What were all these Penn State people thinking?

Sorry, but I have no brilliant conclusions for you concerning the Penn State scandal.

I do have opinions like all the other social scientists in print and on the airwaves.

Like, I think Jerry Sandusky is guilty. He's a monster. The only victims here are the kids he is charged with sexually assaulting. Penn State had to fire Joe Paterno. Law and order failed. More to come.

But here's the primary question, which I don't expect to ever be satisfactorily answered: “What were all these people thinking?”

All of them, I mean, from the original perpetrator to his immediate superiors to university administrators to the police to prosecutors.

Was their motivation greed? Was it to protect their power, prestige and pals? Was it loyalty to good old Football U.? Was it all of the above?

Psychologists can try to explain the reasons to me, but they probably won't succeed.

Since I intend to live forever, 40 years from now I still won't be able to understand how all of this could happen.

How do I know I won't? Let me use the past 40 years as an example.

The past and present were linked a week ago tonight when Paterno was fired at the same time the History Channel aired a documentary on the Vietnam War.

The dynamics between this and that struck me right then as similar. Essentially, in both cases reasonably intelligent men made unreasonably ignorant decisions.

I won't name names, but some of their initials are Jerry Sandusky, Robert McNamara, Joe Paterno, Lyndon Johnson, Tim Curley, William Westmoreland …

More than 58,000 Americans died in Southeast Asia. Nobody knows yet how many youngsters might have been abused in the current case.

We're talking atrocities from there to here and then to now, followed by bad decisions, deception and general cover-ups that only exacerbated the original sins.

Did these geniuses believe they could trick history into chronicling them favorably? Seriously, what were they thinking?

We're talking about military officers and politicians in Nam, coaches and administrators in State College, Pa.

They were supposed to be the best and brightest among us charged with teaching, shaping and looking after younger Americans.

Their foolishness indicates there must be a gene that inclines human beings to go haywire and slither outside the boundaries of humanity.

Yes, even in the USA and even at PSU, which respectively at the time were the moral standards in world affairs and college athletics.

So, how could so many persons within their ranks bankrupt their consciences, embark on paths to ignominy and continue trodding along on them year after year?

I don't know, other than man's capacity for wrongdoing is frightening, including mine and maybe even yours.

However, my indiscretions usually have been isolated and committed while drunk at the moment rather than in a series while sober.

For clarity I revert to the Billy Currington lyric: “God is great, beer is good and people are crazy.”

That's as good an explanation as any, as long as you add that people can be evil. To say nothing of unconscionable, along with insensitive, unaware and immoral.

Still, trying to make sense of the senseless is in itself senseless … even after four decades or longer.

I'll never be able to comprehend what these people were thinking.

mimrem@dailyherald.com