It is good to be reminded of this day. And terrible too. Good because, though somehow the tragedy lingers in many of our minds, the date coming around makes the memory more poignant. That added poignancy is going to cause me to think through again for what me, a person affected by the news and not on the ground in real time with the unimaginable loss of sons and daughters and teachers and friends, was near impossible to comprehend and accept. So, what I must do to feel enough to feel close enough to be relevant is engage enough in empathy to make the pain somewhat personal–I have two daughters. And this gives me–I can give myself–license to offer suggestions for the cause of such never again being allowed to happen. Those murdered at Stoneman were murdered by gun. Guns were the weapon but not the cause. The murderer was a troubled young person. But he was not the cause. The cause is the attitude that allowed for this troubled young person to have a gun and to be so disposed as to slaughter those he should have felt love and compassion for because they were his fellow human beings. His trouble and the troubled attitude that allowed him to perpetrate a massacre, to with his hands, before his eyes slaughter other human beings. He was without humanity. He was without empathy and his enablers, the gun sellers and the legislators who refuse to pass laws to stop there slaughter, the people who support these legislators and are so selfish with their rights as to allow for the taking from others of more important, vitally important rights, are without empathy too and are, therefore inhumane. To obliterate the attitudes that allow so many to act and vote and think in ways that are deadly to others, to our children, in fact, we need to get at root causes and act against the sources of those causes. As with most things troubling this society, the core problem is the selfishness caused by a system that makes selfishness a good, that pits the one against the other, that makes success the possession by one of more than others, competitors among whom the most ruthless usually win, those who lose left to fend for themselves with too little or nothing. It is a society that makes it so that what is good for the one is at the expense of another or many others. The gun industry is, in America, a legitimate business and the propaganda it propagates through its front organizations allowed because such is the kind of freedom those who make and enforce the law allow. Within the system, it is perfectly legal, too well accepted, that the right to sell is above the right to live decently and securely, many business enterprises selling harmful things for the profit of a relative few. Such is their right and this is wrong, wrong. wrong. IT IS TIME, FOR A LONG TIME IS HAS BEEN TIME, TO REASSESS WHAT WE ARE ABOUT AND HOW WE WANT TO PROCEED AND THE ONLY KIND OF SENSIBLE FUTURE, WE MUST COME TO BELIEVE, IS ONE IN WHICH BOTH POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS PROMOTE HUMANITY AND NOT INSANITY. The insanity that currently is THE system cannot be tolerated because it is so deadly and so unfair.Edit or delete this
