Yesterday at lunch with a friend, he asked if I knew about the school shooting in Connecticut. I said I hadn't and he was telling me what he knew and we sat talking about how sick someone had to be to do it and how children are the last ones who should pay the price of someone's mental illness. The fact that most of them were five and six years old made the horror even worse. The only thing that was worse was the story that came out during the first Gulf War of Iraqui soldiers going through a NICU in Kuwait and killing the babies on life support.
We handle Nazi murders, Soviet murders, Pol-Pot, et. al. killing their citizens in the millions with somewhat of an "Oh, really?" attitude. As Eddie Izzard once said, we're really kind of allright with that. Just because millions of Jews, Russian and Cambodian dissidents were the ones who died doesn't make it any less horrible. I think it's the sheer numbers that freeze our minds. We simply cannot fathom death on that level. We've never seen it so we cannot conceive of an evil of that calibre. So we tuck it away as a fact in our minds and hide it behind Aunt Myrtle's fruit cake in our mental attics. We know it happened, but we don't accept that it happened on any real level. The only ones who can understand that horror are the ones who were there and the ones who had to clean up the mess after it was discovered. I don't think those folks were ever the same again after. No one can stare down at that abyss and not have it change them in a fundamental way.
I came home yesterday afternoon and listened to the TV and read online reports and died a little inside. I no longer have small children and no grandchildren yet, but as a mother, I could not conceive of the loss of 20 small children whose biggest fear when they got up yesterday morning was whether or not Santa believed they were good enough to get that special toy for Christmas. Yes, I cried and cringed inside where a part of me was just recoiling in horror. Let me explain why, and perhaps all of you who read this blog will understand me a little better.
Children are absolutely innocent. They have not yet learned the deceit and guile by which most live their lives. Children are literal and believe things quite literally. At five years old they don't yet have a concept of much outside themselves and they are the center of their own universes. Children must be that way to survive. Adults perceive of children thus in nature's way of securing the next generation. Humans tend to nurture things that are cute, so babies are cute and soft and smell as pure as the first sunshine in Spring. Children are resources to carry on our genetic material into the future generations and nature will ensure we do that by protecting them until they can protect themselves. That's why the teen years are pretty much like living in The Exorcist.
We like to pretend we protect the innocent and vulnerable in our society. It makes us sleep better at night. But there is no way anyone on the face of this planet could have predicted or prevented the tragic events that occurred in Connecticut yesterday morning. And trust me when I tell you this, guns or no guns, the monster that killed his mother then went into the school where she was a teacher and slaughtered all of those people could not have been stopped by anything but a bullet to his head. No regulation, no legislation, nothing in this world will stop a madman when he is bent on madness.
Now, here, Eddie Izzard and I will have to agree to disagree. Guns do not kill people. They are merely devices by which people destroy themselves and each other. Cars kill more people than guns yet no one is out there trying to ban driving them. Alcohol and illegal drugs kill more people than guns every years and there is no great hue and cry. Heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure kill more people each year than guns and we still have no way of stopping that either. Eddie Izzard says he thinks the guns help. Really? What about the guy who beats his girlfriend to death with his fists and his boots? Did they kill her or did the mind behind those appendages have something to do with it?
Saying that guns kill people is like saying that you failed your algebra test because of your pencil. It's the mind behind the device, not the freaking device! When you can somehow diagnose and cure defective minds then you can begin to "fix" society. At no time in human history have any of you been able to do that. Regardless of how hippies think they effected change in the 60's.
Now, if you want to know how hippies and their liberal ilk are to blame for the past 30 years of horror and terror in public shootings and mass murders, I'll tell you sometime. I will only say this, the rational mind will snap eventually when constantly told to accept the irrational. We are seeing the fruits of the liberal agenda and their unintended consequences.
