There are a lot of things wrong with our contemporary culture, but this story highlights a number of them. Benjamin Colton Barnes, an Iraq War vet, had been dealing with various psychological issues for the past year or so, and at a New Year’s party got involved in a gunfight, prompting him to flee with survival gear into Mt. Rainier National Park. When he passed a “chains required” checkpoint without stopping, a ranger tailed him while another set up a roadblock down the highway. Upon encountering the ranger blocking the road, a married mother of two named Margaret Anderson, he stopped his car, got out with a rifle, and shot her to death.
Apparently, Barnes fathered a girl with a woman last year, and when the relationship went south, likely right before his first episodes of depression and suicidal ideation, he was issued a parenting plan. In July, the mother of his child demanded a new parenting plan, claiming that he was agitated and potentially violent. The new plan enforced supervised visitation, and required him to complete the standard courses that come along with accusations of that sort.
Generally, people tend to hear about these things after the tragedy, so they appear to vindicate the accusations. However, they often fail to realize that it could be the accusations and court orders that ultimately provoked the final explosion. Separation and custody disputes are psychologically very traumatic events, and combined with PTSD too much for many men to bear. Soldiers, who have been trained to react to threats with violence, are likely at the highest risk of acting out in an aggressive manner in response to these provocations.
What is particularly difficult for soldiers in particular is how deeply alien the civilian world is to men returning from war. Feminization of our culture has likely only aggravated this problem. Warfare is a hyper-masculine environment, and the US military still does a very good job of producing warriors. Young men in a developmental stage of life are hammered and chiseled into kill mode, and then sent out to enforce our nation’s will on other peoples.
Then, when they return home, they suddenly find themselves in the midst of a culture where everything they have been taught to be is held to have no or negative value. This has always been the case for returning soldiers, but now it’s worse than ever. Imagine a veteran facing the loss of his wife or girlfriend along with his child, being treated like a serious threat by authorities, and ordered to endure a number of punitive procedures put in place to “protect” his child and the woman he loves from him. Add to that the promiscuity of many young females – especially the sort who like young servicemen – and the entirely natural sentiment of jealousy, and we have explosive situations building all around the country.
Perhaps the saddest part of all is that exactly what could help these men calm down and return to civilian life with some hope and purpose – the presence of children in their lives – is what is first taken away from them. I remember well the torment I went through during separation and divorce. It is psychological hell; one of the most painful things a man can endure. Yet I had my children much of the time, and we saw each other through it. There’s something about children, especially little ones, that calms and civilizes a man more than anything else — they bring out love and feelings of tenderness, along with an overwhelming desire to protect, that many men never knew they had before. This bond between grown men and children, what we call “fatherhood” is, in my opinion, the strongest civilizing force in humanity.
We can’t say for sure whether Benjamin Barnes would have behaved differently if he’d had more time with his baby daughter, but what is certain is that removing children from so many war veterans is certain to result in tragedy on a regular basis. The love and protective instincts men have for children have another side: when their children are removed, it is instinctively perceived by men as an existential threat, and the passionate feelings for their children can quickly become stormy and violent. There can be no moral judgment about this; it is simply a natural instinct, and for the most part beneficial for children over our species’ existence. But today we choose to defy nature, and tragically people like Margaret Anderson and her family sometimes pay the price for it.
