I'll start with Christina Taylor Green, the latest highly publicized child victim of gun violence in America, one of the 6 people killed in the Arizona shooting.
As for this little girl, Christina, I find, wrapped in the sadness of her murder, the sadness of a wayward nation, which her short life-span symbolizes, given that she was born at the time many Americans were rudely awakened, from their state of distraction to the world at large, by the violent explosion of 9/11/01. She was killed by a bullet a decade later (if you count the time she was in the womb - all technical "life" language aside - she was living almost exactly a decade). Violence that consumed our national attention ushered in her life and ended it, like bookends on a shelf called America.
She came and she left in events of widely publicized violence, which should not be unexpected or considered all that random. Given our culture, it is perhaps shocking, but not surprising. How in the world could it be surprising when it is violence that our nation encourages with its ubiquitous embrace of weaponry and war, of death by violence - a cultural norm that is just WRONG. We remain extremely primative here, even as we advance by leaps and bounds technologically - not a comforting reality.
In her decade on earth Christina developed into a little girl who had grown interested in politics, certainly not a common pursuit for most kids her age. And therein lies more of the sadness her death symbolizes to me - the ugliness of our warped political system/democracy, one which she had hopes for, one which, at the grade school level, she was beginning to jump into and explore. That's what put her at the scene of her demise.
A summary of the above, about Christina, is here, in a nutshell. (Certainly cant summarize a life, though...)
Sadness and anger...
Unfortunately for her, and millions of other American children, the grown ups of this nation have very badly shaped it for those who inherit it, for the children who, in highly hypocritical fashion - a trait for which our nation seems to have endless capacity - are often given syrupy lip service, "cherished" as our "precious resources," as the "most deserving" of our "greatest protection and love." But, in reality, it is a nation which the 'grown-ups' have have made inhospitable and unsafe for its kids - Christina, a now famous example.
And for all the talk about "senseless tragedy" and "looking inward as a nation to seek a solutions to prevent future tragedies like this" well, what of the famous, media-obsessed Columbine shooting? What of the endless coverage and talk back then, about 12 yrs ago, about lessons needed to be learned from that national tragedy? Etc, etc, etc. Those kids, those victims of our national obsession - violence - were famous too. And what came of it? What lessons were learned? (More grief counselors? More metal detectors and security guards? More ID checks? Semi automatic ban undone?) Who even remembers their names?
Christina is but one of millions of other American kids born into this inhospitable nation. The "adults" have made it a place of fear, backwardness and violence, a place of celebration of violent death, along with a crude dismissiveness of those who call for nonviolence, faint as their voices now are.
We are going to hear and already have been hearing a lot of talk about hate speech, the ugly provocations from rightwingers with microphones and lots of fans, and well we should have that discussion. But I have not yet heard ONE comment, in all the coverage since yesterday, about
GUN CONTROL
I'm not going to dig up gun violence statistics right now, or court fights, or whack laws, or any of that. I want to talk, now, about how...
No one will touch this subject anymore.
In fact, the great "silencer" both parties have affixed to pro-gun-control speech has created a huge vacuum that has been filled with a mounting mess of ugly pro-gun (pro-death speech), along with ever laxer gun laws. It is not just the physical proliferation of guns that our lax laws encourage, it is the culture of acceptance of gun violence.
We see this ugliness in Beck's numerous inciteful lunacies. Oh, and let me add, he's very popular. We also hear it in Palin's sick crosshairs "figurative" aiming at political foes, her exortations to "reload" rather than retreat, and her widely publicized animal shooting sprees. Again, she's popular. We see it in deranged folks ambling about in the light of day at political gatherings, a semiautomatic rifle in tow as if it were just another sign or banner ... no biggie. Then we have the freshly audacious "I can top your gun ownership" contest I caught on the news the other day, Hardball, I think ( was on in the background). There, I heard GOPpers at a polical debate (or discussion) in which the participants, men and women (one woman was the worst of all), were feverishly engaged in bragging in one-upping fashion, about who had the most and the baddest firearms. The one who claimed that achievement was the "winner." Much laughter accompanied this grotesque display.
