The equivalent of an emotional super tornado has gripped our nation in the wake of the violent deaths of twenty six and seven year old children in a small community in Connecticut.
One result is the obvious resolve of all who react and comment and grieve to do something to prevent these mass killings.
The death of one child from a stray bullet in a ghetto or twenty confined to a classroom in a rural community are no different in consequence for OUR society as a whole.
The complex and inextricably intertwined reasons that precipitate human failures are virtually endless.
Humans experience so much simulated violence and drama that as a civilization we have come to accept real horror as commonplace and unavoidable.
I often find myself sitting in front of my TV wondering what is wrong with us as individuals and as a nation.
Flip your TV channels and you will likely find the latest murder and mayhem movie or made for TV dramas featuring crime, war and human malaise.
Thankfully most of us don't experience such horrors ... however as human beings we do permit them.
The United Nations is often ridiculed for it's humanitarian approach to change. Weapons are embedded so deeply in the fabric of human civilization that any attempt to replace them with alternatives is immediately dismissed as being naive and out of touch.
Until now.
More important than weapons are human beings ... those who are emotionally distraught and mentally scarred.
I could google a lot of what I'm saying to assure myself that I am correct - but I don't need too.
Each person reading this is my witness to the human character flaws that have become conventional wisdom.
The priority we give common sense in our society is non-existent.
Profit replaces anything that approaches sanity.
Is twenty children dying from starvation any different than twenty children dying from anything which is avoidable?
Behind all the ills of humankind there is one overbearing evil.
That evil is profit.
Profit replaces freedom and is an excuse to be selfish.
We assume and accept that profit is necessary to motivate us to work, yet it is life that motivates us to work.
At the core of the gun industry is profit .. and we can easily extend our vision to the military industrial complex that shapes OUR national persona.
While it is true that we must protect and defend ourselves both as individuals and as a nation ... we must stop to think about how we can reduce the need to defend and protect ourselves.
Guns do not allow us to think beyond reacting to violence or seeking revenge. They bring to a decisive end the arguments that should instead not exist in the first place.
What are those arguments?
perhaps now for the first time as a nation we have stepped back from our TV sets together and can see the entire picture.
Mental health as well as perception are each effected by and influenced by the world that surrounds us. When the ability to wage war is given priority over our ability to care for the victims of war ... we are lost as human beings.
Will twenty veterans of war die of neglect somewhere in America over the coming days? How many are suffering from generations of wars. Are they patriots or have they been mislead?
Do our young men and women fight wars to protect OUR rights to kill one another?
The truth is that joining the military is a job. In many cases it is not the first choice but the only choice.
In Newtown we have a unique set of circumstances enabled by a common problem in the way we manage ourselves and our nation.
It may be a stretch to equate economic crisis or any crisis with the Newtown massacre of innocents but I have always clearly seen the linkage.
OUR culture of violence assumes the minds exposed to the movies and video games are capable of distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction.
But when was the last time we taught logic and reasoning to our children.
We are all children for a time in our lives including those few among us who will commit acts of violence.
The cumulative effect of everything in OUR society can be blamed for the anomalies. Statisticians will say that these aberrations are unavoidable.
However little is said about the means to reduce the frequency and intensity of these aberrations.
Something as abhorrent as Newtown can easily be translated into meaningless rhetoric when contemplated under the influence of conventional wisdom.
In the end we have the solutions, however they cost too much!
For the sake of profit we will postpone forever the implementation of solutions. Preventative steps that would lead to the elimination of human pain and suffering and coincidentally to the end of profit.
As animals and mortals who must hunt and gather for survival ... as a whole we are fighting with one another.
Most are in the trenches and vulnerable to physical and mental disease due to the lack of resources.
Murder is a disease.
So what is the cure?
Perhaps as a nation we are finally prepared to have that discussion.