Narcissism

In 1992, two of my chosen family were nearly stabbed to death in broad daylight on a busy South End street in Boston. They are gay men. They were targeted by a Latino youth gang from a nearby housing project, owned by the Roman Catholic Church. There were many witnesses, who all denied seeing anything. They were members of the African-American or Latino communities of the neighborhood, which was undergoing gentrification. Both victims of this terrorist act are alive now, but both suffer every day from the post-traumatic scars and some of the internal physical damage of this attack.

 

The Boston Police did next to nothing. No perpetrator was ever brought to justice. My friends were harassed by police detectives who implied that the victims deserved being attacked for living in the neighborhood. They implied that the victims attracted the attack by "acting gay". I call this "harassment" because my friends were both hospitalized for some time in intensive care while officers interviewed them without doing anything on the street. When the first of the victims was released from the hospital, the police made a big show of driving him around the crime area so he could identify his attackers. His attackers, as he had told the police, were wearing hoodies and had stabbed him from behind before he rapidly lost consciousness. One victim was later told that some of the witnesses, his neighbors, knew the perpetrators but refused to testify. The police or the courts did not press them to do so.

 

Gay men of my age know terror all too well. And that terror came from people in the society who were considered superior human beings by authorities because they were heterosexual, even if they were murderous little bastards.

 

Yesterday's blasts in Boston, like the terror of 911, pierced the narcissism of the mainstream. This is the horror experienced by the general public when these things happen. Like the recent massacre at an elementary school, this horrific act wakes up the self-satisfied from their sleep. They realize suddenly that anyone can be a victim of hate and violence. No guardian angels or gods have deigned them immune because they are pious Christians or rich or beautiful or even just minding their own business.

 

The narcissism of the mainstream, who are not regularly targeted by violence in this violent society, enables the violence in this society. There should be hundreds of thousands of anti-gun protesters in Washington as Congress deliberates gun control. There should be much higher expectations and transparency of Homeland Security's effectiveness against all violence in the nation. But a narcissistic mainstream does not care as long as they themselves are not targeted. Terror is converted into entertainment.

 

Violence in public is indiscriminate and unacceptable. Violence in private is unacceptable in a civilized society. Our society is awash in violence. It is my hope that these most obvious acts of violence permanently pierce the narcissism and melt away the apathy of more Americans. This is the only way to decrease violence in society. It will not be significantly decreased by the frequently ineffective reactions of authorities alone.