This is a revisit to a diary I posted in 2017, on the anniversary of the killing of a beautiful six year old boy in a South Carolina school shooting. There is no describing the dismay I feel today after yesterday’s event.
I am first posting a slightly redacted version of the earlier diary, then I’ll post some newer thoughts.
The news here in South Carolina last week covered the one year anniversary of the death by shooting of six year-old Jacob Hall at Townville Elementary on 9/28/16. I was in Washington State doing a bike tour with my sister last year when word of his shooting came. Though we were across the country, that school shooting occurred a scant 46 miles from my home (I could easily ride there on my bike.) Three others were shot along with young Jacob, but those injuries were not life-threatening.
I wrote a diary mentioning Jacob last year. I was thinking about it because of screenings of the Newtown Documentary, that were showing about the same time. All such shootings are absolutely terrible, but those of young children hit me the hardest. I am not a parent, I’m never going to be a parent, and still, the children hit me the hardest.
I look at Jacob’s picture, even today. I can’t imagine what being his parents must be like, if I, who never met him in life, feel as I do about his death. His magical smile, the sentience visible in his eyes, his limitless innocence and purity … As I said in that diary, if having him as my son was denied me, through the violent act of another, I think I would go mad. Pretty sure, in fact.
I have been too depressed about last night to … try to get a sense of individual victims. I think of myself as a strong person, but today and this evening I am not that strong. It will have to wait.
But I do think about the debate.
A man I have known for quite a few years, a man I like and respect, shut me down when I began discussing the Newtown Documentary last year. That conversation isn’t finished, but I wanted to tell you about it.
I described the experience of the documentary. When I wrote the diary, above, I fully expected to do a follow-up diary about the documentary, itself. With the election and life’s distractions, I never did. Now my memory isn’t as clear, and, again, I don’t have the strength to view it anew tonight. (It is available in iToones and Googoo and Amazoo. I’m not linking.) I do remember that there were no graphic pictures or sounds or video. There were interviews with people who described the emotional impact of seeing/helping/trying to care for kids shot multiple times. There were interviews with family members of victims, with people whose children survived, with family members of teachers. There was information about steps family members have taken/are taking to try to cope, to try to keep such things from happening in future to other children and other families.
About all I managed to convey prior to my friend ending the conversation was some description of those things. I 'get' that it’s hard. I get that it’s uncomfortable, thinking about the murders of beautiful young children, whose lives would be filled with love and joy and play. I don’t want to think about things like that, I don’t want to believe that they are a part of our world. But that isn’t my choice. They ARE a part of our world. Things like that DO happen. And they KEEP happening, in part, because we don’t talk about them enough.
And when the conversation resumes, which it will, we will speak of a bumper sticker on my friend’s vehicle. I think it gives a clearer picture of who he is than his response to my mentioning the Newtown Documentary. The bumper sticker says:
“No Man Stands So Tall as When He Stoops to Help a Crippled Child”
I can’t find an image of that bumper sticker. All the images I am finding this evening drop the word ‘crippled’ from the slogan, but that is how I remember his bumper sticker. The additional word is important, I think.
Because when the conversation resumes, I will say that EVERY child is ‘crippled’ when it comes to political representation. Only those of voting age can stand tall and help the children. No one else. Schools should absolutely be safe. No child should ever have to fear being killed while seeking an education. And no child should ever BE killed pursuing education. Not at a country music concert, either.
The title tonight is about these conversations that are so critical. Because I ask - always, every time the subject comes up, no matter with whom - how many have die before we say ‘enough?’ (I said enough many years ago, but I can’t decide the issue for the whole society.) And, you know, cowardly they never will give a number. I think the main reason is, because if there were a number, we’d have long since reached it. But I know the answer before asking. There IS no number. That ‘right’ is more important than any number, than any life or group of lives. The number is infinity. They don’t want to have to face that, certainly they don’t want to say it explicitly, but infinity is, in fact, the number. ‘Enough,’ in their view, will NEVER be reached. That’s the definition of infinity.
