When atrocities like the Parkland shooting happen, calling evil “evil” offends Rolling Stone’s Jesse Berney. “Evil,” he wrote after the Las Vegas shooting (Rolling Stone recycled the piece for the latest horror), is a “fantasy” the human mind turns to because “It’s comforting to ascribe an external, unknowable motive to events so terrible we can't imagine a motivation.” And anyway, “What if evil doesn’t exist in this world?”
On the other hand, calling evil “evil” is cynical and calculated. “They call these events ‘evil’ to make them seem random and unpreventable.” Wow, those evil S.O.B.s!
“When elected officials like Trump rely on ‘evil’ to explain away mass shootings,” he wrote, “they are following a deliberate strategy,” so that they don’t have to bow to the screams for gun control. “Republicans know wall-to-wall coverage of these events are the best opportunity gun control advocates have to draw attention to the issue and save lives.”
Let’s assume Berney is arguing in good faith. (Sorry, but it’s hard to imagine a secular liberal -- from Rolling Stone, no less -- discussing evil without a condescending smirk. Remember how liberals snickered when George W. Bush used the word to describe terrorists?) There’s an awful lot wrong with Berney’s take, not least is his projection, neatly illustrated in that last sentence. He made it plain that Republicans aren’t interested in saving lives, a smear gun-grabbers continually use against opponents. And he called mass shootings “the best opportunity gun control advocates have.” Sure sounds like a “deliberate strategy.”
On to the “fantasy.” Gun control is the only possible means -- or the only means he would admit (Berney made no reference anywhere to mental illness, security, or police work) -- to “save lives.” That’s investing guns with their own unique “evil,” and putting childlike faith in the competence of government.
Not that he particularly cares about projection, consistency or anything else. Gun controllers are in a hurry, and emotion is on their side. His opponents “claim criminals intent on breaking the law will just ignore gun laws anyway, as though that doesn't apply to every law ever passed.” But not every law ever passed potentially impinges on an enumerated constitutional right.
It’s ironic that Berney believes calling atrocities evil only fosters “doing nothing.” The truth is closer to the opposite. He’s unwilling to entertain evil as more than a descriptive judgement -- an undesirable outcome, really -- not a moral force at work in the world. You can struggle with, and even sometimes overcome a moral force. You have to live with bad outcomes. Or die with them.
