I'm done for the day
I am supposed to be working. That won’t happen. I keep looking at the news reports and commentaries on the "second to the next" tragic massacre. I first saw the reports while browsing Twitter feeds from friends in Italy. That’s how they see this asylum we call a country. I live in Oregon. The Clackamas tragedy hit fairly closed to home. That non-human’s fifteen minutes were cut short today by a better armed shooter in Connecticut.
I went to Rotary like I do every Friday. The mood was very somber. Our speaker was a very bright young man who was to tell us about his “Teach for America” experience. He had recently returned from teaching at a failing school in Connecticut. He knew the Sandy Hook school and the community well and struggled to get past his emotions. His description of the abysmal conditions of a school in one of the most affluent states did little to lift my spirits.
We have many problems but there are solutions for all of them. Our biggest problem is that we have well funded organizations whose mission is to keep those solutions from working. They have a stranglehold on our public discourse and their pawns in congress quake in terror of their disapproval. In some crazy way the right of an individual, no matter how unstable or dangerous to society, to arm himself self like a commando has been conflated with religion, patriotism and the preservation of wealth.
The tragic scenes we watch like bystanders at a bloody pile-up have already set in motion the next round of carnage. “Never again” is a pretty hollow phrase when we know it may be just days before the next sick fuck takes the stage. It is time that support of the NRA should be seen by voters and politicians as a stigma. Maybe those innocent kids died because we don’t have the courage to come to grips with reforming our electoral process. We let cowardly politicians strip away one of the few attempts to limit the lethal firepower available to citizens.
We have a very capable president who doesn’t have to worry about his legacy or his re-election. I am praying that he will take the lead on at least moderate steps back to sanity. Banning assault weapons won’t solve the problem but it will show the world we are at least looking for a solution. In order for a president to be great, he has to be greater than the organized lunacy that is the NRA.
