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| Any connection to the age of mass killings is pure speculation |
Guns. That's the thing. AIDS? Hardly ever mentioned, even if the number of Americans murdered by guns in an average year are only a few thousand more than those who die of HIV/AIDS each year. Betcha I know which cause of death you hear more about from our media, our pols, our educators and even our religious leaders*.
Of course basic horse sense and concern for the common good would make it easy for us to realize guns existed aplenty when I was growing up, yet we didn't have regular 'mass shooter drills' in school. That's because mass shootings in school didn't happen on a regular basis. They do now.
Common sense and good will would lead us to realize we might have made changes in our society, somewhere between the time when such horrors didn't happen regularly and the time when they did, that shouldn't have been made. But that is something we will not do. Ever. We will not admit we've been wrong.
One of the morning news shows earlier this year reported on a NYT article that basically said fewer parents than ever spank their children, while violence among our youth is at all time highs. Don't let that fool you, however. Turns out spanking still makes kids more violent. Again, we will not admit we were wrong. Ever.
If millions die of AIDS? So be it. We're not going to stop pushing our sex and drugs culture.
If students by the hundreds are killed in school shootings? So be it. We'll deflect to guns or bigotry if possible.
If suicide among children reaches all time highs? So be it. We couldn't be wrong about our changes in family and child rearing.
If drug overdoses, non-gun related suicides and AIDS kill more than 100,000 Americans a year? So be it. Except for those haters over there, we're the best.
If drug addiction, drug dependency and emotional and psychological problems continue to plague our nation and our children at unprecedented rates? So be it. Focus on opioids and ignore the rest.
We'll talk of guns and laws and cabbage and kings. But we will never, ever admit that we've been wrong over the last half century or so. That is a sacrifice we simply are not prepared to make. Not our press. Not our politicians. Not our national leaders and celebrities. Not our educators. And with few exceptions, not our religious leaders. And if a million children must be aborted and a thousand children killed and ruined to avoid the horrible confession? That is a sacrifice we are more than prepared to make.
God bless those killed at Sandy Hook and in all such violence that defines the society we have built. Let strength and peace be given in abundance to the loved ones left behind. And may God have mercy on a nation that would allow this to continue rather than in humility concede what we will never admit.
*Except Orthodox Christian leaders. I noticed that many of them are willing to step up and say there just might be a connection between the global cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960s and the sudden spread of a disease driven largely by drugs and sex that to date has killed over 35 million people.
Yep.
ReplyDeleteThe Navy had a relevant jingle;
“Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said
‘What in the h*ll did I do that for?’”
Our society could learn that and put it into practice. Again, it's clear right now that there is no end to the thousands of lives lost and millions harmed that we'll tolerate rather than ever ask if the problem was our lofty ideas and agendas.
DeleteThat NPR story was SAD. But it kind of highlights that most of society doesn’t know how to process evil or tragedy. I’d have a hard time if something like this happened to my child too, but the poor dad lost himself in trying to find a physical reason for the killers’ evil and ended up abandoning his other kids.
ReplyDeleteBut it points back to your main point: it doesn’t ultimately matter as long as those sacrosanct beliefs aren’t touched on. It doesn’t matter that the killers’ own father abandoned his kid before and after death - the body didn’t get claimed for longer than reasonable, as I recall. He didn’t bear any responsibility for his first family as he’d already moved on with another. But, it was really his “right” to find happiness with someone else so what can we say? “Bad guns! Shame on you!”
Anyway, it’s not much different on the feminist front. If you are an educated woman you must carry water for the term feminism, even with whatever modifiers you choose to add, because that’s what you do. Regardless of the reality that feminist ideas have largely burdened the middle and lower classes. No one wants to admit that but it’s true. I’m old enough to see my friends’ regrets, strangers share their own, and the tension in the younger moms’ life is still palpable. They’re on their way to regrets. But... feminism good, or you don’t get accepted into polite society, or something.
When you consider the failed promises of post-war liberalism, that is certainly one of them. I remember an economist who pointed out some years ago that one reason for stagnant wages (one, not the only) was both parents working. Companies had to pay less knowing that two incomes, rather than one, was becoming the norm. The irony? When I was in school, a big mantra I heard from feminists was that women no longer had to 'marry for money.' They made their own money and could be independent. And yet now, if you want to stay home and be a stay at home mom, your only hope is to marry a man with lots of money! If you don't, then like it or not, you'll be in the workplace. Which then means those moms who are at home and involved in things are more and more often than not well to do moms whose husbands have big incomes. So that while my mom was hardly rich, she would do things in the schools and communities alongside doctors' wives, lawyers' wives and such. And yet today, my mom would likely have to work, leaving the 'community involvement' to those women of higher means. So seldom do changes yield what they promise.
DeleteYup! But I also find that people are not willing to make the sacrifices of material comfort either to make it possible for a mom to stay home. I'm often weirdly surprised by how many people I meet where one spouse alone makes more than my household, but they definitely couldn't afford to have another child because... lifestyle considerations!
DeleteAlso, the value of domesticity has been lost by both women AND men. Women still retain an innate sense of it on some level, but there's still confusion about what kind of value you put on it. Most women only see their economic contribution to domesticity as having value. And it's not helped by the guys. I've seen a LOT of guys be really uncomfortable with their wives not working for a time for whatever reason. And as soon as they go back to work the wives are seen again as equal partners. We certainly don't value hearth and home as we should.