Why is it that people are suddenly taking to such extreme violence? With a man lighting himself on fire at the National Mall, along with shootings at Capitol Hill and the Navy yard making front-page news, it’s hard not to notice a horrible trend emerging. Each individual to blame for these incidents had some psychological impairment, and that is no coincidence.
Drenching himself in gasoline before lighting his body on fire, John Constantino was battling a severe mental illness. He was so badly burned that onlookers took off their shirts in hopes of putting out the fire and saving his life. Unfortunately, it was no use. He was airlifted from the National Mall and died at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
Chased through the streets of Washington D.C., Miriam Carey made a bee-line for the White House in her car, ramming into a barricade before being shot dead by local law enforcement. Her one-year-old daughter, who was in the car with her, miraculously survived the incident. Carey, another person with a history of mental health issues, was found to have prescriptions in her house for schizophrenia, postpartum depression, and bipolar disorder. Sources say she believed President Obama had personally bugged her house and that she was under surveillance and felt violated. And so, she acted out to get revenge.
The man who went on a killing spree in the Navy Yard, 34-year-old Aaron Alexis, was under “the delusional belief that he was being controlled or influenced by extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves (ELF),” according to an FBI official. ELF refers to technology that is used for communications in submarines; however, some believe that it is also used by the government to monitor people.
In light of these events, Susannah Meyer ’15 responds to the hideous trend: “I had actually not considered the correlation between the government shutdown and the increasing violence we’re so used to seeing on the news these days. But now that you mention it, I think it was one factor causing these violent acts, be they political or not. Yes, people do want to voice their own opinions and responses to the government, or lack of it. But people are more than anything angry and frustrated that such a huge, detrimental measure had to be taken basically because opposing parties couldn’t agree or make compromise.”
Some of these citizens are driven by their delusions and are involuntarily spurred to take action by their mental states; others watch the news, read newspapers, and thus become enraged with the government. They put everyone around them in danger, and so we have no choice but to punish them accordingly, if they survive their attacks. Especially with our government attempting to recover after the shutdown, we must be cognizant of events like these occurring sporadically to evaluate society’s progress as a whole. But, is it fair to punish people whose minds are affected by illnesses, without the ability to redirect their actions or help themselves? And can we ever be certain of their motives? After all, a person who is mentally unstable may have equally unstable political opinions. This conflict of values, feelings, and policy is one I’ll leave up to debate.