Men with Guns

The killings at Virginia Tech occupy all the news. What happened, who is to blame… should the university “shut down” sooner? What kind of strong police response would have helped? What have we learned?
In the midst of all this - grief, unmitigated grief of parents, family, friends. And fear.
And at the root of all this is the influence of our gun culture. And by “gun culture” I don’t just mean 2nd Amendment rights. I mean the culture where violence is a right and a response.
Some of you know I am a “Law and Order” addict. And I watch a lot of re-runs on USA network, where I get to see way too many ads for World Wrestling Entertainment bouts. This so-called “entertainment” promotes violence, revenge and the settling of differences by throwing one another about.
Now, I watch and enjoy plays and films where violence and battle scenes are part of the story. And I understand this “wrestling” is all show. As a child I watched (secretly - my mother would have had a fit) those old wrestling programs with Bruno Sammartino and Gorgeous George. But that was so fake, and so silly. And I don’t see this WWE wrestling as the same as Lucha Libre.
This is different. This “raw” wrestling, with our without “the Donald”, is brutal even as it is theatrical. And the screaming fans - portrayed as ordinary guys - yelling, veins bulging.
It’s a culture of violence that allows the disinherited, the deranged, the disappointed to think that the only way to settle themselves or their disputes is to take it out on someone else, not with fists but with guns, semi-automatic weapons, rifles. And then take it out on themselves.
Whether it is a murder-suicide in a suburban tract house or urban apartment, or a mass slaying in a school or business, it is too much. Enough. Enough. We are so far beyond any “debate” about gun-owners’ rights and freedoms.
This is no easy thing. I listened to the voice of a soldier in Iraq on television last night. He spoke about the conflicting message of the religious injunction against murder “thou shalt not kill” and the order to shoot that must be obeyed. How he prayed the man in his sites would stop running away so that he did not have to kill him. But the man ran, in fear perhaps, and the soldier “had” to shoot him.
How can we ordinary citizens find a way to end this country, and our society’s addiction to violence and guns? What have we learned? Law and order, indeed!

The War in Iraq - enough already!

I was against it from the get-go, but who am I? Just an ordinary citizen, full of outrage and sadness, standing on some street corner holding a candle.
And the rhetoric goes on and on. To pullout, they say, is to surrender - it means defeat. But how would we know? What does “victory” look like? They went into this war with some misty vision of “freedom and democracy”, routing an evil dictator harboring terrorists and poised to destroy us with WMD’s.
That bill of goods we were sold - and that some actually bought - was all false. Voices raised objections, suggested that this bellicose attitude was not in keeping with what we understood the USA could be, that these acts of war would stir up more hatred of this country and foment more terrorism, not less; would make us not safer or secure but more vulnerable.
There was no real vision, no realistic idea of what Iraq (or Afghanistan) would be after we smashed it all to pieces. No plan for restoring the infrastructure, for helping the new government meet the basic needs for people in Iraq and Afghanistan; or a way to promote a safe, civil society that fosters democracy, education, openness. And we know - without a vision, the people perish.
So now what? We could stay the course (a phrase they don’t use anymore, but whatever they say now means the same thing) - and one commentator suggests we must, and we have to be patient. It could take 12 years to set things right.
Can you imagine - 12 years of this? Billions of dollars every year. Thousands and thousands of deaths (“ours” and “theirs”), even more maimed; civil dislocation and disruption. And what I don’t hear in this argument about budget line-items for war is anything related to the cost here at home.
If we spend billions on the war (“supporting the troops” or supporting the military-industrial complex), the cost must be measured not only in dollars but in the very real human costs as well: the decline of social welfare… families disrupted, lives damaged, lack of funding for needed social programs that keep our society safe, healthy, educated, housed and working [or could, if we ever got our priorities straight in this country].
The future of this country - of our civil, democratic society - is at risk. Does anybody in a position to do anything about it care?