Terror is Our Way of Life

 The continuing saga of Luigi Mangione, particularly the fact that NYC prosecutors have chosen to charge him under a statute of murder that specifies it as an act of terrorism. Discussions about the meaning of the words terrorism and terrorist aren't new to me. Dating back to the passage of the Patriot Act, the questions of how exactly terrorism might be legally defined, without leaving too much leeway for prosecutors to find inventive ways to charge activists and protesters under statutes nominally created to address terrorism, it's a discussion which had had vehement opinions, coming from a number of different perspectives. 

It's never quite sat right with me. There's the very broad, easy to access idea that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter (something I think is operative in the way people are responding to Mangione being charged with a statute meant to address acts of terrorism), but there's more than that. 

I think, in part because of my obsession with horror films, I might be a little more attuned to the place fear has in our politics, and our everyday lives. I'm sure my history of anxiety and depression contributes too. It's a relatively recent revelation that these are less their own specific mental health issues for me, and more a response to being autistic in a world that can be dangerous for people perceived as different. It at least explains why they've been so treatment resistant in my case. This is to say they're not chemical imbalances, so much as logical responses to the environment and conditions I've found myself living. I'm not immune to questions of whether they've transcended to the rational and logical to become extreme. Every time I think about this though, I'm reminded of the opening line in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." Can any of us ever be completely logical and rational, in all things? My personal observation of human behavior suggests it's not possible, but of course, I could be wrong. 

The way we talk about fear is suffused with the distinctions between what we see as rational or irrational fears, especially when we start talking about things that transcend the individual, and get into society wide norms. There is a degree to which we can't have individual fears defining broad spectrums of behavior, in large part because if we added all of individual fears to the list, we'd be able to do very little. It's true that living in the state produced by attempting to institute or encourage behaviors which wouldn't aggravate our individual fears would be so incredibly antiseptic, at such an intellectual and emotional distance from each other, we might as well not be human.  

Terrorism, is inextricably connected to fear too. The base connotation of it is an action undertaken with the desire to induce fear in the targeted population. Whether it's say, 9/11, which was meant to cause the whole of the nation to be afraid or the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building which was meant to cause fear in anyone employed by the federal government, and anyone who supported the existence of a federal government that at least gave lip service to the existence of multi-cultural, liberal democracy, what delineates an "act of terror" from any other act of violence is the motivation to create fear. 

I can't help but be a little confused by all this though, because really, fear is one of hallmarks of life in the US, for most of the population. It's this, really, that's been the foundation of the response to Brian Thompson's murder. It's in the form of a recognition of rage and anger, but it's really how prevalent the fear is that so many of us are one illness away from our lives being turned upside down, and not just because of the illness, but because of the economics surrounding it, which health insurance is a big contributor to. For those of us who do have some access to health insurance, we basically have to be lawyers and seers in choosing. You're shit out of luck if you happen to run into a health problem your particular policy doesn't cover or only covers minimally, because you couldn't see the future when choosing a plan, even if you did understand the thousands of distinctions that make policies different from one and other. Many of us have no shortage of anger toward the health insurance industry because of the way we have been treated or loved ones, be they family or friends, have been treated. We're all also living with a constant low grade fear, that we have to forget about to function in any meaningful way. Neither the anger or the fear are irrational, illogical, unjustified, but we're expected to just kind of live with them. 

I was reminded today of the fact that active shooter drills are now a normal part of life for school children. We've accepted this is a fear parents, children, teachers, administrators, basically anyone who is in or loves someone who might be in a school, just have to live with. I understand, and do believe, the ease with which people in the US can get their hands on a gun is the most immediate, practical way to address this, and the anger in response to the lack of action on that front. I also think we are missing something pretty important when we simply throw up our hands and accept that we're producing so many people who turn to the idea of taking up a tool of murder in response for whatever reason they perceive they are justifying in doing so, because of course, mass shootings aren't limited to schools. They are a society wide occurrence at this point. There have been examples in just about every location where people might gather in numbers that could be attractive to someone whose made that decision. It is particularly telling though, I think, that this is a normal we accept for school children. In some ways, this is all so backward, we've come to accept as normal things like bomb threats being called into children's hospitals, nominally motivated by a desire to protect children. 

There's also the matter of police violence. There are so many of us who have to live with a fear of police violence, that's rational and logical in the face of the facts, though not treated as such on a broader, societal level. The evidence that Black people, and other people of color, face a greater preponderance of police violence than white people is incontrovertible, by standards we would accept in relation to almost anything else we'd deem a problem in need of serious, urgent address. People with disabilities, including different forms of neurodivergence, mental illness, intellectual disabilities are killed by police at the rate of sixteen times those without, and when we consider how often police are the first contact for us (I count myself among this number) in emergency or crisis situations, especially with the reality of the number of "wellness checks" that end up in the person that's in need of help being killed by police, there's nothing illogical or irrational about us having a fear of ever having to interact with police, for any reason. The number one complaint police departments receive is police brutality, which is scary by itself. The second highest number of complaints are sexual harassment and sexual assault. It's not illogical that women who experience sexual harassment or assault might be hesitant to call the police, in recognition of this fact alone, before we even get into the legal standards related to securing a conviction for the charges, and the way police and prosecutors have long treated victims who do come forward. Considering how low the percentage is of false claims related to sexual violence, it's not completely rational to treat them all as if they might be false, but it is logical in the sense that "innocent until proven guilty" is the stated standard under which investigations are supposed to be conducted, and charges are supposed to be prosecuted. It's a conflict and contradiction we haven't done much to solve. 

