Having followed the Sandy Hook tragedy and grieving with the rest of the Nation, I am pleasantly (and I hope not prematurely) surprised by the mature tenor of the National dialogue. The discussions that I have followed, have been relatively free of cant and personal posturing. People appear genuinely gob-smacked with their hearts opened, as if they have touched some bedrock humanity. For the first time in many years I see in public dialogue an abandonment of personal aggrandizement---as if it were commonly perceived to be beneath anyone to take advantage of this tragedy for a personal agenda. Perhaps my country is growing up. Perhaps the common denominator of our loss will unify us.
Irrevocable loss is the normal introduction to wisdom. Every friend and relative of every Sandy Hook victim sees the world in a new way today. I don’t think it a stretch to assert that the majority of citizens may as well. The commonality of loss has shrouded the entire Nation, and despite the suffering responsible for our mourning, there may be a hidden blessing in it: Americans of every class and persuasion are experiencing a higher level of common humanity, as they did after 9/11.
There is a big difference between today’s tragedy and that September in 2000. The absence of an enemy has saved us from indulging in rage. We are rather, more befuddled. This murderer came from our own culture, and while obviously damaged, he was recognizable as a child---a warped and disturbed child---but also a suffering child who might have been helped had more attention been paid to him and his family.Fear and violence are always neighbors in the mind. When someone frightens us, we often have violent fantasy responses. Since 9/11 the Nation has indulged in a collective fantasy of unequalled violence and vindictiveness directly related to the fear we all felt that day. It has been an enduring National post-traumatic event which has not been fully processed, because, that fear, sadly, has been directed into sustaining political agendas--- ending Constitutional protections for American citizens, allowing the practice of torture, pre-emptive wars which have shifted funding away from domestic programs( like mental health, nutrition, and health care) to the military and armaments industry, removing regulations and laws thus making it easier to buy and carry concealed weapons even in schools, national parks, and bars to name just a few.
Violence begets violence. We can observe the evidence of that in the daily media and our own lives. Grievances, attacks, and retaliation are the order of the day. All our mental armaments against anxiety have solidified into a culture of fear and volence that fuels the disturbed among us, and stirs up the rest of so that latent anger and anxiety prevent us from we focusing on our common problems. We have made murder and violent repsonses so commonplace and ubiquitous that our current ideas of “defense” have been warped to include pre-emptive murder. This is an extremely slippery slope.The lengths to which we have sanctioned the application of violence amounts to an unstated admission of National paranoia. We are collectively disturbed by it. How might our raining of death and suffering on the helpless, impoverished women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan affect our psyches? Does the act of turning a blind eye to it, force us to do the same in our own cities to the deaths of thousands of children of color? If we disregard the suffering attached to those deaths of "others", what message are we sending to our own citizens? We are different Nations, but one species. Are we becoming so calloused to death that it requires the murders of babies to stir us? Have we lost all ability to feel the suffering of those we describe as “others?” Are we judged mass-murderers by this Afghan and Pakistani mothers and fathers who have lost equally ‘bright’, ‘promising’ and ‘loving’ children in our drone attacks and suicide bombings? If we never consider their perspective, how are we to be distinguished from mass murderers? When challenged, Madeleine Albright said that she thought the deaths of 500,000 children in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, "was worth it."
Perhaps Sandy Hook is propelling our maturing as a Nation from Adolescence to Adulthood. We will have achieved full maturity when we can look on the lives of others as equal to our own—as Jesus, Moses, Mohammed and all cultures instruct us; when we can see them deserving of care of the and protection we reserve for ourselves. When we can extend the tenderness of our self-love to the entire Planet and its myriad species and , I would venture to suggest that we will have achieved wisdom.