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snowywolfowlYesterday I saw a news flash that a school shooting had occurred so I immediately opened up CNN, determined that the shooting didn't occur in either Kentucky or Florida, and closed the story without bothering to read the rest of the details.
I mean really, why should I? None of my family were involved so it doesn't affect me. Today I don't have to schedule time off work, book a plane ticket, or get my suit dry cleaned. I don't have to go and help pick out a casket, write an obituary, or try to identify the body of a family member violated by bullets. I don't have to worry about doing any of that for this one, so there's no reason to get over excited. As much as I enjoy keeping up on current events mass shootings in the US are like buses. Miss this one and you can just wait for the next one. They all lead to the same place and you know the route is never likely to change.
That and its frankly too hard on my mental health to focus on them anymore. Once Sandy Hook established that slaughtering elementary school kids isn't enough to make change happen I was done, defeated, kaput. If that couldn't move the pendulum towards sanity I can't imagine what could now.
Of course next year will be a bit different (and yet not) when my American born and raised step niece goes off to college. Just like yesterday I'll be summoned to a webpage on a news site by that routine headline, and again I'll read a few lines to determine that its nowhere near where she is. At least I hope that's how it goes. In a country where mass shootings have become an accepted part of the social fabric that type of blind stupid hope is the only thing I've got.
America, you know I love you but when it comes to the gun fetish insanity that is killing your people en masse, right now you are so fucked you might as well be an extra in a prison movie.
And it makes me cry.
I mean really, why should I? None of my family were involved so it doesn't affect me. Today I don't have to schedule time off work, book a plane ticket, or get my suit dry cleaned. I don't have to go and help pick out a casket, write an obituary, or try to identify the body of a family member violated by bullets. I don't have to worry about doing any of that for this one, so there's no reason to get over excited. As much as I enjoy keeping up on current events mass shootings in the US are like buses. Miss this one and you can just wait for the next one. They all lead to the same place and you know the route is never likely to change.
That and its frankly too hard on my mental health to focus on them anymore. Once Sandy Hook established that slaughtering elementary school kids isn't enough to make change happen I was done, defeated, kaput. If that couldn't move the pendulum towards sanity I can't imagine what could now.
Of course next year will be a bit different (and yet not) when my American born and raised step niece goes off to college. Just like yesterday I'll be summoned to a webpage on a news site by that routine headline, and again I'll read a few lines to determine that its nowhere near where she is. At least I hope that's how it goes. In a country where mass shootings have become an accepted part of the social fabric that type of blind stupid hope is the only thing I've got.
America, you know I love you but when it comes to the gun fetish insanity that is killing your people en masse, right now you are so fucked you might as well be an extra in a prison movie.
And it makes me cry.
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Date: 2015-10-03 04:35 pm (UTC)Sucks, I know.