By A. Daniel Bodine
PRESIDIO, TX--Can't even more explain what makes a person like the recent Norwegian shooter go “off his rocker” over immigrants and kill so many people like he did any more than you can. Although I certainly have some thoughts on it though.
But in event supervisors, friends and coworkers, or family members, ever get a heads up that something like that is going on inside another such person's mind--before it goes full-scale disaster--I have an ideal treatment for the person. Send him/her to spend some time with my friend Alberto down in Presidio, TX. He can neutralize wretched anger faster than comedian Red Skelton could find half-smoked cigars.
“I'm not saying I'm not guilty, Judge,” he told me the last time I had him in court--this one, municipal. On speeding tickets, I think. I was behind a desk. He sat 10-12 ft. off to my right in a metal folding chair. Had his head down, talking to me. Paraphrasing him the way I remember it, he added, “I'm just saying God didn't make me perfect. Ain't none of us perfect, Judge. We mean well, most of us, but sometimes we just slip.”
Alberto is 5'10” or 5'11”. Wiry, angular guy. Dark-haired. He had on jeans and his old, scuffed boots, and was in the process of rubbing his right leg down, his thigh, looking at it as he rubbed. Too, he had that leg's knee hiked up a tad, and was swinging the boot on the end of the leg--in and out, in and out, in rhythm with the rubbing--from beneath the chair. While rubbing his thigh.
There was this odd silence. Like he'd put the courtroom in a trance. The police officers looked at each other. I didn't know what was next. Then Alberto looked up at me. He was sitting a little catty corner off to my right, not directly.
“All of us here are good people; I'm a good person, Judge. Try my damnest to be! But you know how it is sometimes. A man just SLIPS!”
As he said it, that right leg with the boot on the end of it shot out about two feet, onto the floor. In front of me. It was an involuntary jerk; wadn't a push. I could see it clearly.
That boot just jerked sharply out from underneath that chair just like some strange, mysterious spirit floating by--a ghost rider in the sky, maybe, who'd had the leg already roped and tied--suddenly yanked it. On the cue of “SLIPS!” And then here comes ol' Alberto's foot with a boot on it, sliding at me. Whooo!
His face never showed emotion; his eyes were fixed directly on mine. In a flash he'd thrown his right hand down to grab aholt underneath the chair, to keep from falling (as the spirit jerked his boot, 'ya know!)--his butt actually teetering for a few seconds on the tilted edge of the chair, perched like upon a high wire, before he caught himself. But not once during all this did his face change from stoical sincerity. Nor did it ever leave mine.
“I try my best in life to always do good, Judge,” he added. “I really do. But sometimes—you know how it is—you just slip!”
Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian citizen with affiliations to right wing extremists, identified himself as a Christian Norwegian Conservative—a man with a dutiful cause, in the aftermath of the Oslo massacre last month. He didn't “slip.” His crime was intentional. Supposedly he hated immigrants—Muslims, to be specific—so bad (and the way he saw it, they'd dirtied his country's racial purity so much), he felt obligated to kill people. Make a statement, it was to be.
After a bomb explosion in Oslo killed eight, he went to a youth camp—described as containing some 500 of the best and brightest of Norwegian youth—and proceeded to kill 69 of them. Were they already contaminated? In his view? Probably. His messenger was a sophisticated gun,.
I agree with noted evangelical Professor Ben Witherington, blogging Aug. 3 at his The Bible and Culture, when he said neither of the world's three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) command “cultural imperialism or opposition to cultural change, or opposition to multi-culturalism in general.” Breivik instead was “privileging certain questionable interpretations of peripheral teachings which allow individuals to justify their own racists and violent tendencies...”
Historically, always there have been racists, and there have been lunatics. It hasn't been too difficult to tell them apart. The racists kill for a cause; the lunatics kill to get the devil off their back.
Modern society though, in its hastened search for a pluralistic, commercial denominator, has actually created a great Half-Breed Conflagulation—a high-tech caldron of evil-spirited intelligencia; which (using its own wildly infused energy) has produced yet another type of killer: a dumb-butt terrorist, a profligate racist killing machine who's mired so deep in its own underdevelopment, in its own naïve, cosmic stench of gloried yesteryears, it really can't tell shit from shinola.
I say dumb-butt because these people associate themselves with virgin snow. Whatever their race. Whatever their religion. On simple terms, if it's not as God created it, that means there's been a foreigner around. Get your gun, Jethro! In the name of god, we've got some defending to do. For our country. For our people (those who aren't contaminated yet). For our ideas.
These are the people who show up two hours after some bus leaves thinking it hadn't even arrived yet; then get angry hours later with the advanced ticket sales guy at the counter because they think they've been hoodwinked. And before the night's over burn the damn bus station down to make a statement. Where do you weed these people out? Can you?
Breivik may have considered himself a defender of Norway's finest bloodline—a purity of race and intelligence—but in his sanest moment, I'd put Alberto's friendly, disarming manners and less refined intelligence over him in a heartbeat.
