Monsters

If he is indeed a monster, we have created him.

— John D. MacDonald

A Santa Barbara surfing instructor drove his young son and infant daughter to a ranch in Baja California earlier this month and murdered both of them with a spearfishing gun. 

The children

He was arrested at the US border on the way home.

A QAnon follower, the surfing instructor told police he killed his kids because they were infected with serpent DNA inherited from his wife and would grow up to become "monsters." 

He had to save the world from them.

Friends and associates described the surfing instructor as a "loving family man," although he "believed some weird stuff."

There's no need to ask, who's the real monster?

But who's the monster's maker?

I'm reading John D. MacDonald's 1960 novel The End of the Night, a chilling tale of a crime spree that Stephen King once called "one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century."

Part-way in, one of the narrators (there are several) ponders the reasons why an otherwise admirable man can kill in cold blood, often without a rational motive.

It's too easy to say he's a "monster."

"A monster?" the narrator asks. "If he is indeed a monster, we have created him.

"He is our son. We have been told by our educators and psychologists to be permissive with him, to let him express himself freely. If he throws all of the sand out of the nursery-school sandbox, he is releasing hidden tensions. We deprived him of the security of knowing know right and wrong. We debauched him with the half-chewed morsels of Freud, in whose teachings there is no right and wrong—only error and understanding. We let sleek men in high places go unpunished for amoral behavior, and the boy heard us snicker. We labeled the pursuit of pleasure a valid goal, and insisted that his teachers turn schooling into fun. We preached group adjustment, security rather than challenge, protection rather than effort. We discarded the social and sexual taboos of centuries, and mislabeled the result freedom rather than license. Finally, we poisoned his bone marrow with Strontium 90, told him to live it up while he had the chance, and sat back in ludicrous confidence expecting him to suddenly become a man. Why are we so shocked and horrified to find a child's emotions in a man's body—savage, selfish, cruel, compulsive and shallow?"

MacDonald wrote that 61 years ago, but could have done so yesterday.

The surfing instructor is currently being held without bond. 

A GoFundMe page asks for donations for his wife.