What the actual F***, America?

I started out this morning with writer’s block. I don’t know where it usually comes from - laziness, overthinking, lack of sleep - but today, mine came from rage, desperation, sadness, and confusion. No, this is not one of those “emotional word vomit” essays where I spill for all of you what I should really reserve for my therapist. What has me in this state is that yesterday this country saw its 212th mass shooting on just the 144th day of the year. I’ll save you the math: That’s about 1.5 mass shootings PER DAY. In case you’re living under a rock, buried under a bigger rock, buried under dirt, wearing earplugs and blinders, this one took place at an elementary school, where 19 2nd-4th grade children and a teacher - plus the shooter’s grandmother - were murdered by an 18 year-old with a handgun and a modified AR-15. Once again, we are seeing the consequences of refusing to ban assault weapons, which were designed with only one purpose in mind.

It is telling that countries with full assault weapon bans experience virtually no mass shootings. Literally, only in America. This one took place in Texas, one of the states in the U.S. where politicians proudly tweet about how they vote down basic and common-sense gun safety laws that are supported by more than half of the country, like universal background checks and red flag policies designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and abusers. It’s the home of “let’s solve this by giving teachers guns, or hell, let’s just arm everyone!” It’s like they’re pushing and shoving each other in an effort to drive the bus we’re all on into a Margaret Atwood-inspired dystopian future. In their daily lives, most of these fanatics probably come across as decent people, but in the public sphere, they show their true nature: Callous, hypocritical, cruel and heartless caricatures of the modern public figure.

One of these is Texas Governor Greg Abbot, who is speaking at the NRA’s national convention in a couple of weeks and who recently lowered the legal handgun carry age to 18, making it possible for this most recent child to go and murder other children. The police at the school “tried to stop him from entering the school and were unable to” according to the news (another systemic failure) but had no problem killing him after the fact. And today, Republicans from Texas and elsewhere – including my supposed liberal bastion home of Oregon – are either conspicuously silent, offering meaningless thoughts and prayers, or doubling down on their commitment to our culture of violence and inaction.

Shouldn’t we be willing to try anything reasonable and common sense that MIGHT serve to keep our children safe from mass murderers and mentally disturbed individuals with weapons? In a political system that is all about low-hanging fruit, you would think that this is the lowest and easiest to grasp. And yet…we collectively refuse to do so because it seems that there aren't enough people out there that give a shit, are willing to reject propaganda and think for themselves, and are willing to do something about it to protect the innocent.

According to Pew Research, 63% of legal gun owners cite personal protection as their reason for owning a weapon; for some of them, this is probably legitimate reasoning. However, this viewpoint is predicated on the belief that at some point, someone is going to come for me and what I have and the only way to ensure that I hold onto what’s mine is to maintain the capability to kill whoever is threatening that ownership. This is another example of the scarcity mentality that pervades our culture: There is only so much _______ (insert anything here, really; love, money, land, power, success, and on and on) so I have to make sure that I get whatever I can and protect it at all costs. Furthermore, the only way to get mine is to take it away from someone else because if they have it, that means that I don’t. This foundational belief of American Capitalism is the bedrock upon which our systems of oppression and inequality are built, and actually makes the need for some people to protect themselves a reality; we all collectively believe there isn’t enough, that someone is coming for what we have, and it becomes a construct, and then a reality.

This is one of the reasons there are more guns per capita in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world by far, more than double that of the next country (which is the Falkland Islands, with a population of 3,000, and 2,000 guns. Don’t mess with the Falkland Islands). Staggeringly, however, and a stat that exposes the weakness of the “legal 2nd amendment gun ownership/right to bear arms” argument that Republicans seem so fond of, is that as of 2017 – pre-COVID, pre-George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, before crippling anxiety and protracted lockdowns and “don’t say gay” laws and book-banning and paranoid conspiracy in the mainstream – there were 1.1 million registered guns in the United States and 392 MILLION unregistered guns.

The second amendment was written in 1775, during a time when people were still more likely to own knives and bows as weapons than firearms and it took two people and the better part of a minute to reload a single-shot musket that was 5.5 feet long and weighed 20 lbs. It could be argued that the most useful part of the musket was the bayonet. The population of our fledgling country was 2.5 million at the time of the start of the American Revolution, which today would fall somewhere between New Mexico (2.1 million) and Kansas (2.9 million) as the 37th most populous state out of 50 and would have fewer people than New York, L.A., and Chicago, and about the same number of people as Houston…which is 275 miles from Uvalde, Texas where this most recent travesty occurred.

