Oakland California: 4 policeman dead
Rural Mississippi: a few more dead
A North Carolina Nursing Home: another half dozen or more dead
Binghamton New York: 14 more dead, 2 in critical yet
Pittsburgh PA: 3 cops dead, one more wounded in a deadly ambush
This is just in the last month.
Maybe this is why we like TV violence so much, so that it prepares us for reality, and hardens our hearts to the pain and anguish of communities not that far away, but closer than we think.
When I was a teenager in the 1970's, I was shocked by news reports of the Khmer Rouge Killing fields in Cambodia, and stories of hundreds of thousands of people dying. Americans decried the slaughter in Cambodia as barbaric, we did the same as war in the Balkans turned to ethnic extermination, and we did it again as Rwanda was torn apart by the warring Hutu and Tutsi tribes.
Darfur? Lots of outrage, lots of talk, and the killing goes on. We Americans have this absurd idea that we should lead the world, and be its moral compass, much like we once were.
But we are not. No one looks to America for leadership outside of Americans. Our great society, once the envy of many in the world, is now mocked and reviled outside our borders. Invading a sovereign nation on trumped up evidence will do that to one's street cred.
The point is, how many hundreds of thousands of Americans have died at the end of a gun barrel since January 1st, 2000? Do we even want to do the math on that one? I know the numbers are terrifying to ponder, but it is in the hundreds each day. That easily rivals anything happening currently in Darfur or once long ago in Cambodia.
For a few moments, let us put the war on terror aside, I'm not saying we should put the Afghanistan and Iraq situations somewhere out of sight, but we should take a long look back, and try and figure out not where our society lost its way, but why?
America has a greater percentage of its population imprisoned than any other country. Yes we do, even more than those so called freedom hating communists in China. Is that not amazing?
A free society with more citizens incarcerated than any other?
We have lost our soul. we traded it for easy credit and materialism unrivaled by any civilization to come before us. Caesar and the Senators of ancient Rome have nothing on America. Caesar tried to buy the people's loyalty time and time again by spending his Empire's treasury.
Is there a lesson in the modern day paralleling that?
For us, it is all about who has the most stuff, and we are easily swayed on what we should want by what we see in the various media.
It is a sad statement about our country that we are more interested in protecting the right of anybody anywhere to own a firearm, and possess the ability to exterminate other human beings, than we are in protecting the right of those same gun owning individuals living on the brink of financial disaster to have a job that enables them to support their (In far too many cases)unrealistic lifestyle.
The political class created the addicts, and are now expecting them to go cold turkey. If every day a few of them happen to snap and cull a few victims from "the herd", well, there's probably a bean counter somewhere figuring out that the victim(s) would never have paid as much into the system as they would have drawn out, so its a good thing.
The even crazier thing is that the last thing we need to do right now is to try and restrict firearm ownership. People need the right to defend themselves. If there was any proof that the government can not protect us, the veritable wave of mass murders, in churches, in malls, and in nursing homes, of all places, should tell you that restricting weapons is not the answer.
I have always advocated training and tight oversight of firearms, I would even allow for psychological testing, along with certification. But a balance must be struck. The carnage is spiraling to the point that it is beginning to resemble the American west of the late nineteenth century.
TV or Movies are not the cause, nor is the idea that our freedoms are too loose. The cause is a moral decline, and a lack of appreciation for the difference between what is right and wrong.
We traded our souls for immediate gratification, and taught the next generation that we would always look out for them and give them everything they need, never holding them accountable for their actions. We have taught them that some are more equal than others, which is why some drunk drivers get5 life sentences, while some with rich parents get probation and go to college on house arrests. That's why poor kids get busted for drugs and get several years, and the kid with a pricey lawyer wears an ankle bracelet.
America isn't fair. America is not a country its people can believe in anymore. It is a dangerous place, and in some neighborhoods is no better than Mogadishu or Beirut.
But as long as most can afford to move to the suburbs, the problem won't get addressed. as long as the haves can move away from the have nots, it will keep getting worse. We treat the symptoms, but never the disease, and we play this game with society's overall health at our own peril.
It is not a Republican problem. It is not a Democrat problem.
It is an American problem.We are dying from within of a cancer we willingly subjected ourselves to, much like an addict shooting up with a drug at a dosage level he knows could kill him. "It hasn't yet" is the insane reasoning used to keep doing it.
Look at the body count, as it grows day by day. Now tell me it isn't killing us, one American at a time.
Don't worry kids, politicians are spending your future earnings today!
