A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill | Common Dreams

A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill | Common Dreams:

"Sandy Hook did not happen because of a lone, disturbed young man and it is not an isolated incident. It is an epidemic and we are all to blame. And today (and tomorrow and every day after that) is the time to confront this self-inflicted tragedy."

Never happen. Mythology is too strong. We'd have to confront our very roots, to admit the incredible arrogance of conceiving a national self as "a city on a hill," specially ordained by God. We'd have to admit to genocide against the natives here. Never, never happen. We'll go the way of the empires before us. The process has already started.

How do you live in such a world? That's what CJ asks himself in The Reluctant Suicide, my new novel in progress. I don't know his response yet.

But this is important: you CAN make life safer in the asylum. You CAN ban assault weapons, provide greater and more accessible mental health services, there are any number of things that reduce the odds of tragedies like this. This can be done and needs to be done.

The larger issue, well, it would take a generation or more to fix it, and I can't imagine that it would happen or even begin. We are our mythology. We are Americans.

If society changes, it will be "new Americans," immigrants without our cultural baggage, who change it. How ironic!

In the meantime, I tend my own garden (Voltaire). I sublimate (CJ). I divert (cooking, banjo). I contribute as best I can (teaching, writing). And I actually have a good time most of the time. Never forget the positive energy in a zero-sum universe.