Except it’s not the most recent one, because it’s been more than a full day, a span in which, according to the numbers, another two mass shootings have occurred. And while I could go on and on with statistics from reputable sources, it becomes easy to emotionally disengage from a problem when we reduce it to numbers, and I’m not ready to let go of my fury and grief. Stats are informative but reductive, and when applied to something like dead children in an elementary school, are avoidant and dehumanizing. We live in a culture that is also – especially today, in the era of instant gratification, curated content, and information at our fingertips – predicated on convenience and delusion. We don’t want to see what’s happening around us – we choose to ignore it or make excuses or just turn a blind eye and heart – if seeing objective reality and thinking critically might present us with the necessity of making inconvenient or uncomfortable changes. So we just go on living our lives, sending thoughts and prayers and feeling like we’ve done something, as if that’s going to change people’s behavior or prevent the next mass shooting or war of conquest or violation of personal sanctity.

The bottom line is that our foremost purpose as parents and teachers, coaches and community members and global citizens is to make the world better for our children. This is the lens through which we should be filtering every decision we make. Those 19 kids weren’t Democrats or Republicans, and this is not a “Left vs. Right” issue. And yet, we adults manage to, over and over, politicize and commercialize the lives of our children. They shouldn’t have to be thinking about hiding under desks and barricading doors against an active shooter, they should be learning social and emotional and relational skills, how to read and create and express themselves and solve problems and find joy and autonomy in the process of their own growth. Their only responsibility should be to explore who they are in a supportive and inclusive environment that is free from the threat of invasion. These were kids in a classroom, what should be the most safe and sacred of public spaces, and yet once again, the system run by adults failed them miserably because we - and most especially our politicians - hide behind politics, convenience, cowardice, hypocrisy and lies and prioritize power over morality and the lives of living, breathing, innocent people.

So where do we go from here? What can we do in the face of a system and an American Empire that more and more resembles the Titanic – beautiful and full of life and hope and too big to fail and yet, through negligence and hubris, callous arrogance and lack of any forethought or consideration, is sinking. If we’re going to just do what we’ve always done, then where we’re going from here is just to the next tragedy, the next bloody classroom, mind-boggling headline about the erosion and regression of this country. We are in the midst of an intentional backwards slide of morality, freedoms, civil and human rights driven by a grossly opportunistic and callous (the Right), frustratingly disorganized and out of touch (the Left), and corrupt and elitist (both) political system. Our social fabric isn’t just fraying, it is being ripped apart because we as a country, as a society, have lost sight of what it means to live in community - on the middle path where we seek to understand one another and find common ground - with other human beings. What we’ve done so far is to listen to the noise, to choose ideological sides against our fellow humans, to immerse ourselves completely in distraction so that we don’t have to choose to change.

There is also the question of the mental health of the people who perpetrate these atrocities. It is easy to see the damage, confusion, hopelessness, and sometimes psychopathy of these individuals in the pictures that make their way into the media. It’s in the eyes, usually. And you will never hear me advocate against more mental healthcare, especially for young people. Let’s just be honest about what we’re dealing with: We have concurrent crises, of steeply declining mental health, environmental and economic collapse, profound systemic inequality, and more or less unregulated and easy access to weapons of mass destruction, legally or otherwise. In Texas and much of the South - and in parts of the Midwest and West - it’s easier to get a gun than it is to register to vote or receive basic healthcare.

Our system simultaneously trumpets freedom and takes it away, and as always, kids are the ones who suffer because they are relatively helpless within the construct of the system, at the mercy (or, these days, the striking lack thereof) of adults and adult-run spaces. Mental health is absolutely something we need to address, AND WE NEED TO TAKE GUNS OUT OF THE HANDS OF MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE while we work to get them treatment. Let’s not discount gun safety and reason while we hide behind vague nods to mental health and at the same time work to cut social service programs and stigmatize the very mental healthcare we’re defunding and hiding behind. I think it is also worth noting that while psychological and emotional care exists on a broad spectrum of services and needs, banning assault weapons does not. One need only look at the numbers of mass shootings in the US before and after our assault weapons ban expired in 2004. As the slogan goes: It’s the guns.

