Parkland Florida...time to Bend the Knee

Bend the Knee

The deaths of 17 more young students in Parkland, Florida is truly a made in America product.  The rest of the world literally shakes their heads while Americans shrug their shoulders and send "more thoughts and prayers.

There is, according to the BBC (not fake news) a school shooting in America every 60 hours!  The response to these events is now scripted because it is so common. There are the natural and genuine comments from parents and students of the survivors who are gleeful at being alive and at the same time shocked because they are in disbelief for what happened to their friends and classmates. 

From the community, at the local level and beyond, there are the almost, now useless, thoughts and prayers, references that although are likely well meaning lead to no resolution.  Each thought and prayer should be translated into a letter to a congressman. Perhaps that is the more progressive route to change.

Politicians, often the same who get paid by the gun lobby, also throw in their useless laments and thoughts and prayers and a call for change that no one is willing to lead.  The gun lobby, NRA and every gun lover in America will be shouting from roof tops (great sniper perspectives) about their right to automatic rifles, with the mantra that  "Guns don’t kill people," with the addition, "Let’s not make this tragedy political as this is a time to mourn…and under their breathes “Over my cold dead body will you take my gun.”

The only real non-scripted comments come from those who actually suffer the loss because those emotions are raw and real and none of us can have a remote inkling of what that could be like.  Those feelings are soothed by the "deep and meaningful sensitive" tweets from a president who blames mental health and not guns.  A president whose first act of legislation was to make it easier for the mentally ill to secure fire arms.  And since when is social media an appropriate vehicle to deliver such messages to grieving parents?

Is there a solution to the carnage in America? 

 Actually the simple answer, at present, is a resounding NO there is not because of the greed, corruption and power of pressure groups that rule in the background and control so many campaign funds.  NO, because American’s love guns over life and I mean that in a literal sense.  NO, because the logic of allowing automatic weapons in the general population seems to evade the conscious mind of citizens and lawmakers alike.  NO, because Americans do not trust Americans.  NO, because some suggest that the solution is more guns, arm the teachers.  NO, because Americans live in fear and believe in Guns and God in that order, and just the fact that they do believe in guns and God at the same time.

In another 60 hours, or less, no changes will be made in public policy, in gun control, in mental heath, in the gap between the rich and the poor, in the fear factor and all those things that depress and divide America. And in another state, or in the same state, another dozen young people will be shot to death in their classrooms, a theatre, a concert or some other public place because Americans are no longer horrified with this legacy.  Americans expect it.  Americans have a broken system, a divisive government and country and a love and tolerance of violence with a president who can not drain the swamp that he wades in.

 Many Americans are outraged when a Black man bends his knee, as a call for change, during the national anthem, as that shows a lack of patriotic feeling.  That bent knee is in fact a demonstration of those things wrong in America. Metaphorically speaking and in terms of real action Americans will have to all “bend the knee”.  By that I mean recognize the divides, the corruption and the immoral congressmen who prevent meaningful change and act together to vote them out of power because ..tick, tock, in 60 hours it all happens again…again…again…