Which is more valuable in both defining a country's citizenship and holding it together, too? In optimizing it's performance? In our need for laughter? To vent our contemptuousness? Our need to see our virtue? In getting thru one day to the next? Keeping the wheels rolling? Huh? Huh?
Born and reared in Presidio, Alberto never amounted to anything lofty in life, he says, simply because he didn't want to be anything lofty. He was a high school graduate and a U.S. Army veteran. Served in Vietnam, supposedly. His aim, his “position in life,” was simply to be content with the people around him. To help out here and there. And live off government subsidies as much as possible. In Presidio.
After all, if the government was stupid enough to make a particular thing available (many, many people will argue this point), who was he to say it wasn't for him? Huh? That's why Life is a challenge, right? God gives people brains to figure out ways around things. Life needn't always be a contact sport.
When I moved to Presidio in '89, culture shock was a light way of describing how I felt. The town is 85 percent Latinos. Maybe a third at least were immigrants, many illegal. I was 100 percent gringo. But I met and made some of the best friends of my life there. I did what a stranger needs to do in a strange town—flush any “air's” he/she may still have down the toilet, and look for a way to help people. I knew I had an angel with me; I wasn't asking questions. Only listening for God's gentle urgings.
Alberto is one of several thousand silent ambassadors for the city who'll damn sure be glad to say hello to you on the streets and shake your hand and smile and wish you a nice day--on any given moment's notice. And they'll do it without condescending themselves, too.
Life is hard enough without building lofty walls of segregation among us. So we can “minimalize” someone's character, or his/her stature. Too, Life has a way of pulling the ladder out from underneath people when they get too high and mighty. Doesn't it?
Leaving an unfortunate situation behind me in Dallas-Fort Worth, I was careful not to bring any pretentiousness with me to this place. I joined the Lions Club; introduced myself everywhere I went; and started helping people. And immediately felt “one of the bunch” for it. In the final analysis, isn't that all one can ask for in Life? Spiritual, human touching? To feel worth something? This was my place, I said.
Alberto usually carried a walking cane along with him, the first few years I knew him anyway. Rumors on the street said he claimed it went back to something that happened in Vietnam. He'd limp. A war wound? People would smile at him for his “acting.” Was he ever even near Vietnam?
He'd work at odd jobs, a yard here, or there; and drove an old, beat-up station-wagon of some kind. And 2-3 times a year he'd visit the V.A. hospital in El Paso. Catch a ride for the long trip. His “old war wound” reportedly. And people would snicker more.
Three, maybe four years ago, you started seeing Alberto more and more without his walking cane. Oh, and he bought himself a newer vehicle, too. Said he'd finally started drawing his disability checks from the government. He was in tall cotton. Then you started hearing a few catty remarks. Not many. But a few. This is the way new-found wealth usually works, isn't it?
“Why don't we all just go to the V.A. and claim an injury?” some started to say.
And when you say “talk” you must understand that the river is no divider here. We shared stories, events, and trade. Or at least it was like that before the Drug War, and the militarization of the Rio Grande. Before it was simply La Junta de los Rios—the place where the rivers meet. It's Presidio-Ojinaga--people together as one, in one place. Gossip is a universal language. Doesn't need a border. So yeah, Alberto had friends on both sides.
What really ticked some of the people off the most--some of the town's upstanding men, too--was when he and “a beer buddy” or two somehow talked a young, particularly attractive woman into moving in with them for a few weeks, into Alberto's house in Presidio.
All she wanted in return “for sexual favors” was an unending supply of beer, the story went. And after a few days, more and more men started stopping by the house for a few hours. Requesting sexual favors, presumably. And all brought beer. None was an outstanding citizen, of course.
“They're abusing her in there, Judge!” some men said to me. “She's mentally retarded, and they're just flat abusing her. For her own safety, you need to have her picked up. Get MH/MR down here.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “Where's her family to complain to police? Maybe she just likes sex. Maybe it's Alberto's charm. It's still a free country supposedly.”
No, they didn't like it. He just shouldn't be able to get by with stuff like that.
Thus 2-3 months later when I had him in court on the traffic tickets—as minor as speeding tickets are--it was an opportunity for him to be shown “the letter of the law.”
I sensed it, from comments. Justice was due. It needed to hit him smack-dab square in the face. Maybe even revoke his driver's license. Just the fines themselves totaled just under $500, I think.
But too bad, it was. I just “slipped,” I guess. He caught me off guard with the boot show maybe.
“I'm not any different than you or any of these officers here,” Alberto continued. “I just slipped, that's all. The fines are too high for that.”
Think I dismissed one of the charges; dropped the other one a hundred dollars or so; and put a deferral on it, so it'd be dismissed after a month of probation. If he kept his nose clean.
Couldn't have someone of Alberto's stature running around town without a driver's license. That would be a mess! In small towns you stay away from looking for trouble.
“Pay the court clerk,” I said.
“Thank you, Judge.”
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