As you may know, the LA Times is keeping track of the homicides in LA as reported by the LAPD. Of all the things to deal with, there are few things more overwhelmingly frustrating than dealing with the worst thing that can happen to somebody.
As I read through the names, descriptions and locations, a series of images flash through my head. I know that area of town, or there's someplace I know about but never go. I imagine the man walking home from the bus stop, or in the barfight out in the parking lot, or surprised by a shot in the back. I imagine the woman smothered in her sleep by the son she threatened to kick out of the house. Or just these slim two:
Lewis Carter, 35
Lewis Carter, a 35-year-old black man, was shot at 1119 East 88th St. in Florence and died at 10:22 a.m. Feb. 13.
Fred Luna, 50
Fred Luna, 50, a Latino man, was shot several times at 1236 East Avenue Q in Palmdale, and died at 8:05 p.m. Feb. 12.
That's all we know. Fill in the blanks. How, why, who?
I mailed the Times to suggest that they get with the times and paste red spots on Google Maps when they have the addresses. Maybe a pattern would emerge and we could say 'here is a bad neighborhood - lots of murders'. Maybe. Murder doesn't take much of a reason, but whatever reason it takes, geography isn't going to matter much. Maybe I'm out cruising and I see somebody who looks like the man hitting on my girlfriend. Maybe that kid on the bicycle looks like he's from the wrong gang. The bullet has your name on it, not your address. More importantly, it has a killer's motive behind it and that is not subject to our desire to abstract it onto maps.
Whether we like it or not, people find wholly random reasons worth killing for. Every day. It's something that's easy to forget when we are engaged in the political intrigue that surrounds the prosecution of a war halfway across the globe. The death and destruction of war far outstrip the terror of murder, but a war is always more clearly arguable. There's always a foreign policy agenda. There's always a failure of diplomacy. There's always a pro and con debate where the two sides talk about the same thing. There's always a clearly defined arena in which that talk about the war takes place. The URL, the TV channel, radio stations, will all be on schedule and take up the topic. But nobody knows you when you're Lewis Carter. Nobody even knows how you were shot, much less the reasons why.
Patton said of war that all of mankind's other inventions pale beside it. War appropriates all rationale. Every reason eventually attaches itself to war, therefore war belongs to civilization. Murder belongs to the two and only a few can know, or will care to know the reasons why.
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