(no subject)
Title: Tragedy is not a guide by which to live
Author: melliyna
Prompt: 62, the first anniversary of Rosslyn
Fandom: West Wing
Rating: R
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Gen, Ensemble
Warning: Season 2 spoilers, mature themes
Disclaimer: Belongs to a bunch of people, particularly Aaron Sorkin who are far more talented than I am. I borrow for the fun, not for the profit making.
Summary: It's not a day like any other (quotations from various speeches of RFK).
What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
They don't do well at listening to the news today because it's everywhere - plastered across the day in words, pictures and sounds. Somehow, it never comes back to any kind of positive but a focus on the fear, the pain. They even interview the parents of those who are sitting in jail, let them illustrate anger, racism and fear. CNN is talking to someone or other about psychological affects, aftermath stories and CJ wonders how to articulate the fact there never was an aftermath, because somehow that implies an ending. Sometimes she thinks that they left themselves behind, in that moment before the first shots rang out and they'll never get it back, what they had before.
She goes through the briefing though, steadily answering questions without answering them. Because you can't spin Josh, who is never entirely himself anymore or Toby, having trouble looking at his hands. Donna, keeping too close by Josh and Sam, who does the same but ends up going to Toby, to talk to him or to just to sit. CJ goes to all of them, listens, talks and jokes when needed, gets angry and slams a few doors but she does not think of the sound that glass makes, when it smashes in that particular way or the words - from the jail, from the pundits and the people on the street that have so misunderstood them all, sympathetic or hateful or Charlie for whom she has no words at all, not today when the outside world has far too many to speak.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Sam wants to forgive and to understand. So he reads everything - every article, briefing memo and profile that he can lay his hands and wonders at himself, that this is the way that he deals with the anniversary. CJ forgets and comforts, Toby copes in his own way, the President ponders and Josh? Josh is scarily quiet and Donna is too, sticking close to him. They all want to do that, today.
He thinks about it, as he hovers. About the solutions to a world that has produced this act, that will hurt even the shooters and wonders who began it, in the end. Was it the shooters or the country that failed them, left them in poverty and pain, easy prey for hate, fear and violence because if nothing else, it gave them a meaning, a reason for their desperate circumstances. Sam thinks about this - thinks about a country that spends more money on guns than it's children, which has led and failed the world and itself in so many things and thinks about kindness and if Carl Leroy and the others had ever known what it was.
If they had ever had a friend like Josh, a father figure like Jed Bartlet or ever been told that they were worth something, by anyone. So he reads and it helps him not to hate and looks at Charlie and Zoey and knows there is another future, another ending to the story that can be written. Sam wants to craft that, wants to know there will be a day when there will be no more Carl Leroy's because they have been told and know, that there is a place and a future for them, so they will not need to turn to hate and fear.
The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means
Toby would like to say he was better than this, but his is not the goodness of Sam but a different kind. There is Josh, who is so still now and whose blood he can still feel - on his hands, on the pavement. The way it spilled out, so fast and so alive even as it took life away from Josh, from his brother.
He watches the trial and thinks of elementary school and a face twisted in rage, as it kicked him in to the dust of the playground, because he did not pray to the same God that they did. Sees Carl Leroy and thinks of war and what it means, when you become the Other to be disposed of, wiped from the earth and about the country that allows this because that it is what it means to be free, that you cannot allow gay marriage or certain kinds of books but the KKK must be allowed to rally, to express their words and to meet.
There is unfairness in that and this is something he knows. But Toby knows about words, about the things they lead to and he wonders somehow about his commitment to liberties because he has seen them, seen how they led from the playground to Josh bleeding to death outside a hall in Virginia, to another set of kids who have seen things they should never have to see.
Toby Ziegler compromises. He is still trying to find loopholes, still wrestling with himself but he does not sign it off, because he cannot find it in himself to go down the road of regulating thought, no matter where it may lead. Even if it feels desperately wrong, much of the time.
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
He has had debates, speeches about freedom of everything under the sun. Words and ideas, that he tossed back and forth, proposed and rejected. On this day, he reads the Constitution and wonders about the allowances that his country gives to those who would destroy it, who would try to take his childrens' lives for the crime of simply being who they are.
Jed Bartlet thinks about Toby that day, about being the only kid in the class who doesn't pray and wonders if that is how it began, with the shooters. A playground and the telling of a national story that does not include another, a pledge about a particular kind of god and belief. He hugs Zoey and wishes he could hug Josh, grab hold of his son and never let go. Protect them, protect the country from the diversity of intolerance that is its other side.
He fingers a sheet of paper, a photograph and a pen, reads the Constitution and wonders if it all adds up, in the end - this toll that freedom demands. A young Toby with a bruised face, Josh on the operating table, a terrified Charlie and Zoey and all the rest who will be forever different and distinct because of such acts of violence. In the end, he does not sign but the debate will go on, as it should. As is the price of America.
