Something more needs to be said before the Marcy Cole drunk-driving incident recedes and is forgotten in the archives of local journalism only to be replaced by the most recent bit of titillating information. It’s not difficult to see that this incident is about more than Marcy Cole. Drunk driving is a national pastime. And an impotent legal system is as symptomatic of such social pathology as is an educational system and social system (read ‘community') incapable of remediating those who compulsively defy healthy and productive cultural norms.
Various attitudes and opinions have emerged on the blogs and radio shows as to how we should comprehend and resolve this issue. But of course let’s keep in mind that this is not just an issue about Marcy Cole. It is about symptomatic alienated individuals who have failed social integration and not yet found a fulfilling personal identity. Marcy Cole is not alone as the issue, though she may stand out either as an extreme example or the tip of the ice berg. The issue is a disintegrated, impotent community incapable of culturally or educationally, that is within normative institutions and practices, socializing its members as autonomous and responsible citizens while imparting a sense of self with personal power and esteem. This is a kind of social amnesia in which we have forgotten the socio-cultural roots which nurture either healthy or pathological identities, purposefulness or the lack thereof and a sense of belonging or not belonging. If Marcy Cole were a lone example then we might claim that she is soley responsible for her anti-social, unintegrated behavior. Given she is one of innumerable cases, we must admit that this is a social failure to integrate her and those like her, a persistent, systematic "system failure," a crisis of community incapable of acting for the good of the whole and re-creating itself as such politically. The "problem" can't be solved at the level in which it manifests, namely, that of the individual. Given that it is persistent and pervasive, the real problem exists at the social level and must be solved at that level structurally and dynamically. A cancerous body won't be healed by cutting out its malignant cancerous cells piecemeal.
It does little good for the well-being of the community to reduce Cole’s case to a psychiatric problem. They may well do nothing but further suppress --even though possibly successfully chemically remediate her with various pharmaceuticals-- the cause, motive and reason for such self- and socially destructive behavior. Self-help groups like AA have not eliminated this pervasive, if not growing, social problem. Moreover, to relegate the ‘problem’ matter-of-factly to the Courts may result in finding her soon back on the streets and, God forbid, conceivably even back in the classroom. Lapsing into a bleeding heart “liberalism” in which sloppy compassion ends up letting her in some way “off the hook” is equally disastrous. Moralizing the matter and blaming someone who is obviously a victim, but a victim of victimization which cannot excuse irresponsibility, further represses and refuses to address the social dimension which continues to breed and de facto bless such potentially murderous dysfunction and its concomitant irresponsibility. Tougher laws or judges won't work. Have they solved the "drug problem," assuming such a problem is one of criminality? No, they have simply created a new industry, the 'criminal industrial complex,' also known as the prison system. Of course they have also created smarter drug dealers.
So the blame is “ours.” The responsibility is ours. Only we can root out and “remedy” the causes, motives and reasons within a community that in effect turns a blind eye to what is right in front of our faces as social dysfunction and pathology. Any occasion of drunk driving is a tragedy, we all ‘know’ but do not effectively “acknowledge,” waiting to happen. When that next tragedy does happen unfortunately we are all too ready to mobilize readily available rationalizations and other pseudo-solutions such as: “Life is tragic!” or “You just never know!” or “Some people just don’t care!” or “Maybe she deserves another chance!” or “Lock her up and throw away the key!” or “Hey, people are gonna drink!” etc., etc., etc.
Ultimately this is a political problem of community re-constitution. A community that capitulates to mass cultural trends such as exonerating drunk drivers, not to mention a social life all too dependent upon inebriation, is no community at all. A community that cannot act politically to address and reflect upon the problem of its identity, values, norms and social expectations is one not consitituted by social individuals but variations on narcissistic personality types who always find a way to rationalize and justify their own behavior while remaining consciously oblivious to the social center that no longer holds and a social whole without definition, parameters or limits.
The Emperor has no clothes and the 800 lb gorilla remains in the room. In the meantime, while we objectify Cole and thus dissociate ourselves from forces that produce train wrecks like her, we might begin to ask whether some latter-day Godot is ever really going to come and whether we out to stop waiting for “him.” Or do we have to do something about it? Do we not have to do something that involves not only helping Marcy Cole but thereby helping ourselves to create an authentic political, i.e., self-educating and self-determining community, and create an opportunity for inevitable and absolutely necessary soul searching on the part of each of us, individually and in groups, families, churches, schools, etc.
Anyone else out there knowingly drive drunk lately? Anyone else out there know they are dependent on if not addicted to alcohol or some other source of false consciousness? Anyone else out there feel that the fragmented agencies and individuals designated to re-mediate this dilemma do not really have the "remedy?"
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