In the face of this path we’re on, the only solution I see is to face the music with honesty, humility, contrition, and compassion. To stop with platitudes about thoughts and prayers. To be willing to be uncomfortable, to listen, and to practice the art and skill of discernment. Is what I’m hearing and reading real truth? Or is it someone’s agenda? Do I really believe the things I think I believe? What are my deeper core values and do my supposed intellectual viewpoints resonate? Most of all, we have to take a good, hard, honest look in the mirror and take complete and ruthless self-responsibility in all things. Responsibility for our reactions and actions, for our own feelings, and responsibility for the choices we’re making. We - I - have to stop blaming, even when this tragedy and others seem to be clearly someone’s fault. I didn’t make this system, but I do choose to live in it and complaining and blaming prevent me from doing anything to change it. Blame keeps us in the past, where we have no control; responsibility brings us into the moment, where we sometimes have a little.

I find myself asking: Who do we want to be? What do we want our kids to say about us in the therapy sessions that they’re definitely going to need after having to grow up during this time? Parents are more or less learning on the job, so it’s inevitable that we fuck up our children; the question is, are we going to do it from a place of humility and trying to do right by them and learn and grow with them, or by knowingly putting them in unreasonable danger through our choices and through the disconnect between what we say and what we do? Right now, I can start by deciding what’s important and how I can demonstrate that through my actions.

What kinds of relationships am I cultivating? How am I challenging myself to be better for all the kids, not just mine, and what am I doing to help myself understand what that really means? How do my actions and words align? Asking these questions every day can help me stay engaged in demonstrating my Core Values through action. Much more than what I say, what I do is a representation of who I am. I urge you to pay attention to the alignment of what you say and what you do, especially you self-proclaimed Christians out there who talk a lovely game about acceptance and kindness and love, and then turn around and behave in ways that are totally out of alignment with Christ’s fundamental teachings.

Just as importantly for the state of the country, pay attention to the alignment – or, usually a lack thereof – of words and actions of people in power, and then act accordingly. What businesses am I supporting? Where am I spending my money? How am I spending my time? In this broken system, resources talk. If you think Xi Jinping and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Craig Menear (Home Depot) are megalomaniacal narcissists – or just straight-up racist assholes – who don’t care about their workers or their people, only use their power to accrue more, and funnel billions to countries, companies and politicians with heinous human rights records, consider directing your resources somewhere else rather than complaining and claiming to care, and then mindlessly buying cheap products from China on Amazon before driving your Tesla to Home Depot.

On another, most practical level: In addition to self-responsibility, I need to take responsibility for the choices being made on my behalf by my elected representatives. Even in a political system that on its best days resembles Wrestlemania (weirdly entertaining but more or less bullshit), voting is still our most powerful referendum and tool for change. Why do you think one of our political parties is doing everything they can, not even bothering to hide it, to disenfranchise all but the whitest and most conservative of voters through restrictive ID laws, banning vote-by mail, and redlining/redistricting among other racist and classist policies?

In March of 2020, then-candidate Donald Trump stated that if we made voting more accessible, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” The modern Republican Party understands that it represents an ever-shrinking political, moral, and social minority, but instead of changing their weak, no-solutions platform to appeal to more voters, everything the members of that party do is a desperate - and, admittedly, effective so far - clutch for a power that is based in the bolstering of systems of oppression and white supremacy. In the words of disbarred Alabama judge, former senate candidate, and known sexual abuser Roy Moore, today’s GOP is fleeing for “the good old days, before the passing of the 13th Amendment, when families were stronger even though we had slavery,” and dragging the rest of us with them.

I have historically voted Democrat because, more and more, the alternative in our two-party system is unconscionable. However, if I lived in a state with open primaries – in which anyone can vote for anyone in a primary election – I would be a registered Independent, because the Democratic party appears to me to be a combination of morally self-righteous, internally divided, and disorganized that prevents it from seeing how disconnected it has become from the needs and wants and benefits of everyday people. I understand this is a blanket statement, and that some of my staunch Democrat readers will be offended.

