. Forgive us too, if we see your answer of relegating guns to the dark back alleys as naive, counterproductive, and unconstitutional. Forgive us if it seems that by refusing to waste time with an ineffective argument we appear to be doing nothing. We have not yet thrown in the towel on God, for we know that He is closer to the answer than gun control, and our prayers more potent than hashtags. This blog reaches thousands, and I occasionally present some coherent thoughts, but I have no illusions that it holds a candle in potential to my mother’s solitary prayer. Those who pray are apt targets for displaced aggression and transference, as is their forgiving God who seldom throws thunderbolts anymore. Just the same we will continue to offer our comfort to the grieved, put forth prayers for intervention and wisdom, and bend our thoughts to real solutions for our trouble. We will stay the course, and like any good dog, forgive the ones who kick us.