Then, several people today have shared this tweet from 2015.
Although there are aspects of that that I agree with, my fervent hope is that DPJHodges is mistaken, and that the gun-related deaths of children are the key to progress on this issue, indeed the STARTING point of the progress we need so desperately. Because even some of those who want to say that there is no limit on how many have to die before they’d consider saying ‘enough’ are reluctant when it comes to children. They find it harder to say that infinitely many of them is a ‘price’ worth paying.
Regarding that ‘price…’ in a diary by Jen Hayden on the subject, a tr0ll on Daily Kos today (I am not linking to that $hit) wanted to tell Nelba Márquez-Greene (mother of Ana Márquez-Greene, a 6-year-old girl gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012) that she ‘shouldn’t be talking.’
It is the family of Jacob Hall, the families of the Sandy Hook victims, the families of the victims last night who truly PAY the price, along with their deceased and injured loved ones. Those for whom guns are a happy fetish aren’t paying the price. Neither are the Congresspersons who express sympathy in words at these tragedies, while acting to insure that similar tragedies are certain to continue for years to come. They aren’t paying any price at all. They HAVEN’T paid a price, which is why infinite deaths do not trouble them. I can tell you who I will be listening to, going forward. (I have been listening to them all along, and will never stop.)
Finally, I’ve been thinking about this clip from the Newtown Documentary website.
“God forbid it happens to anyone in your family. Because you’ll become the member of a club that one one wants to join, and until you’re in that club, you have no idea how long and bumpy that road is.”
Isn’t that really when the concept of infinite deaths becomes real? When it happens to us? When it happens in our families? They are very resistant to think about that, but we must MAKE them. These ARE our families!
Yes, the club no one wants to join — that, as of yesterday, so many more have joined. Damn.
I looked at a WaPo article this am. It reports that more than 311,000 school children have experienced gun violence in their schools. That is, they were present at their schools when a school shooting occurred, directly exposed to the sound of gunfire. Of course, in a sense, the number is much higher, since there ARE no school children who have not been exposed to ‘active shooter’ drills.
Imagine that. I did all of my years in school without ever experiencing what today’s children must. It never occurred to us that schools weren’t safe, that schools could ever become shooting galleries. Moreover, we were never slammed in the face by the implicit truth - that our parents and the (supposed) adults of our world were willing to do NOTHING to change the threats facing us every day at school. Because, since this began with Columbine, the threat has only grown. (The above WaPo article says 42 school shootings in 2021, most ever, and 24 so far this year, which is ahead of the 2021 pace.)
One of the most interesting articles - for me - is the David Frum article in The Atlantic, entitled “America’s Hands are Full of Blood.”
“Thoughts and prayers” seem to pop up every time we have one of these tragedies, but it always surprises me just how little discussion there is about those. What, exactly, are the gun fetishists praying for? I can’t imagine they haven’t been asked, but I haven’t seen any such exchanges. My feeling is that their prayers are for there to be no consequence on their miserable gun rights. No matter how many children die, no matter how much impact there is on the lives of our schoolchildren.
The point I liked most about the Frum article was this:
Thoughts and prayers. It began as a cliché. It became a joke. It has putrefied into a national shame.
If tonight, Americans do turn heavenward in pain and grief for the lost children of Uvalde, Texas, they may hear the answer delivered in the Bible through the words of Isaiah:
“And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.”
It’s like they want God to bail them out from consequence - to stop, by himself, the murders that have become so common. When he never did, before. But is that how they believe that prayers work? That they expect God to ‘fix’ a problem where they are unwilling to lift a finger? I think not. I think even those most convinced about the effectiveness of prayer believe that the prayers must be consistent with, not in contradiction to, that which is prayed for.
Hands full of blood, indeed.
Frum closes with our challenge and our mandate.
The lobbying groups and politicians who enable these killers will dominate the federal courts and state governments, as they do today, until the mighty forces of decency and kindness in American life say to the enablers:
“That’s enough! This must stop—and we will stop you.”
Because, for them, infinitely many deaths are not enough.