Sunday, December 16, 2012

Newtown

The United States of America is terminally ill and in need of a miracle.

I was driving to work early Friday morning. It was still dark and very cold. I noticed a lot of houses with their Christmas trees lit. People up early, getting ready for work, taking the time to click on the Christmas tree for a while.

I thought that was pretty cool. It tells me that it means something to people. Whatever it is, Christmas spirit, or hope or happiness or a break from the norm, it means enough  to light up the tree for an hour or so before leaving for work. It made me feel good.

A few hours later I was absorbing the news that a soul-less ghoul killed five year old kids. When you kill kids, you kill innocence. You kill hope. When you kill adults and adolescents, jaded points of view are already in place. Cynicism. Mistrust.

I am not saying it's OK to kill adults and adolescents. What I am saying is that every fresh wave of children offers hope. Maybe someone in that crowd will figure out a better way to live, a humane way to treat each other. Maybe they can get that message out there and watch it grow. Maybe they'll cure cancer. Maybe they'll invent a vaccine that will eradicate racism.

They are a blank slate, a pristine soul. They just might be the only hope we have. Killing that is killing everything.

My heart broke to hear this news, more so than any other mass tragedy before it, and I noticed the same reaction on the faces of the people I talked to, the news commentators I watched covering it when I got home. These deaths are incomprehensible in the abrupt end to innocence before ever having a chance to turn that innocence into a positive thing for humanity.

And the parents. Parents who sent their kids off to school in a presumably safe environment to get an education that would have given them options, an opportunity to improve their lives. Instead their lives were cut short. I cannot imagine the pain, I cannot understand how a human being endures that kind of pain.

I shed tears to see the look on the face of the President of The United States as he fought back tears to get through his statement. A statement that included words that suggested it is time to do something meaningful to reduce the violence.

I heard his statement on NPR on my way home from work. The commentator introduced The President as the Commander in Chief. And The Mourner in Chief. How true.

Immediately, and once again, the debate over gun control became hot. I heard a Congresswoman say that we should not call it gun control because it creates the wrong reaction in small minds. We should call it gun safety.

I agree with her because that is truly what it is all about. Not lack of guns, but gun safety.

Sometimes when I get an idea for something to write about I do some research to inform myself. I have been collecting notes and stats for a while concerning the fact that this country has fallen so far from the world leader we once were. Areas like infant mortality, homelessness, education, life span, medical costs, poverty. There are many, many civilized countries that do a much better job than us.

It's embarrassing.

I realized Friday I should have been concentrating on the one thing we excel at.

Violence.

We are light years ahead of the rest of the civilized world in violence, gun related or not, and in mass shootings. It is not even close.

This is symptomatic of something sick in our culture.

There will be hot debate over gun safety and the NRA will mindlessly oppose any changes. This is part of the problem. This unthinking gut reaction of small minds regarding their right to own weapons.

Tighter controls are necessary. Period. The civilized countries of the world who have exponentially less violence have much stricter gun laws.

There will be hot debate on profiling potential mass murderers. Suggestions on ways to counsel people and reduce violence. This is part of the problem as well. You can't do it. Not thoroughly enough, not effectively enough.

There is a lot more going on here.

There is a culture in this country, a vibe that has gone horribly wrong.

You have the soft underbelly, people who manipulate the system, people who don't work and yet drain the system for unearned benefits. You have the cold hearted crust, the companies who lie, cheat and steal to the point of endangering our economy and never look back. And exploit their employees while doing it.

You have politicians who ignore the desperate plight of their "constituents" as they play games and fatten their own wallets.

You have a government that has become unresponsive to the needs of the population. Slow moving and deadlocked because of ideologies that do not address the needs of people just trying to survive.

Obesity is an epidemic in this country. Alcoholism, drug abuse. We are unhealthy, overindulgent, weak and vulnerable.

You have a work ethic in this country that produces nothing but heart attacks and strokes and cancer. Most of the civilized countries in the world offer their employees much longer vacations. They take longer breaks during the work day. In other words they recognize their employees as humans.

And the irony is with this work ethic that we are always bragging about, we are still falling behind and callously sacrificing worker health.

In today's economy it is even worse because there is little chance for reward or advancement. We are rats on a wheel chasing cheese we will never taste.

There is a frustration in this country that is enormous. And an anger and an apathy and a cynicism.

On the night of the shooting I watched little kids being interviewed. Little kids who were there in the school. I was furious. We don't even know what is going on in their minds yet, how they can possibly interpret what they just lived through. The only people they should have been talking to were their parents AFTER hours of hugging and crying and on your knees gratitude. Shoving cameras and microphones in their faces was an injustice almost as heinous as the crime itself.

And the worst part is knowing the parents had to OK those interviews. We are indeed a sick society.

Maybe this is the end result of this grand experiment called democracy. The founding fathers probably assumed all people were as strong as them and would always appreciate this new form of government. They had to be tough and intelligent to do what they did. They could not imagine a lazy, unmotivated, self serving population like the one we have now.

On the other hand, when you consider that we lied to, exploited and massacred the native population of this land to get what we wanted, maybe that tells you everything you need to know right there.

I am not talking just about violence. I am talking about a mentality in this country. A mentality that is making us weak. I don't know if it is human nature or what human nature evolves into under this thing we call freedom.

I am saying that all this violence, all these mass killings are a sign of something going on in this country at a very deep level. A disease that took root at some point and is spreading throughout our culture.

That is what needs to be addressed. I have no idea how that can be done.

I only know that there is some sick a**hole out there right now trying to figure out a way to out- sensationalize this horrible mass murder.

And given our current culture he will probably succeed.

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