Whenever something like this happens … too fucking damn often! … I find myself looking for a model that I can use to understand it. Mostly, I hearken back to the explanation about how to make fire. It takes four things: fuel, oxygen, a heat source and a reaction to sustain it.Take even one the these ingredients away and you can’t make a fire.
My gut says that this type of wild attack is somehow similar. In my mental model, it seems like a combination of (at least) four essential ingredients:
- Targeted Hatred (Fuel?) … A visceral hatred to the point that it dehumanizes a group of people … in the case of Orlando, it is deep-seated traditions of hatred against LGBTQ … but we can substitute other hatreds and get different attacks (women, Jews, abortion clinics, blacks, etc.)
- Permissive Rhetorical Environment (Oxygen?) … To build full intensity, the hatred must be expressed freely and receive validation … the ravings of ISIS and/or US anti-gays, and/or rabid pro-lifers, etc.
- Mechanism to Sustain It (Chain Reaction?) … To kill 50 people, you need to be able to keep killing … You need fast guns and lots of bullets … Easy with our non-existent limits on gun ownership
- Triggering Event (Heat Source?) … It may seem random like a lightning strike, or it may grow steadily through festering alienation, anger, indoctrination, training or progressing mental illness … or some combination … This is usually the part we don’t understand until after the fact.
I think these contributing factors apply pretty broadly. In Orlando, my take on the toxic mix is something like this:
- Fuel — Mateen was intrinsically angry and violent and he seems to have focused his frustrations into hating LGBTQ.
- Oxygen — I wonder if he embraced ISIS because he really believed in it, or if he just needed ISIS to validate to his intrinsic anger and hatred? We may never know.
- Chain Reaction — An AR-15 can really sustain an attack
- Heat Source — This is the one that we may never totally fathom. What set him off? The attack was clearly planned. When, why now? Alone or with encouragement?
I think you can construct a comparable list for virtually every recent terrorist attack, against virtually every type of target.
So what’s my point? Other than sharing a self-indulgent mental exercise?
The reason that models like this are important is because they help us to conceptualize better ways to respond to complex situations. We may not always get it right, but we have to try … and that demands a strategy. Not just a reaction to the last attack, but a forward-looking strategy to reduce all types of attacks.
I don’t profess great expertise in this field. There are lots of professionals who make this their daily living. However, I have studied human systems for 40+ years and I think it might help if people of good can share a simple model that helps them organize their discussions and responses. Not alter their views or beliefs… just make things easier to explain.
In that spirit, let me offer some generic strategic directions that a model like this may suggest:
Silver Bullet: Remove all of at least one ingredient. Fire safety experts believe that you need all four ingredients to successfully start and sustain a fire. If you lack even one ingredient … no fire. So one strategy is to pick one ingredient and pour our mind and treasure into eliminating it as thoroughly as possible.
- Can we convince everyone to not develop these violent hatreds?
- Can we suppress the awful, public rhetoric that validates those hatreds?
- Can we remove the capacity to kill in large numbers by removing, or at least controlling, the weapons.
- Can we systematically understand the angst of angry, young (mostly) males and intervene before they reach the ignition point?
These all seem awfully hard, but it ought to work if we really could eliminate any one of them. Of the four ingredients, the two that seem most amenable (still far from easy) are the permissive rhetoric and the ready access to guns of mass destruction.
Whack-A-Mole: Remove all of one ingredient in each situation … but not necessarily the same one each time.
This happens a lot with real fires. You may have paint stored in hot, enclosed space … but there is no spark or match … or if the fire starts, it quickly dies from lack of oxygen. Another time, you have have a forest of tinder-dry wood, oxygen of course, and there is lightning. But there is also rain and temperatures are falling. In each case, you might have “almost” had a fire … but you didn’t.
In my analogy, if we try to eliminate the key ingredients whenever and wherever we can, we won’t succeed globally, but we may get lucky in a lot of individual situations. We might have more “almost” attacks. If everyone just keeps the pressure on and fights the good fight, you never know where or what might break the chain. Actually, we will probably never know how many “almosts” there are. But that’s OK.
The problem with this approach, and what sets it apart from the one that follows, is that this is a many-headed, micro-solution. Every situation is unique and must be addressed by whoever happens to be there. It is hard to conceive how one would build a broad, “coordinated” approach.
Slow Suffocation: Weaken all ingredients a bit … just enough to make it overall harder to light.
We can try to systematically reduce the intensity of every ingredient by at least a little bit … not eliminate any of them altogether … just make each a bit weaker. Think of it as making the wood a bit more damp, making the air pretty stale, and providing matches that are old and busted. In the current appalling context, something like this might be helpful.
- Fuel — Talk about how we are better together than divided. Lay it on thick … and mean it. Stop with the dumbass Bernie vs. Hillary shit. Both ways. Kumbaya baby! Remember “Hope”?
- Oxygen — Beat Trump like a drum in the GE to make it clear to the meatheads that most real people are not amused.
- Sustainable Reaction — Get some forward motion on reasonable gun control. Close gun-show loophole. No-flyers can’t buy. Some functional limits on clip size. Training-wheels stuff.
- Triggering Event — Do something creative about educating, training and motivating our young people. Give them something beyond suicide to aspire to.
Some attackers will still manage to overcome these extra roadblocks. But, hopefully, many more will be deterred, get tired, or become distracted. Those will all be wins.
Just my $0.0002