Monday, October 5, 2015

We Are the Problem

There have been so many school shootings in the United States since the Sandy Hook massacre that no two responsible data-gathering agencies can agree on the precise number, which might be as high as 142.

“Stuff happens,” said Jeb Bush, prince-in-waiting of the presidential dynasty from Texas.

United States aircraft bombed to smithereens a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 22 patients and medical staff.

“Collateral damage,” said an official statement by the U.S. military there.

Can this craven, war-obsessed, bloody-handed nation sink any lower?

Spare us the “few rotten apples” argument.

This is a sick, evil nation.  The relative handful (among millions) of perpetrators of the school massacres, the My Lais, the helicopter assaults on innocents in Baghdad — these relative few are not the problem.  WE are the problem.

We elect the blathering fools who fund the senseless, endless wars; we look the other way while profit-gorged war mongering oligarchs take control of our country and its laws; we tacitly affirm the “right”  to arm this nation to the teeth, so that anyone, anywhere, can legally assemble the wherewithal to kill six, eight, 20 people at a time. We allow the NRA to perpetuate the lie that the Founding Fathers wanted it this way when they wrote the Second Amendment. We “Support Our Troops.” We wave the flag

We allow armed criminality. Some of us fervently endorse this, somehow conflating “freedom” with weaponry.  Abetted by the media, we seek out comforting euphemisms for our criminality.  We do not call these crimes what they are.  Murder. Massacre.  Genocide.  

We wallow in our delusions of national greatness, traditional morality, American exceptionalism.  Even as the carnage mounts and the innocent continue to die.

We lack the courage to acknowledge what we have become, clinging to a belief in an America that never existed.

We walk with The Enemy and don’t even know that he is Us.

14 comments:

  1. Update (10-9-15)--One killed, three injured in Northern Arizona University shooting. 47th this year.

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  2. Update No. 2 -- And another one in Texas. This is insane!

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  3. Tom, I agree with you. Where do we start? No one wants to address the key areas behind most of these shooters.
    1) Stop Welfare and the self-entitlements
    2) Young adults from dysfunctional marriages and no father in their life
    3) Drugs including marijuana
    4) Loners
    5) Young adults with known psychological issues
    6) Video Gamers that learn to kill on games that are unregulated
    7) Young 'men' that feel scorned my women
    8) Many of the guns are stolen from their parents that would not be regulated by gun show loop holes, etc.

    We don't have far to look at the issue. Our President is from Chicago where a large part of crime/ gun murder comes from and he does nothing about it.

    To find a solution, Conservatives need to realize they will have to give some and Democrats will have to realize the social plans they have created in many of the predominant democratic cities do not work.

    Both parties need to realize marriage and the unity of both parents raising their children needs to be an ultimate goal. Children having structure leads to more responsible adults.

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  4. "gun-rights advocates find themselves venerating a moment at which slavery, honor, violence, and the public carrying of weapons were intertwined."

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-origins-of-public-carry-jurisprudence-in-the-slave-south/407809/

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  5. Update No. 3 -- . . . and another in Tennessee . . .

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  6. Update: and another in Winston-Salem . . .

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  7. Update: four killed on the streets of Colorado Springs . . .

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  8. Update. Three dead in shootings in Maine. Why do we tolerate this madness?

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  9. Update: a judge is shot outside her home in -- where else? -- Texas.

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  10. Update: shootings near Penn Station in NYC leave one dead, two wounded. Guns are EVERYWHERE.

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  11. Update: at a Black Lives Matter protest In Minneapolis, five demonstrators were shot late on Nov. 23 by three white male suspects.

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  12. Update: another Christofascist gun nut armed with an automatic rifle goes on a shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado; at least two dead, 11 wounded.

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  13. Update: At last 14 dead in mass shooting in San Bernardino,CA; gunmen had AK47 type weapons.

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  14. Final update: studies cited by the New York Times show that on average, there is at least one mass shooting EVERY DAY in the United States. Every . . . Single . . . Day.

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