These "normalized terrors" are one of the foundations for the existence of feminism more broadly. Think of the number of phrases and ideas that have become familiar in the cultural parlance, just related to women experiencing logical, rational fears about existing in culture that has normalized men committing violence against them. Not all men... but how are we supposed to know which ones? The examples of the way we teach women to act, that focuses on them preventing them from becoming victims, instead of focusing on what we might do to prevent men from becoming victimizers, like having their keys in their hand if they are approaching their cars alone, not walking alone at night, the infamous advice that says a woman should scream "fire" and not "rape" (even as that was born of a debunked urban legend, which by the way, came about as the result of police incompetence, not because no one attempted to get help for the woman in the story). In my lifetime, no matter their status or how they may be situated in society, women being put in a position where having any variety of public platform, not least of all social media, that they basically just have to accept that they're going to be sent threats of rape and murder. The more public their lives are, the more we expect them to accept this as normal. 

There was a short period of a few months in my life, where death threats via social media were regular. The lack of interest by authorities and institutions was at least as distressing as the death threats themselves, including but not limited to police and the social media companies. Whether or not the individuals making the threats had a history of violent crime or were themselves police officers, made no difference, at all. "I might just come looking for you," from a police officer sixty minutes away, hits differently than some random goon fourteen hours away. It didn't matter though. I was expected to just live with it, maybe change my routines and behavior in response. 

Despite the correlation between a number of far right media personalities and news outlets being clearly correlated with acts meant to inspire terror, like bomb threats or swatting, both mainstream media and the social media companies used to disseminate the choice of target are unwilling to take action. Libs of Tik Tok exists on every major social media platform, despite the clear evidence their coverage of any individual or business is meant to inspire this behavior. The number of people who have been able to recount the direct correlation between far right media focusing on them and a wave of harassment mean to induce fear, is too long for it to still be considered a casual/unintended correlation or incidence. 

A lot of the discussion around Mangione's arrest, charges and the crime he's charged with committing, have been about class. This idea that some of us have to live with certain terrors that others don't isn't quite so easily broken down as simply being about class either. Celebrities, even when they have extensive wealth, are more or less expected to have to deal with or accept being the subjects of behavior meant to or consequently evoking terror. A list of people who've been convicted of various offenses related to stalking celebrities would be so long it would take up the same amount of space as the Library of Congress, but none of them face charged related to terrorism. In my lifetime, I can't remember someone ever being arrested for any of this behavior that legal and media institutions were going to such lengths were attempting to make an example of, and it's a behavior so common, we just expect people who seek a public image and persona of any kind, just need to live with it. There are no shortage of media outlets whose entire existence is based on stalking celebrities, and in many ways, feeding and acting as accomplice to the variety of celebrity obsession that is genuinely dangerous. 

Capitalism uses terror as one of its main motivators. Economic precarity produces terror, as a constant cloud that hangs over those experiencing it. It's one of the main contributors to the response to Brian Thompson's murder and Mangione's arrest and charges. There are far, far more people whose lives exist on a razors edge of homelessness and/or the complete dislocation and disruption of their lives than their are those in the financial position to be able to weather even basic financial disruption or emergency. Somehow, this fact is simultaneously the fault of those experiencing it, and the reason we're all supposed to find some kind of urgent, additional well of sympathy for people we are are told have decided misogyny, racism and homo/transphobia are going to solve those problems. There isn't a no measure of harm in US life, that poverty doesn't significantly exacerbate and make more likely, yet we just kind of expect people to live in poverty, with that constant, never ending, oppressive sense of fear. 

It's clear our legal institutions and media are rushing to prevent the normalization of CEOs in industries the public finds morally questionable at best, and reprehensible at worst, being subjected to living with these kinds of floating, vague, but still rational and logical experiences of terror. I'm not sure how Chappel Roan, who's only offense has been existing as a pop singer and out lesbian, rises to the level of having to accept harassment and behavior meant to induce terror, but the executives and board of Boeing, having made decisions leading directly to their planes being less safe don't. What's the calculus here? The argument has been made that seeking a public platform like being a musician is different from being an executive who doesn't choose to seek the spotlight. I don't really buy that though either. I don't see how seeking executive positions at companies whose products or services are so intricately intertwined with public well being are treated as not having sought a status that deserves any less public scrutiny or criticism. There's some logical argument to be made that neither should have to expect this, but there's clearly a far different standard in terms of what our institutions and media are willing to do to protect one from it, where they are, in so many cases, actively encouraging it in relation to the other. 

My question is, why them? It's not just that they're wealthy, as it's clear wealth isn't enough to make someone rise to a status of such importance they need to be institutionally and systemically shielded from a kind of terror so many of us are just expected to live with. This is part of my personal distaste for the institutions and individuals who've in some way made some expression that there's something wrong in the response to Thompson's murder. If I myself, everyone I know and no shortage of people I just know of, have to live with some kind of terror on a consistent basis, what exactly makes the executive class so special for it to be so important for them to be able to live above it? 

The more that I think about, really everything in US politics and society, comes down to fear, and the way to really understand how it works, on the most practical level, is to understand who is expected to live with it, what fears they are expected to live, and what actions they will be punished for taking, whether or not those actions are logical and rational. Equality, can be measured in who is expected to live with terror, and what terrors they are expected to live with.