Life as a Western

In case you doubt that our civilization is just one step ahead of barbarism, consider this scary Texas story:

Celebrants at an informal Juneteenth party in a crowded public housing complex parking lot turned into an angry mob that beat a man to death after the car he was riding in apparently struck and injured a child.

I'm a big fan of Westerns, and one of the standard themes is that of the lynch mob that wants to drag the suspect out of the jail cell and string him up. Sometimes the guy is guilty, sometimes not; it doesn't really matter. The rabble spend hours and hours working up their courage by getting liquored up at the saloon across the street while the marshal tries to convince his girlfriend that there is a difference between an execution and a murder, and that it his job to draw the line. Usually there is a confrontation in front of the jail in which the marshal intimidates the crowd into going home. In perhaps the greatest movie to explore this theme, The Ox-Bow Incident with Henry Fonda, the suspect is lynched and turns out to be innocent, and those who killed him have to live with what they have done.

In real life, things happen a little faster. The car hit the kid, and the crowd that was already there, probably already liquored up, swarmed and killed. But, as in the movies, the lynch mob gets it wrong. It was a passenger they killed, not the driver. And the child who was hit is in the hospital, with non-life-threatening injuries.

But the solution is just as clear as the lesson from the simple right vs. wrong morality of the Westerns. Those in the mob need to be identified and face the justice that they denied their victim. The law isn't perfect, but it is the line we draw between anarchy and civilization, the one force that lets us know we can live among others with some sense of safety and sanity.