Sounds obvious and yet where is the other violence? Yes, there is a lot but the worst of the worst comes from nowhere, for no reason and destroys beyond reason. Why is there so much violence being played out with the most destructive firearms available and played upon our most innocent? It seems with each year the guns are more aggressive and the children are younger. The shooter in the Columbine High School murders in 1999 used bombs and different 9mm weapons. It seemed avoidable in hindsight as so many catastrophes do. Columbine was planned for a year, mostly in plain sight. The planned murders undetected or unnoticed went forward and ended in the expected death of the shooter.
We have been asking the very same questions for years now and Uvalde seems to be a turning point in the discussions and if it isn’t we need to press it till it is. There are reasons as to how we got to this place in our history and as illusive as the answers seem we have to squeeze this moment till we understand and have a way to change. For now we are knocking on all the old doors that have become more hardened. Hardened. The word that’s now used to describe how we will fix schools. Its foolishness of course. Hardening our schools is a foolish as asking the same questions and listening to the poor answers.
Even small, random acts of violence can seem justified from time to time but are still all violence. The small and terrible things that happen to us all that we can’t seem to forget or ignore. It all matters and it all adds up and like all things, will stick around unless something happens to relieve the energy that is balling up and getting in the way.
Change and demand for it is the only way we will see a difference. Anger, frustration, hatred, and the perception of mis management in life is all around us. The traffic that won’t move, the store with higher prices with none of what I’m looking for, the boss that is a jackass, the paycheck that doesn’t cut it. Simple, everyday and what else is in there? What are the deeper grievances? Why can’t people cope? Are these the wrong questions? I conclude they are. Logic does work and logic says here, “find different questions and you will get different answers”. Maybe answers that will work.
We’ve become a land of grievances. The complaints add up to violence, rinse and repeat. Collectively targeted are those that cannot fight because the weak will always be hurt by the stronger. Enter David, the giant slayer and who is David now? The lone shooter or the “good guy with a gun”. We acknowledge the times have turned things on their head. Strength is perceived but it isn’t strength, it is raw force with no purpose other than to destroy. Cruel and uncaring in all these act of violence have brought us to where we are being led by the broken ones. It’s not us, we’re not to blame. But that doesn’t square up either.
Violence is. It’s like fire, water or wind. Violence is a force of nature too, like fire and water they are part of our world in balance and out of balance we burn or drown.
The Vietnam War spawned the poster above. One much like this was on the wall of my high school friend. We played guitar, snuck cigarettes and bemoaned the war and its obvious failures. The words are stuck in my head. War is not healthy for children and other living things. This war we are having here. The one we are in now. What’s the name? Is that the right question?