Religion gone mad. Rage. Revenge. So many
different reasons for 19 men to take the knife or turn the yoke to draw blood
from a few symbols of the other. Only it wasn't symbols that bled, it was
humanity on 9/11. Mothers, brothers, friends, fiancées. It was the collective
us. It was another day of hate and
violence.
Bruce Springsteen's
album and its title song "The
Rising," based on some of his reactions to 9/11, are a vicious gut punch and a loving embrace of an
album. His songs evoke the deep sadness and the ensuing wellspring of resilience
that New York, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania and the world experienced after
that horrible day. Nearly 3000 died and 6000 were injured as we watched on live TV.
Violence, not so epic in scale or so visually
gripping does not move us in the same manner. We do not see the 1, 2 or the “mass”
of 4 or more that is often used as the threshold for a mass murder. Those tragedies happen as consistently as
anything else in our lives in America.
For the 20 that were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary or the 9 praying in the basement of a church in Charleston or worshiping in a small, Texas church; there was no live-stream to bring us that horror. The newspaper professionals that were trapped and hunted 32 miles from the nation’s Capital, were not pushed to us on video through notifications so we could watch in real time.
All of those people were posthumously introduced to us and as we wrapped our heads around the facts, we knew that our horror, shock and grief would be limited in duration if not depth. Why? Because as Americas, we understand that the thoughtless use of guns that Patterson Hood wrote about in the song "What It Means" applies to police shootings as well as schools, movies theaters, workplaces, homes and more.
For the 20 that were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary or the 9 praying in the basement of a church in Charleston or worshiping in a small, Texas church; there was no live-stream to bring us that horror. The newspaper professionals that were trapped and hunted 32 miles from the nation’s Capital, were not pushed to us on video through notifications so we could watch in real time.
All of those people were posthumously introduced to us and as we wrapped our heads around the facts, we knew that our horror, shock and grief would be limited in duration if not depth. Why? Because as Americas, we understand that the thoughtless use of guns that Patterson Hood wrote about in the song "What It Means" applies to police shootings as well as schools, movies theaters, workplaces, homes and more.
“And it
happened where you're sitting
Wherever that might be
And it happened last weekend
And it will happen again next week”
Wherever that might be
And it happened last weekend
And it will happen again next week”
In 2017 there were
14,500 gun deaths from murder and over 24,000 killed themselves with a gun…and
it will happen again this year. The status quo remains, even though there are
ideas here and all over the world that point the way to stopping the bloodshed.
We know who stands in the way and who is looking the other way.
In the novel, The Circle, people
are “encouraged” or manipulated to wear a video camera and live-stream their
life for all of us to watch. Not doing
so would be considered selfish since everyone else could not learn from your
individual experience without seeing and hearing almost everything you experience.
Imagine editing together 37,000 gun-death
film clips and creating America’s Gun Show
2019. It would be far from “live” television,
but it would be reality. We would be, without a doubt, a truly exceptional
nation if we compared our annual gun death compilation to the paltry video clip that Canada, Japan, Italy or Australia could produce. God bless us indeed.
