The tough are those too cowardly to face tragedy

There’s a certain kind of “toughness” that consists, in effect, of making a public show of anger and resentment towards the broken. The refusal of compassion is imagined by the refuser to show their strength. It actually shows a weakness of both courage and of imagination- a fragility and timidity of spirit, hidden beneath gestures of strength.

Reactions to violent psychosis are, I think, a great case study of the fundamental spiritual weakness of a certain kind of tough-mindedness. To be “tough” in a certain kind of gestural way- to furiously rage against the victim of psychosis as if they were just making bad moral choices- is to be hard but brittle, and it is to be afraid. To be tough in a certain way is to avoid confronting tragedy, but strength really consists in facing it.

Perhaps the story will change later, but this is my and the public’s current understanding. Sydney Wilson had a psychotic break. The police were called to her house to perform a welfare check. She attacked the officer with a knife. The officer drew his gun to try to dissuade her. She kept going and slashed and stabbed at him several times. I am no fan of the police, but the officer in question seemed to have shown remarkable, some might even argue excessive restraint. Eventually, he shot her in self-defense. She died.

Her death was tragic. All deaths are tragic, but especially the deaths of the innocent. As people experiencing a psychotic break, while they are deeply that state of psychosis, are not generally moral agents in the way you or I are, it would be deeply unfair to blame her for her actions. Likewise, it would be deeply unfair to blame the officer for making the decision to defend himself. Two people clashed with great violence and in doing so neither did anything they were morally culpable for. That’s a tragedy that psychosis, in its most destructive forms, can sometimes cause. To be sure, I cannot rule out that Sydney Wilson had moral agency at the moment she was slashing at the cop, but the best guess is surely that she didn’t, and in any case, we are to err on the side of caution when making such judgments.

Yassine covers the response well here. If you go look at people talking about her death- say, on X or Facebook- you’ll see people saying stuff like “She fucked around and found out”, “Tragic loss? She slashed a cop in the face with a knife”, “Is this the quality of Georgetown graduates for the last couple decades?” “Perhaps you can share how Sydney's elite education at Georgetown prepared her for a life of non-violent and productive well being in human society?”, “This is like Ohio State posting a photo of Jeffrey Dahmer after he was jabbed to death in prison.”.

Essentially, they take it for granted that because she tried to kill someone with a knife, she must be a bad person. Commonsensical perhaps, but garbage. Insisting on a non-existent capacity for responsibility in these cases is an attempt to deny the possibility of tragedy, to shield yourself from the thought that good things happen to bad people, and worse, that under certain conditions good people can be induced to do terrible things. [Incidentally, I find it weird that people are saying it’s odd that this happened because she was a certified mental health first aid specialist, or more bluntly, that the certification must be garbage. That’s not strange. Oncologists die of cancer all the time.]

I think all this is coping. It’s an attempt to deny the fragility of the human condition, and our common vulnerability to our very minds rotting, it substitutes King Lear or Opedius Rex for a trite script that would pass the Hays code.

On the other hand, you have some progressives trying to argue that her killing was wrong. I don’t know the full details of what happened before the video, but at least directly during the interaction, it’s hard to find anything at all wrong with the cop’s behavior. The progressives at least have their heart oriented toward compassion- unlike the “I’m glad the woman with psychosis is dead” crowd, but the fundamental mistake here is, in a way the opposite side of the coin. They reason that: 1. Either the cop is guilty or she is 2. She is innocent 3. Therefore the cop is guilty. This is the same reasoning as the conservatives but with the opposite proposition for premise 2. Once again, the reality- that we live in a terrible world where sometimes morally innocent people have to be shot in self-defense, is too disturbing to contemplate.

I’ve seen a bunch of right-wing accounts lately arguing that they could not become homeless, no matter their circumstances, because essential to them are certain features that prevent homelessness- at least in the sense of being unsheltered. Even if we accept the premise that long-term homelessness only arises from some feature of a personality, personality has no essential shields that couldn’t be overwhelmed by, say, a head injury or Alzheimer’s. Nor do you know you won’t develop schizophrenia, it can happen at any age and with few warning signs. A friend of mine who once did a study of the homeless met a man who- upon his wife and children all dying in a car crash with him the driver- spiraled further and further into depression and eventually had nothing left and lived on the streets. Although we vary in our tolerance massively, there is some threshold of trauma that could break any of us. You are absolutely not safe. Certainly, vulnerability can vary by order of magnitude or more, but count no one safe until they are dead.

From here on out, look around at those who aim to project toughness- see how it covers over a lack of perspicacity and emotional fortitude, manifesting in a denial of the possibility of tragedy. It’s particularly clear in cases of insanity and legal wrongdoing, but it reveals itself in many other places. Tough talk on welfare is almost always emboldened by the empirically absurd denial that good people often end up with nowhere to turn but the government. Tough talk on crime is almost always emboldened by the denial of human fragility, chance, and circumstance. Tough talk on foreign policy is emboldened by the refusal to face the tragedy of international relations- that nations are constrained by their circumstances and not simply motivated by malice.

Of course, there’s a minority of the tough who aren’t self-deceiving- Sydney Wilson wasn’t ‘bad’ necessarily, but it’s good that she’s dead. The indigent aren’t necessarily bad people, but we’re better off leaving em’ to rot. Our enemies aren’t evil, but we should crush them. These people, while more monstrous, are at least honest.

I recently had dinner and drinks with some friends, including a woman who has been running an animal welfare organization for years. After we were deep in our cups (mine filled with Pepsi Max) she said something in Vino Veritas that I think will always stick with me. “We’re always going to be cruel sometimes, we’re always going to be selfish sometimes, but what I want is for us to stop lying about it. Eat animals if you must, but don’t pretend they have no sense of pain. Refuse aid to the poor, the sick, and the stranger if you will, but don’t pretend they are not people largely like you.”

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A bear stands behind the veil of ignorance

A Bear stars in King Lear