Toxic Mix

Patriotism

I am an American patriot.  I believe in America, that it can be Reagan’s “Shining city on a hill”; the hope of the world.  I know: “American Exceptionalism”, the idea America is different than any other country established on earth, is “out of style”. But I still think it’s true.  America is exceptional in its dreams and its goals, if not in its current actions.  We are a nation dedicated to becoming “…a more Perfect Union”, aware of our flaws and the failures, but working to improve both.

But right now, in this particular moment of American history, we are in a toxic mix of extremism, frustration, tailored personal communication, and advanced weaponry.  And we are paying the price for that mix, almost daily.

Common Message 

First there is the “fuel”.  Americans no longer hear a common message of information.  The days of “Huntley-Brinkley or Cronkite or Jennings” are far behind us.  Even those names don’t resonate to the majority of the American people anymore.  There was once a time where we all received a similar message about what was going on in the world.  We had a common source of knowledge, what today would be called “mainstream media”.  And while that corporate media sometimes succumbed to government messaging, it could be critical as well.  The 1960’s; with the triple crises of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal, taught us that.

America changed because we all received the images of the attack on the marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge.  We all saw the tragedy of the children killed in the church bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  We all watched as the bodies of the four civil rights volunteers were uncovered at the dam.  It was a common message:  America needed to change.  

We changed when we saw the carnage in Vietnam, for no gain.  And we changed when the criminality of the Presidency was revealed, bit by bit, over two years of televised hearings.  

Fuel

But today, we have such a multiplicity of information sources, that almost any event is subject to under-cutting and re-interpretation.  Ten were killed at a supermarket this weekend, shot down by a crazed eighteen year-old filled with hate for Black people.  Most folks see that as terrible.  But there is a place in the “internet” where his actions are heroic, calling “the revolution” where “whites” will “re-take” America.  Even some major “news” networks are whispering the need for “action”.  “We (whites) are being replaced, and something must be done”, they say.  

Was the January 6^th attack on the Capitol an Insurrection, or just a “demonstration” that got out of hand? Despite the pandemic, was the election of 2020 the most successful in American history in terms of percentage of Americans voting, or was it stolen?  Are Democrats just folks with different views than Republicans, or are they (we) all pedophiles?  It all depends where you get your information.  It’s the gasoline spreading on the floor, the fumes seeping into every crevice of American political life.  All it needs – is a match.

And Fire

And then there is the fire.  We are a nation awash in weapons.  There are over twenty million semi-automatic rifles in our country.  There are  120.5 guns to every 100 Americans (BBC).  This weekend alone there were four “mass shootings”: in Buffalo at a super-market, in Milwaukee near the NBA playoff game, in Houston at a flea market, and in a California church.  

They all had different reasons, but there is a common theme – guns.  America has a “gun” culture, that not only accepts guns for hunting and sport, but as a weapon of personal protection, and now, one for “political” change.  The old arguments against guns were based on crime, “if you ban guns only criminals will have them”.  But now, the gun argument is about government.  For many, guns are now “protection” against a perceived over-reaching federal government.  The Second Amendment is now another form of “political speech”. A concealed gun under a jacket no longer even requires a license here in Ohio.  What are my political views:  look under my lapel and see.

Good Guy

We do not control mass shootings: in schools, in churches, in crowds and in places where folks are doing their grocery shopping.   We cannot armor our institutions enough to prevent the overwhelming tide of weaponry from seeping in.  Aaron Salter, the heroic retired police officer who charged into the line-of-fire in Buffalo did exactly what we expected him to do.  He was the “first man in”, part of the “defense” strategy we all know about mass shootings.  The first officer on the scene goes in to engage the shooter, to refocus him from killing his victims to defending himself from police.

Retired Officer Salter was the security guard at the “Tops” Super-Market.  He was outside the store when the gunman started, and could easily have walked away.  He did not, and certainly saved lives as he gave his own.  But his bullets didn’t penetrate the body armor of the well prepared shooter.  Salter was the “good guy with the gun”.  He valiant efforts, his sacrifice, wasn’t enough to stop the carnage.

More Perfect

America will have to “live with” this time of risk.  As a child, I hid under desks and in the hallways from atomic bombs.  That didn’t happen.  But our children today have a much better chance of hiding in the corner or the closet of a classroom, or under the racks in the bread aisle, or under the seats in the movie theatre, because of a mass shooter.   We drill them on what to do, but we really can do nothing to keep it from happening.  And that’s not a question of doing, it’s a question will, a will to take action.  America won’t.

We have a long way to perfection.  And we aren’t getting any closer by allowing our nation to remain a shooting gallery, and sending gallant officers to their deaths.  The fuel continues to spread, and the match is already lit.  How much has to burn is America’s choice.