Have We Come To This?

 

 

I keep hearing from people who think that the mass murder in Connecticut boils down to a need for more people to carry guns.  This country is suffering from a virulent and systemic disease - a disease of the heart, if you will, that has permeated and compromised every area of life.  You can't kill a disease with a gun; you can only kill the sufferer. So it feels like it is our culture, certainly our future, in the crosshairs.

This hideous assault on school children should not become a political football, but it will.  This horrible loss of life and potential should not become a partisan issue, but it will.  It is my opinion that the problem should be approached with a three prong solution to stabilize and treat our society, in the same way that a post MI cardiac patient is stabilized and treated.   

1) Frontline drugs and initiation of appropriate emergency measures - that is to say sensible gun control and reinvigoration via funding and restoration of resources to our mental health community for diagnosis, treatment and long term care.  These two things are equivalent in my mind.  

2) Investigation of the onset of the disease, life style contributors and initiation of long term drug and other medical therapies.  Our primary underlying problem is the corruption of our government.  The brothel formerly known as Congress is coin operated and serves the needs of moneyed special interests.  From the gun lobby to the Koch brothers, the system is rotten with corruption.  One of the major contributors to this disease process is the corporate owned media – there is no free press anymore.  They lie through omission, usually promote a partisan agenda and often engage in mere propaganda.  This has gone on for so long that it feels like it can’t be changed, but believe that it can.  After all there are exceptions, Maddow and Klein to name but two.  We must commit ourselves to change.

3) Ongoing monitoring of drug and medical therapies as well as life style changes and the advance if any of the disease.  Get involved; pay attention; demand more from your government and media. Reestablish civility in this society, perhaps we need to rethink how we discipline and teach our children, including what we allow them to see, what we allow them to hear.  Insist that greed is not an acceptable character trait.  Money is not more important than people - the idea that it is feeds the concept that people are disposable for whatever reason.  

Get past the bullshit because it doesn’t serve you.  I don’t like guns and I want sensible gun control, but I don’t want to take the guns of responsible gun owners.  I never have.  Keep your guns, dance with them, sing with them and make love to them – just don’t let them fall into the hands of a lunatic.  

Learn to identify double-speak because we are inundated and swimming in it, and this bastardization of language and communication is to corruption what cholesterol is to heart disease.  For instance, next time you run into a bible-thumping, gun-loving, fear-mongering, Rightwing-nutjob who is promoting a prolife agenda and squealing about freedom and the Constitution, you might advocate that there is no respect for life in demanding a freedom based upon a Constitution that must be bathed in the blood of our children.