The American people are told constantly that we have nothing in common, and share nothing together. We are told that we are hopelessly, permanently and utterly divided. It’s not true.
Here is one thing we all share. Any one of us, at any time, can become a victim of gun violence. The evil can manifest itself anywhere at anytime in America. There is no place that is safe. Nowhere.
Schools, churches, concerts, workplaces, army bases, malls, synagogues, mosques, highways, parades and any place where people gather is at risk. The gunman can come from anywhere at any time. Americans are being routinely targeted, hunted and slaughtered. Last week, the carnage came to the small town of Lewiston, Maine. Eighteen people were killed and 13 injured in a bowling alley and a restaurant.
Think about that. Imagine that.
Imagine the terror and violence that was loosed in a place where families bring their children to have fun. Imagine what it looked like after the massacre. It would have looked like a war zone.
When my daughter was younger we used to go bowling all the time. Strangely, I always had an anxiety about going into a bowling alley because I had an irrational fear that it would be the place where this evil manifested itself close to me. Some people manifest their worries about life in a fear of flying, driving, swimming or a hundred other things. For me, being shot with my children in a bowling alley was mine. It sounds nuts, but then it happened in a small Maine town in a beautiful part of our country on a normal American day.
This madness must end.
My wife is Canadian, and I spend a lot of time in Canada. It is different there because I don’t worry about being shot when I go to the mall, supermarket, movies or for a walk. I don’t have to be constantly looking over my shoulder. When my stepkids go to school I don’t worry about them not coming back. There seems to me to be an absence of dread and a deficit of fear that seems ever present in America. When I go outside in Canada I don’t scan the crowd looking for the gunman. I simply don’t think about it.
This is a fearful time in America. Everywhere there is fear and anxiety. Everywhere.
There are 300 million guns in America. A few belong to me. A few might belong to you. This fact should have nothing to do with ending this crisis of death in America. The sickest people in our society have easy access to military weapons, and they are using them with abandon. They are using them to slaughter our children and elderly and everyone in between. The greatest lie of this era is that we can’t do anything about it.
We can. We must.
The new Speaker of the House from the fascist wing of Congress blames the "human heart", its failure, for Lewiston. What exactly that means I am unsure, since it was an addled, poisoned brain and not a heart that killed and mauled those victims. Those inhumane monsters who speak so glibly about these horrific life moments should experience them at least once on a personal level. Let us see how quickly they run to decry the human heart as the villain. Worse than Republican stupidity is their toxic inhumanity. Johnson is a white supremacist Xtian nationalist. FACT: There is NO JESUS in Johnson's universe. He lifts up Scripture as his guide book. WHICH part of Scripture? WHICH testament of Scripture? He is phony to his core, a fallow, shallow and hollow servant to his orange puppet master.
He is an answered prayer for evangelicals, the arm of Xtian fealty that parses passages of Holy Scripture like so much Halloween candy. Their apostacy is toxic brew for a bitter and more coarse society. Their soulless darkness looms heavy. It is a death knell for our constitutional democracy. They would destroy all that is good simply to validate their heresy.
Hi Steve.
I live in Whitby, a small community just east of Toronto. Many of my father's family are Americans. When my mom and dad broke up, my mother moved to Florida and married an American, a former air force pilot and FBI agent (retired). Over the years of visits and gatherings, I came to love the American sense of wonder and adventure, things would always be better tomorrow. I came to love my mother's new partner; he was a wonderful man. Sadly, they both have passed away, so I don't go to Florida any longer. All of my Aunts and Uncles have also passed away, and I have lost touch with cousins (to the best of my knowledge live in Texas.)
I have also worked in the US as a technical consultant for Canadian companies that had contracts in the US for various projects. Amazingly, once at NASA in Coco Beach where I was part of a crew installing Canadian made launch control consoles at the Technical Operations Command Centre.
Also a project at the USDA near Beltsville Maryland, a Chrysler stamping plant in Sterling Heights in Michigan and a pharmaceutical company Abbot Labs in North Chicago. among many others.
My work also included several stints in Europe, and in Mexico. I am telling all of this because of that experience I have a pretty good feel for what Western civilization has to offer, and what sometimes, just doesn't deliver.
All of this long winded history is to say how, from my perspective, the US has fallen in delivering one of the key reasons for the counties promises. The pursuit of happiness.
What has replaced that? Paranoia and fear. Truth no longer matters so long as there is someone to blame. If only we could keep the southern border secure. I am always amazed and how I am questioned when entering the US as though I am trying to sneak in to live there instead of being in Canada! There were times I seriously considered moving to the US, but I always put the thought away after careful thought. I never liked the thought of rugged individualism. I always thought that we should care for one another, and take care of those who could not care for themselves.
Humans seem to be different than other animals, in that we contemplate our reason for being. Who we are, and why we are. Maybe other animals do that, but I don't know how they do, because we are the only animals with writing. I can read about other peoples lives. Dolphins can't do that, nor can dogs or cats, or crows, perhaps the most intelligent of birds. Other animals can communicate with each other, be we are the only ones with written and recorded history, philosophy and scientific principles. At least that is the way it seems. But what do I see some (it is important to say some here) Americans doing? Burning books, banning them from libraries, and refusing to allow some thinkers from speaking at universities!! Political leaders (are they, or do they just think they are?) lying in ways that would have been so scandalous as to make an honest person ill.
Please do your best Steve to promote critical thinking, to scour your country of evil propaganda, of ridiculous intolerance, of grifter politicians, of purchased judges and senators, of religious zealots and criminal racist conspirators. Are you a modern Man of Lemancha? I hope for more, so much more. More effective with bigger game in sight, and instead of windmills, tilting at odorous windbags.
As a Canadian, I want the America that was dreamed of by the founders, in spite of the problems with race and constitutional problems. I can see that the second amendment is causing turmoil and to a certain extent a loss of freedom to be secure. Why can't things change? It is an amendment. Doesn't that mean change? The very definition of the work amendment? Things can be changed. It just takes the will to do it, and more people like Steve.