A Life Out Of Balance:
The Uneasy Legend Of Timothy McVeigh
To most people, Timothy James McVeigh was the embodiment of pure, unadulterated evil. He's been called the "All American Monster" and has been vilified, believed to be burning in hell and forever damned. The book, entitled, "One Of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing," is a scathing document of a seemingly ordinary American who went off to war in the middle east and then sunk into a dark, dreary abyss. When you read this book, the public hatred for McVeigh is palatable and powerful. He has been called "the most hated man in America" and the majority of people all over the world practically salivated as McVeigh was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Revenge was the order of the day. Even staunch anti-death penalty activists believed he sould die. It seemed as if everyone was eagerly awaiting McVeigh's execution and on that fateful day, June 11th, 2001, the ceremonious, the spectre was dubbed, "Bloodstock." There was a circus atmosphere as people sat riveted to their television screens, practically salivating as a blow by blow narrative of how McVeigh died, how long it took----under six minutes---and what was happening to him as three potent drugs quickly shut his body down. I was disgusted at this disturbind spectacle. Nobody has the right to take a life, but all of those who despised McVeigh felt that there should have been an exception to that rule in his case.
Having said that, I firmly believe that McVeigh, Gulf War veteran, former awkward high schooler and shy, hesitating young man, had decided that, no matter how hard he tried, nothing in his life was going well. We've all read about McVeigh's years spent acting as the butt of cruel jokes by unkind bullies, as well as harbouring a rather poor feeling of self-esteem. His happiest years were spent in the army, but when he retured, victorious from the Middle East where he had been forced to kill two soldiers not unlike himself, McVeigh couldn't secure a good job. I wish that someone had told him that if he were to seek treatment at the veteran's administration hospital to diffuse any lingering post-traumatic stress disorder, he would not subsequently be refused employment because of that. But he neither confided in anyone about this matter, nor did he know that it was now illegal to deny anyone a job who had any history of emotional problems. A prospective employer was forbidden to ask those questions.
McVeigh ended up in an assortment of dead-end jobs, working at Burger King and as a Burns security guard. Both jobs paid only meager wages---minimum wage---and the young man felt more and more isolated and depressed. I believe that one of Tim's biggest obstacles somewhat debiliating and pervasive depression. It seemed to have begun when he was a child. When I read "American Terrorist" I was struck by the way in which Tim McVeigh's life was lived under a dark, almost paralyzing cloud of despair and numbness. He needed something worthwhile that would bring him up out of this sometimes crippling affliction. What he knew well was that working security for a small paycheck, pursuing a prospective relationship with a pretty young woman and coming up empty-handed at every effort and feeling that his life was beginning to be less tolerable with each passing week, were making McVeigh feel hopeless and lost.
Everyone thinks that the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas and deaths of over eighty followers of charismatic religious leader David Koresh, which included the deaths of many children, provided the catalyst for the eventual bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal building in Okalahoma City on April 19th, 1993. However, I am more inclinded to believe that McVeigh planned, built and detonated the truck bomb that killed 168 people, including 19 little kids as a method of exacting control and a sense of purpose to a life he'd grown tired of living. People are quoted as saying "If there hadn't been a Waco, there would not have been an Oklahoma City bombing." I do not think for one minute that what happened to the Branch Davidians was responsible for what transpired in Oklahoma. Yes, Waco might have been the catalyst, but McVeigh was discovering that he finally felt a sense of purpose. Tim was an intelligent man and, following his decision to just stop trying, he knew instinctively that the prospective bombing would culminate in a series of events that would act as a rather strange kind of anti-depressant.
McVeigh has said that he knew, even before he'd driven off the interstate with his Ryder truck filled with a deadly cargo, that he would be caught and subsequently executed. Feeling that life had little or nothing to offer him, Tim McVeigh decided to, as the cliche goes, "Go out with a bang instead of a whimper." After the bombing, he enjoyed the spoils of fame. Barbara Walters stopped by for an interview, he was splashed all over CNN and people just couldn't stop talking about him. There's no such thing as bad press, so McVeigh was basking in the limelight and had the entire world eating out of his hand. The public became a captive audience, while McVeigh achieved in one deliberate, violent act, all of the notoriety and attention he'd been craving since he was a child.
And so it was with his looming execution date. Tim knew he had no hope of prevailing and getting a pardon from the state's governor, so he decided to orchestrate his own violent end. Strapping someone to a gurney and then pumping him full of deadly poisons is nothing short of barbaric. No-one knows just how frightened he was at the prospect of being able to know precisely when he would breathe his last----he refused to acknowledge any sense of fear at all. Joan Behar, one of those annoying women on a television production called "The View" told their audience that when Tim learned he wasn't going to get a second stay of execution, "He begged. He really begged not to die." She couldn't have been more wrong. I am sure that David Hammer, a fellow death row inmate who is awaiting his own death by lethal injection, would have told me if that was the case. Tim even poked fun at the whole matter by grabbing his throat and pretending to hang himself, complete with lolling tongue, a scant day before he was taken to the death house. David said, "Typical Tim. But I guess it's better to laugh than to weep.
Tim was, essentially, shining in the limelight once again, as he became the centre of attention at his own execution. We all know that he greeted death with his eyes wide open and that he was stoic and silent right to the bitter end. To say that McVeigh was a true enigma is just scratching the surface. He lived out the last six years of his life as if he were creating a dramatic production of his own making. I do not think I am alone in saying that this young man achieved the pinnacle of a strange type of "success." He had many strangers writing to him, some professing their love and lust---with the emphasis on lust, it would seem---so that the ridicule he suffered as a young boy was eclipsed by fane, excitement and a heady sense of brillant achievement. I have Tim lurking in the background of the book I am writing. He was my catalyst for writing fiction.
He has fascinated me from the beginning. His story was the stuff of Stephen King novels. But in the end, he became the 169th victim of the Oklahoma City bombing. His parents no longer have a son. Patty and Jennifer are robbed of a brother. Those are the realities. Anything else is---well, a senseless, tragic waste.