To those people: I know there are righteous, amazing people and organizations all over the country, including in politics, working very hard to enact positive change, and I believe strongly in aspects of the stated mission of a few Democrats (and a certain independent senator from Vermont) in Washington. I also happen to agree with quite a few “blue” policy ideas, including transitioning to renewable energy as fast as we can, codifying environmental protections, LGBTQ rights, and reproductive freedoms into law, creating an achievable pathway to citizenship for immigrants while closing down border detention camps, rebuilding the tax system so that the very rich and corporations have to pay their fair share, eliminating student loan debt while making it easier for people who want an education to get one, and for God’s sake, enacting and passing simple and common sense legislation about guns.

The problem is that there is too much infighting and bickering and finger-pointing, and not enough courage, within the party and so not enough gets done. It’s great to be “good people." Let’s just not try to pretend that Democrats aren’t politicians trying to stay in power. And, on both sides, there are people who closed-mindedly vote their party without thinking about it, without considering the implications of their choices, and so we are saddled with increasing extremism that leaves most of America unrepresented and deeply dissatisfied somewhere in the middle.

AND: While I detest our political system, I also understand that it’s the one we have. That doesn’t mean change is impossible, it means that I have to pay attention and make sure that I’m doing my best to push the boundaries of what’s possible rather than throwing up my hands and walking away – or maybe just throwing up. Yesterday afternoon, the impulse to do both was so powerful that it brought me to tears. I work with kids, spend more time around them than adults, have dedicated my work and my life to their growth and development and self-determination and joy and learning. For me, aside from the daily process of doing my best to be someone who cares a lot and demonstrating it through my actions, being the best version of myself means supporting candidates that will – hopefully – do something to stand up for human rights, civil rights, equality, integrity, common sense, and the safety and protection of our Earth and the children who will inherit it. It also means demonstrating to other people what prioritizing those things looks like, and helping empower those young people - through education, and listening to them, and showing up for them, and by doing my part to act - to participate in the change they so desperately want and need.

There’s an election coming, and it’s another important one. If you really want to spare another classroom or supermarket or nightclub or church from the violence and trauma and violation of an armed invasion and coldblooded murder; if you claim to care about the safety and growth and health of our children and families; if you believe in the possibility of a better now in service of a better future; if you believe that you have the right to make your own decisions about your body, sexuality, and identity and that other people should have that right as well whether or not you agree with the choice; and if you believe in honest truth in the face of hypocrisy, then I implore you to have the backbone and courage and conviction to vote accordingly even if it means “switching party affiliation,” and to humbly investigate what else you can do, even if it makes you uncomfortable and even if it’s inconvenient.

Growth, for individuals and for societies, happens at the edge of a comfort zone, and within every tragedy that brings us to that edge exists an opportunity to learn and evolve and make changes that will sustain us into a different, hopefully better future. Right now we’re justifiably uncomfortable with something – the preventable murder of children – that seems so impossibly horrible and uncontrollable and so far from what most of us consider normal that it would be easy to keep doing what we’ve been doing as a government and a society, which is to shrink from the moment. It would be easier to do what I felt like doing last night, which is to start researching which reasonable countries accept American expats on a work visa. It would be easy to just give up on America the way it feels like it has given up on so many of its people and on its children.

An alternative, though, if we’re going to be uncomfortable anyway, is to have the courage to take some ownership over the source of our discomfort and to choose to accept a different discomfort - the kind that comes from bravery in taking on a challenge - in service of something positive, to place ourselves not only at the edge of our comfort zone but at the vanguard of change. It’s going to hurt, probably, but not as much as it hurts to lose a child to a senseless act of preventable violence while the people in charge of the system that is supposed to protect that child make excuses and demonstrate their callousness and cynicism, their disrespect and heartlessness, and their tireless work to keep the status quo in place.

So, self-reflect. Be willing to change your mind. Be willing to look beneath the words that hide the contradictory actions. Be willing to put the kids first. And whatever your method, don’t just sit on your hands and complain about the broken system. Politics is bullshit, but blaming doesn’t change anything. Don’t feel confident in your individual capacity to effect change, or don’t know where to start? Come together with other people, seek to understand each other, and find that common ground that is RIGHT THERE if only we’re willing to look for it. The truth is that we need each other; human beings are not meant to be alone, and the only way we’re going to prevent the next tragedy is by being honest about what IS right now. Be honest with yourself. Be honest with each other. Seek out honest, compassionate others. And, take responsibility. Choose rightly. Then act accordingly. And for your kids and their future, please, please, PLEASE vote.

Originally published on May 25, 2022