Sometimes I just have to shake my head and wonder just what in the name of all that's holy is wrong with this country. I've almost lost the capacity to be shocked any longer by what some nut case has done has done with a gun or, in many cases, guns--almost. The lunacy that we witness in this country because any lunatic can own or procure a gun is simply unspeakable. I was truly shocked and appalled to see that another madman with a gun, actually 2 guns, had killed 13 random people and then himself in Binghamton, NY, a few days ago. Even as I am in shock, I could actually understand somebody not being shocked by these mass murders any longer. They've become routine. We can count on 3 or 4 of these every year, it seems. Just think about how many there have been in this country in the four weeks. Care to guess how many lives have been blown away in that time? Forty-seven, brothers and sisters. FORTY-SEVEN. From coast to coast: New York, Washington, Alabama, North Carolina, California. Oh yeah, this is nationwide madness.I sat down to write this piece about the Binghamton murders, but in checking Google News to get a link for the Binghamton story, lo and behold: two more stories of mass murder confront me. This violence leaves me speechless, and every time something like this happens, I go all nuts again about the idiotic gun laws we have in this country that unquestionably enable these killings. Worse and truly depressing, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that those laws will ever change. Americans are a violent people, and we will not brook any curbs on our capacities for wreaking it whenever and on whomever we chose.
In Graham, Washington, yesterday a guy killed his five kids and himself after his wife told him she was leaving him. The kids were 7, 12, 14, and 16. The kids were shot multiple times with a high-powered rifle just to make sure they were all good and dead. Four of the five were in their beds. My God!
In Pittsburgh yesterday morning, some lunatic who was pissed off at his mother shot and killed three policeman who were responding to the domestic disturbance call. The whole tiff between mother and son started because the dog had pissed on the floor. In context, I suppose we should all be thankful that the guy didn't kill his mom, too. God help us all.
6 comments:
There are more than enough good size shootings to warrant a cable channel on their own, something like Nancy Grace.
Alas, you are unquestionably right.
I did a post on March 31 about John C. Calhoun.
I started reading his writings. I had never before questioned anything connected with our praise and adulation of Lincoln, however:
"It is madness to suppose that the Union can be preserved by force. Disguise it as you may, the contest is one between power and liberty."
Do you think that our attitude towards the Civil War is possibly another example of our fascination by violence, and why we find it so satisfying?
Hmmmm. I'm not so sure that I'd equate fascination with violence with finding it satisfying. Although I don't think this is what you're saying, is it? I think our historical conditioning as Americans--slavery, destruction of the native Americans, in particular, Manifest Destiny, imperialistic seizure of territories in the 1840s and 1890s--all this leads to our acceptance of violence as normal. We are not a gentle people.
Yes.
(1)Only I don't think it is cause-and-effect. The instances of violence and war in history march along hand in hand with our acceptance of it - they reinforce each other.
(2)What if John Qunicy Addams had issued the Emancipation Proclamation and had made it work? How would we view Lincoln and the Civil War? Would we consider him a pawn of the John Brown-type radicals?
(3)If we are not gentle, what are we?
Are we brutal?
There are only so many choices.
If we are brutal, have we actually understood - as writers - what it means to write for a brutal audience?
1. Of course. War/violence have to be hallowed as a legitimate tool of foreign policy and then further sanctified by attaching notions of honor and patriotism to it. The idea of dying for an abstraction like "country" won't stand up to scrutiny, so it's one of the "truths" that people are socialized into from the beginning of their lives, so when it comes time for their lives to be sacrificed for whatever political expedient is at hand, they do it willingly, to the plaudits of everyone else.
2. JQA could have never gotten an ounce of political backing for emancipation in the 1820s. He would have been considered a lunatic. It would never have worked then. Lincoln, in my view, was a pragmatist to his bones. Emancipation was a war measure. He is on record as saying if not freeing the slaves would preserve the Union, he would take that course.
3. We are callous, avaricious, and, increasingly, ignorant. The three reinforce each other. As writers, it's our obligation to stand for the opposite of these.
I don't think "brutal" with its connotations of savagery and barbarism is accurate for the vast majority of us, although it would certainly describe a portion of Americans.
Post a Comment