Remove Killers from Memory and the Human Community

Last week Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin asked us not to name the man responsible for the killings at the community college in Oregon.

And the debate begins.

Josh Marshall takes issue with Hanlin. He says that withholding the shooter’s name is a kind of evasion. : “Withholding knowledge is not the way forward.”

I disagree. I think we should always withhold the names of killers. I think their punishment must include obscurity. We might want to go so far as an “unmarked grave.” I say excise their names from our collective memory, oral tradition, and media coverage, short cycle and long.

Here’s why.

I expect these killers mostly conform to the stereotype we have of them. They are basement-dwelling losers, ignored when not scorned when not despised. (This notion may be a confabulation created by news programmers and CSI writers. Only research will tell.)

But if the stereotype is right, we can imagine the nonsense circulating in monsters’ heads. “My name will be legend. People will talk of me. My name will provoke fear and trembling.” This sounds like the stuff of video game narrative and fantasy fiction, and that might be where it comes from. (No cheap shot intended here.)

And if this is the motive that drives, then our strategy is obvious. We must deny monsters their wish. We must eradicate the motive that drives them. We must remove them from the human community.