There’s another multi-death shooting nearly every day. I’m tired of reading and hearing news reports about the mass shooting du jour. It makes me sick to constantly hear about these horrible things. I can’t stop thinking about the people whose lives were cut short unexpectedly. Children? Why would anyone ever kill kids? Gay people? Honestly, based on the number of gay artists, musicians, nurses, and animal rescuers that I have met, I believe that gay people are a large part of the gentlest, most empathic and most creative portion of our population. Killing them hurts us all. Hundreds of random people, killed for absolutely no reason other than someone took out their misguided rage on them.
When I consider the huge number of people who die every year in these mass killings, I grieve for all the things our future has lost that we may never know about. Some of these people were surely slated to do great things. One of those victims could have been destined to find for the cure for cancer or the solution to world hunger. We’ll never know, because they were shot in a school, or a church, or a theater, or a nightclub.
I grieve for the families who lost a loved one to random violence and now have to live with that fact forever. Losing anyone we love is hard, but I believe it’s much harder when it’s sudden and unexpected.
I grieve for the police who risk their lives trying to stop the shooters. I grieve for the detectives who have to listen to those cell phones ringing in the pockets of the dead bodies on the floor while they try to piece together what happened.
I grieve for the first responders and paramedics who have to cover the dead and carry them away, and try to hold together the survivors long enough to get them to a hospital.
I grieve for the doctors who work tirelessly to try to save those survivors. I grieve for the survivors whose bodies, minds and lives were shredded by the horrific experiences they have endured.
I hear about these events and I wonder why they happen. Why is our country becoming so violent?
The answer is so complex it would take volumes to really address that question in appropriate detail.
We have, in no particular order;
*poor nationwide mental health care, which leaves dangerously mentally ill people at large;
*a government that operates mainly to cater to the whims of corporations instead of working to best help the country and its citizens, which makes most people feel helpless and frustrated;
*shrinking income levels and reduced opportunity for advancement among the majority of the population, which leads to a growing sense of dissatisfaction, unrest, and anger;
*religions that urge people to follow ancient religious texts that treat violence as a fact of life, which encourages some angry mentally ill people to act on the words found in those texts;
*vocal religious leaders who preach that those who are “different” are unacceptable and suggest that those who differ from “the norm” in race, sexual orientation, or religious belief should be destroyed by violent methods, which can lead to hate, both of others and of self;
*celebrity and media personalities who suggest that citizens should violently rebel against anything with which they disagree, which encourages hate crimes;
*a spreading nationwide culture of “me first” that encourages people to impulsively act without regard for anyone else, which leads to people doing things they might once have considered unthinkable;
*political personalities that loudly espouse racism and national isolationism, which leads to more hate crimes;
*scaremongering print, radio, television and internet media that inundate us with news stories intended to frighten and anger just for the sake of ratings, which continually adds to the growing fear and hate;
*and last, extremely easy access to weapons, including weapons only designed to kill many people quickly.
Our entire day to day existence consists of slow-roasting over a huge subliminal message fire of “you’re never gonna make it/there are no jobs/no money”–”watch out or someone else is going to take your job/money/wife/husband/belongings”–”you’re not good enough/you’re a sinner/you believe in the wrong deity/you’re going to go to Hell because you’re the wrong color/gay/not the right flavor of Christian/not a Christian at all”–”be afraid of everyone who’s not just like you because they’re all bad, every one of them and they’re all out to get you”—“we’re Americans, we’re number one, we’re the best in the world, and Americans can have any damned thing we want and we want it all and we want it right now!”.
Oh yeah, and “there’s a gun show next Saturday”.
Sure. Toss some loaded assault rifles on top of that fire and see what happens.
How can we fix this?
My personal suggestions/dreams start with banning all religions and destroying all guns, every last one on earth. Religion just fuels those fires of hate and fear. And if nobody has a gun, then nobody else needs one.
Make all kids take biology science classes, and make all adults take remedial biology science classes until everyone understands and accepts that a human is a human is a human no matter what color their skin is, and that each individual human’s sexuality falls on a spectrum that is designated by genetics, not just a casual choice. Put back in place the truth in journalism laws; require “news shows” to tell the actual truth, not just express opinions and spread lies. Oh, and get all of the private corporate influence out of the US government.
But of course, I’m not omnipotent and can’t make these things happen, so my suggestions will simply be ignored or ridiculed.
Surrounded by so much hate and fear, I feel like the world is made of broken glass. I want to be optimistic, but I just can’t, at least not right now. I’m a writer, and usually I have an ending in mind when I begin to write a story. But this time I’m not writing fiction. I can’t begin to imagine how this will end, or when. So I offer you two possible options.
Ending A: Nothing will change. We will continue marching down into this spiraling hole until we either become a fascist country or descend into a civil war.
Ending B: People will start to come to their senses and fight back against the constant onslaught of fear and hate that’s being thrown at us; they’ll vote for sane candidates who have solid ideas on how to fix our country’s problems, turn off the “news”, stop supporting churches and individuals that preach divisive doctrine, and actually start to care for one another again.
Which will we choose?
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