Is a civil war imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that! But it might.
-- Timothy McVeigh, letter to the Union-Sun & Journal, of Lockport, N.Y., Feb. 11, 1992
On the day Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed on April 19, 1995, Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to vent.
"You dogs, you cannot hide!" he thundered. "And when you are found, it will be the worst day you can possibly imagine! . . . And if we trace it to a particular nation, what about hitting the nation anyway, even if we don't know who exactly did it?"
In retrospect, Limbaugh was just staying on brand, saying out loud the irresponsible rhetoric that was running through a lot of our heads 25 years ago. His gut told him it was "Middle Eastern terrorists" who perpetrated the bombing, and he ran with it. Lots of us did. Maybe you don't remember. I didn't.
But I can look back and see what I thought. I have what a lot of would-be judicial appointees try to avoid; a record of my opinion. And I thought at first that the perpetrators were probably homegrown white supremacists striking a blow against what they habitually refer to as the Z.O.G.--the Zionist Occupation Government. But I hedged my bets, saying that I doubted the local hatefuls could pull off an attack as effective and deadly as the one in Oklahoma City without blowing off a few of their own fingers.
I was as wrong as Rush. When it turned out that it looked like kooky "patriots" were responsible for the attack, it felt like a slim beam of relief burning through the shock and horror.
"As bad as it is, it would be worse to think that the Islamic Jihad or Hamas had penetrated so deep into this nation's guts; that we might indeed be forced to scramble planes and to drop bombs and cause collateral damage of our own," I wrote. "We are xenophobic enough; had the bombing been blamed on 'Middle Eastern terrorists', thousands of innocent Americans, as well as foreign students and other resident aliens, would have suffered."
It would be six more years before Jihadists would usher in the modern era by weaponizing commercial jets.
Timothy McVeigh was pathetic, an underachieving white male who had the misfortune of coming of age just as the job market was closing down opportunities to the under-skilled. He escaped into the Army for a while. He made rank and received a Bronze Star and a Combat Infantry Badge during Desert Storm. He tried out for the Green Berets but washed out. Maybe that broke him. Anyway, though the Army still considered him "among the best" and an "inspiration to young soldiers," he didn't re-up.
He found himself back in his old bedroom, living in his father's house, working as a security guard and seeming to find some purchase in society. They promoted him to supervisor. Then he raged at a teenaged girl who was too slow to produce her ID. After that, they looked to minimize his contact with the public.
What was most scary about McVeigh was his ordinariness. He wasn't much different than a lot of white guys I've known of average sensibilities and abilities who somehow became convinced that they were victims of something other than their own lassitude and lack of talent. All of us know the guy who would probably have made the major leagues had his high school baseball coach not had it in for him.
There is no consensus on how McVeigh was from the people who knew him then. Some remember him as bland and non-threatening, others as a road-raging hot-head. He probably tried out a lot of personas and never settled into anything he could be comfortable with.
We all star in our own movie, and it doesn't take much imagination for a thwarted soul to re-interpret himself as a solitary taciturn loner who sees the mission with the utmost clarity. (All those guns you've been saving up are about to come in handy.) He understands living free is worth all risks. He is reconciled to being misunderstood and reviled by timid souls; while he may be too humble to say it aloud, he is one of nature's aristocrats, a man of action to whom the rules oughtn't apply. He operates in a territory beyond moral judgments. He does what must be done, what only men like him can do. He understands that violent means are sometimes called for; he is not afraid to die for what he believes.
Right. I think a good girlfriend (or boyfriend) could have saved Timothy McVeigh, and spared the nation a tragedy. But you can butterfly effect everything--what if Hitler's watercolors had caught on?
This species of unhappiness has always been with us, and as much as it is in evidence today, I don't know that it's any more pervasive. It is genuinely difficult for people of ordinary means and abilities to succeed in the world we've designed, but that doesn't make it less dangerous. Words have consequences--they can radicalize American kids who've grown up beholding images of a world they can never enter.
It is not wrong to feel that there is an unfairness to the world, or that the balance is increasingly shifting toward the powerful. It is not wrong to notice that certain bonds are frayed and cannot long hold. There is movement in the shadows, there are things to which we are not privy. They do treat us like children, they do abuse our trust and work their angles.
But the government is, by and large, us: People who work for paychecks, who put their kids in day care, who pay their taxes and try to get along with their neighbors. You blow up a building, you blow up human capital. You blow up moms and dads and, in McVeigh's case, babies.
Maybe, even in this horse latitude year, with all of us becalmed or foundering and an aging child who imagines himself an action hero Tweeting petulant insurrection from the White House, we can hope to be better when we grow up. Not every revolution involves pitchforks and guillotines. "Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system?"
No. No, we don't. No matter what those self-aggrandizing drama queens and loser nihilists dressed up as G.I. Joe Extreme figures might tell you.
Soon history will start to catch and grind, to pull us on toward whatever reckoning awaits.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 04/21/2020