12/14/12

12-14-12 - I awoke this morning to illness. Sure, I’ve had the flu for the past week…but I’m not talking about that. Actually, there is no physical illness existing on the planet that compares to what I witnessed on my television screen on this day. It took a few minutes to settle in. In today’s world…that says a lot. As a matter of fact, today’s world has taught me that time can heal the news of airplanes flying into buildings and killing thousands or a student walking into a college or high school and opening fire on random people. Violence has become such a part of our daily lives that our minds have learned to block it out…but nothing could prepare me for visions of innocent elementary school children being gunned down in the hallways by a currently nameless adult. Doesn’t this kind of thing just happen in the Middle East? If we give the person responsible a racial or religious identification…does it make it easier to swallow? If we send in boatloads of troops to annihilate anyone in the affected area that even physically or religiously resembles the person responsible and blast it all over the news every night…do we sleep better at night? If we make up fake playing cards with the perpetrators faces on it…can we even laugh about it here and there to lighten the mood a bit so our children can feel safer in their own homes? How much ocean do you have to cross before you can label a senseless act of violence ‘Terrorism’? No one wants to hear it…but terrorism is alive and well within our own country and has taken giant leaps past the war zones of the media in regards to how evil it can truly be. How have we, as patriots, allowed this to happen? Lack of retention. Americans can’t stay angry for long periods of time. We preoccupy ourselves and change the channel when we just can’t take anymore. We invent contingency plans to deal with the aftermath of tragedy but our laws won’t allow for prevention. Legal experts now call it profiling. We are no longer allowed to deal with problem people and are forced to show sympathies and solutions for their ‘issues’…even though repeated attempts to do so have failed miserably and catastrophically in most cases. Our legal system tries desperately to fix in our society what can’t be repaired. Our society insists on rehabilitation of those that can’t be rehabilitated. It insists on putting criminals on probation which is just a fancy legal term for delaying the inevitable. At what point in our civilization did we give up on trying to stop wrong doing dead in its tracks…and start turning a blind eye and praying for the best? This is no longer the America from our history books. This is no longer the super hero country of stories past. We’ve become the world’s counselor while ignoring our own problems. Why? Because it makes for better media coverage on the nightly news. Psychotic individuals like the elementary school shooter do not develop such mental issues overnight. Someone, somewhere, knew who this person was and what he was capable of before this event took place and, even though nothing is official yet, it was more than likely someone in the legal profession. We couldn’t call him on it or try to prevent it because the behavior wouldn’t be politically correct and it could be considered profiling. They’ll protect his identity until the last minute and until he has reached near celebrity status…and THEN introduces us to all the professionals, friends, and neighbors that knew him personally and thought he was crazy…but just couldn’t say anything ahead of time because it wasn’t NICE. The only thing good that will come of this is the fact that the gunman is dead and we won’t have to watch him deteriorate before our very eyes in a jail cell awaiting trial with bright orange hair or refusing to shave a beard for religious reasons. When you refuse to meet violence head on with equal or greater violence…you are destined to lose the conflict. Contrary to popular belief…it doesn’t teach our children that ‘violence is the answer to everything’…it teaches them that monsters are real…and they live down the street or right next door to us…and they look just like everyone else. They don’t have to live thousands of miles away and claim different gods. Our troops don’t need to be on foreign shores kicking in doors in search of terrorists because they’re right here in our own neighborhoods in our own country. Why can’t we stay angry? Why do we forget the wrongdoings on our own soil so quickly? Does it all heal at dinner time when the news stations show footage from the inevitable candle light vigil? Will it all be gone in a week when some rock star donates a lot of money to the families and plays a concert in honor of the fallen? Finally, when the media bores of the repeated coverage…will they start showing footage of Lindsey Lohan in court again to take our minds off of things? Anything to fuel the beast within, I guess. To prove my point, in the short time that I have been writing this, the channel has been changed on the television to one that isn’t showing coverage and I’m desperately searching for the emotion that was initially present at the beginning. Don’t change the channel. Keep watching. Get mad. Stay mad. Protect those around you today and in the future regardless of the tragedies destined to occur that will soon take the place of the one we all witnessed today. Any leader or elected official can make a phone call offering his condolences…but our fore fathers would have ridden a horse to Connecticut and continued to kick the corpse of the man responsible long after his was dead to show the world that we are tired of putting up with shit like this by our own. Man up, America. Stop shaving the monster in order to make him look like the rest of us. Don’t change the channel. I came from a broken family. I was bullied sometimes in school. I have military and martial arts training. I've had two divorces. I play violent video games. I watch violent movies. I watch violent television shows. I own guns. I shoot guns. I have never hurt or threatened anyone with a gun. Ever. Gun control is a myth. People control is the only answer. It starts with parenting and ends with education. It's like blaming the airplanes for 9/11...