My heart hurts for all senseless deaths, regardless of the method. I get murderous rage. I've been trapped in a room full of PTA moms. But I went to my happy place, with my pet fire breathing dragon and I was able to get through it. I have no plans whatsoever of calling my elected representatives demanding some sort of legislation that will in no way prevent this tragedy from happening again. The enured are waking up, my friends, and it is not going to be a good day.
We handle Nazi murders, Soviet murders, Pol-Pot, et. al. killing their citizens in the millions with somewhat of an "Oh, really?" attitude. As Eddie Izzard once said, we're really kind of allright with that. Just because millions of Jews, Russian and Cambodian dissidents were the ones who died doesn't make it any less horrible. I think it's the sheer numbers that freeze our minds. We simply cannot fathom death on that level. We've never seen it so we cannot conceive of an evil of that calibre. So we tuck it away as a fact in our minds and hide it behind Aunt Myrtle's fruit cake in our mental attics. We know it happened, but we don't accept that it happened on any real level. The only ones who can understand that horror are the ones who were there and the ones who had to clean up the mess after it was discovered. I don't think those folks were ever the same again after. No one can stare down at that abyss and not have it change them in a fundamental way.
I came home yesterday afternoon and listened to the TV and read online reports and died a little inside. I no longer have small children and no grandchildren yet, but as a mother, I could not conceive of the loss of 20 small children whose biggest fear when they got up yesterday morning was whether or not Santa believed they were good enough to get that special toy for Christmas. Yes, I cried and cringed inside where a part of me was just recoiling in horror. Let me explain why, and perhaps all of you who read this blog will understand me a little better.
Children are absolutely innocent. They have not yet learned the deceit and guile by which most live their lives. Children are literal and believe things quite literally. At five years old they don't yet have a concept of much outside themselves and they are the center of their own universes. Children must be that way to survive. Adults perceive of children thus in nature's way of securing the next generation. Humans tend to nurture things that are cute, so babies are cute and soft and smell as pure as the first sunshine in Spring. Children are resources to carry on our genetic material into the future generations and nature will ensure we do that by protecting them until they can protect themselves. That's why the teen years are pretty much like living in The Exorcist.
We like to pretend we protect the innocent and vulnerable in our society. It makes us sleep better at night. But there is no way anyone on the face of this planet could have predicted or prevented the tragic events that occurred in Connecticut yesterday morning. And trust me when I tell you this, guns or no guns, the monster that killed his mother then went into the school where she was a teacher and slaughtered all of those people could not have been stopped by anything but a bullet to his head. No regulation, no legislation, nothing in this world will stop a madman when he is bent on madness.
Now, here, Eddie Izzard and I will have to agree to disagree. Guns do not kill people. They are merely devices by which people destroy themselves and each other. Cars kill more people than guns yet no one is out there trying to ban driving them. Alcohol and illegal drugs kill more people than guns every years and there is no great hue and cry. Heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure kill more people each year than guns and we still have no way of stopping that either. Eddie Izzard says he thinks the guns help. Really? What about the guy who beats his girlfriend to death with his fists and his boots? Did they kill her or did the mind behind those appendages have something to do with it?
Saying that guns kill people is like saying that you failed your algebra test because of your pencil. It's the mind behind the device, not the freaking device! When you can somehow diagnose and cure defective minds then you can begin to "fix" society. At no time in human history have any of you been able to do that. Regardless of how hippies think they effected change in the 60's.
Now, if you want to know how hippies and their liberal ilk are to blame for the past 30 years of horror and terror in public shootings and mass murders, I'll tell you sometime. I will only say this, the rational mind will snap eventually when constantly told to accept the irrational. We are seeing the fruits of the liberal agenda and their unintended consequences.
My heart hurts for all senseless deaths, regardless of the method. I get murderous rage. I've been trapped in a room full of PTA moms. But I went to my happy place, with my pet fire breathing dragon and I was able to get through it. I have no plans whatsoever of calling my elected representatives demanding some sort of legislation that will in no way prevent this tragedy from happening again. The enured are waking up, my friends, and it is not going to be a good day.
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