Author: melliyna
Prompt: 62, the first anniversary of Rosslyn
Fandom: West Wing
Rating: R
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Gen, Ensemble
Warning: Season 2 spoilers, mature themes
Disclaimer: Belongs to a bunch of people, particularly Aaron Sorkin who are far more talented than I am. I borrow for the fun, not for the profit making.
Summary: It's not a day like any other (quotations from various speeches of RFK).
What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
They don't do well at listening to the news today because it's everywhere - plastered across the day in words, pictures and sounds. Somehow, it never comes back to any kind of positive but a focus on the fear, the pain. They even interview the parents of those who are sitting in jail, let them illustrate anger, racism and fear. CNN is talking to someone or other about psychological affects, aftermath stories and CJ wonders how to articulate the fact there never was an aftermath, because somehow that implies an ending. Sometimes she thinks that they left themselves behind, in that moment before the first shots rang out and they'll never get it back, what they had before.
She goes through the briefing though, steadily answering questions without answering them. Because you can't spin Josh, who is never entirely himself anymore or Toby, having trouble looking at his hands. Donna, keeping too close by Josh and Sam, who does the same but ends up going to Toby, to talk to him or to just to sit. CJ goes to all of them, listens, talks and jokes when needed, gets angry and slams a few doors but she does not think of the sound that glass makes, when it smashes in that particular way or the words - from the jail, from the pundits and the people on the street that have so misunderstood them all, sympathetic or hateful or Charlie for whom she has no words at all, not today when the outside world has far too many to speak.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Sam wants to forgive and to understand. So he reads everything - every article, briefing memo and profile that he can lay his hands and wonders at himself, that this is the way that he deals with the anniversary. CJ forgets and comforts, Toby copes in his own way, the President ponders and Josh? Josh is scarily quiet and Donna is too, sticking close to him. They all want to do that, today.
He thinks about it, as he hovers. About the solutions to a world that has produced this act, that will hurt even the shooters and wonders who began it, in the end. Was it the shooters or the country that failed them, left them in poverty and pain, easy prey for hate, fear and violence because if nothing else, it gave them a meaning, a reason for their desperate circumstances. Sam thinks about this - thinks about a country that spends more money on guns than it's children, which has led and failed the world and itself in so many things and thinks about kindness and if Carl Leroy and the others had ever known what it was.
If they had ever had a friend like Josh, a father figure like Jed Bartlet or ever been told that they were worth something, by anyone. So he reads and it helps him not to hate and looks at Charlie and Zoey and knows there is another future, another ending to the story that can be written. Sam wants to craft that, wants to know there will be a day when there will be no more Carl Leroy's because they have been told and know, that there is a place and a future for them, so they will not need to turn to hate and fear.
The free way of life proposes ends, but it does not prescribe means
Toby would like to say he was better than this, but his is not the goodness of Sam but a different kind. There is Josh, who is so still now and whose blood he can still feel - on his hands, on the pavement. The way it spilled out, so fast and so alive even as it took life away from Josh, from his brother.
He watches the trial and thinks of elementary school and a face twisted in rage, as it kicked him in to the dust of the playground, because he did not pray to the same God that they did. Sees Carl Leroy and thinks of war and what it means, when you become the Other to be disposed of, wiped from the earth and about the country that allows this because that it is what it means to be free, that you cannot allow gay marriage or certain kinds of books but the KKK must be allowed to rally, to express their words and to meet.
There is unfairness in that and this is something he knows. But Toby knows about words, about the things they lead to and he wonders somehow about his commitment to liberties because he has seen them, seen how they led from the playground to Josh bleeding to death outside a hall in Virginia, to another set of kids who have seen things they should never have to see.
Toby Ziegler compromises. He is still trying to find loopholes, still wrestling with himself but he does not sign it off, because he cannot find it in himself to go down the road of regulating thought, no matter where it may lead. Even if it feels desperately wrong, much of the time.
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
He has had debates, speeches about freedom of everything under the sun. Words and ideas, that he tossed back and forth, proposed and rejected. On this day, he reads the Constitution and wonders about the allowances that his country gives to those who would destroy it, who would try to take his childrens' lives for the crime of simply being who they are.
Jed Bartlet thinks about Toby that day, about being the only kid in the class who doesn't pray and wonders if that is how it began, with the shooters. A playground and the telling of a national story that does not include another, a pledge about a particular kind of god and belief. He hugs Zoey and wishes he could hug Josh, grab hold of his son and never let go. Protect them, protect the country from the diversity of intolerance that is its other side.
He fingers a sheet of paper, a photograph and a pen, reads the Constitution and wonders if it all adds up, in the end - this toll that freedom demands. A young Toby with a bruised face, Josh on the operating table, a terrified Charlie and Zoey and all the rest who will be forever different and distinct because of such acts of violence. In the end, he does not sign but the debate will go on, as it should. As is the price of America.