And from Democrats, who are much better behaved when it comes to such displays and urgings of such violence?
What do we hear from Democrats about our naitional disease, gun violence? About gun control as means toward a cure, not just of the actual wounding and killing, but towards dialing back the sick cultural mindset?
SILENCE
It is their SILENCE I am highlighting now.
Related sidenote: Given the locale of this freshest of tragedies, that being Arizona, it hasn't escaped my notice how our incredibly easily-obtained automatic weapons keep making thousands of widows and mothers and CHILDREN weep in Mexico, as Arizona - oh the irony - gets angry at Mexicans, not weak gun laws, and enacts laws to scare them away and back to where they came from. That would be their American-exported-gun-violence-ridden home.
But keep dying Mexicans, and keep it up, drug lords! We need our drugs and our guns - and our crazy parallel universe laws about both! And our whack priorities based on our whack values. (How do we manage this insanity? Rewind to: hypocrisy, a trait we have mastered, a necessary drug of sorts for our nation, for which we are infamous worldwide, if not to enough of our own people)
[Another sidenote, related to the last] The much-maligned (by some, at every opportunity) Cenk Uygur had a very good rant on this very topic, our Mexican drug war issues, when he was subbing on MSNBC last week. I find he has the best - most honest - progressive rants of all the MSNBC hosts, at this point.]
For all our talk, all our lip service, now coursed thru with weepy sorrows, DO we, as Americans, as progressives, as activists, care about kids like Christina and all the people of this pathetic nation... a nation whose grown ups have abdicated their responsibility to behave like grown ups when it comes to controlling (and eradicating, hopefully) these useless and extremely harmful weapons?
The loud voices we should be hearing pro gun control (and related anti death culture messages: anti death penalty, anti war and torture, anti defense/killing expenditures and proliferation) have gradually been overcome by a conscious, deliberate silencing. The space that has been ceded has been filled by loud and dangerous pro gun (pro violence) voices.
I am sure we will also get to hear from folks who will be falling all over themselves to author the worst scenario for the perpetrator of the crime in Arizona: "Fry him! Shoot him as many times as he shot his victims! Etc and so on. That kind of talk is considered righteous proof of our love... for Christina and all the other victims. As if that is the answer!
And they will call for more folks to "carry" as cure. More madness to end the madness. Younger folks. College kids. (Virginia Tech. Remember that "conversation"?) High School kids (and their teachers! Columbine, etc, etc) ... What next? Elementary school? Should Christina have had a gun, too?
The sane voices have been gagged. I include myself as falling down on the job - I used to write more and agitate more around this issue. I, too, got zapped by the silencer.
I'll end with a toxic cherry on our violent cocktail Americana, an ad I 'coincidentally' saw just before the Arizona shooting, just before I learned of Christina falling victim to it. It is a Netflix On Demand commercial. A disturbing commercial that has landed, I think, quite appropriately in this diary.
In this ad, there's a precocious little boy in his pj's, gathered round the TV with his family. The show they are watching is a classic western, the scene, a saloon. He's interfering with 'old style' TV, his pajamaed self zapped in with the tough guys in the movie as they play poker, too slowly for his liking. (Something about speeding up their game and getting to "the action" ... something about getting instant gratification via Netflix On Demand)
The ad's parting shot was delivered by the kid, now sitting on the sofa with his family. The film is at the desired action - a classic (post-poker) brawl on the saloon balcony. Camera framing a furious fist fight in progress, he couldnt seem to fathom this less violent use of violence. He exclaims, in all his incredulous "cute" modernity: " Huh? Dont those guys have guns!?"
Ha ha! Yeah, a fist fight! When they could just blow their foes away! How dated! Bang bang! Netflix is cutting edge! Yuk yuk!
Yuk.
I found it neither cute nor amusing.
How we love to sound like we care about the children, like Christina. "The children are our future!"
Yes, they are... and we dont care. As long as the inheritance we give them is one of our blazing hypocrisy, our ever-heightened fears and security measures, our ever advanced weaponry... and our violence. Exported and for domestic consumption. To kill and be killed. From sea to shining sea.