The Familiar Nightmare: We're Nuts

How can this keep happening? Sometimes I look at this country and find it utterly incomprehensible.

It is an all too familiar nightmare. A man, dressed in black military style clothing, carrying at least two hand guns, walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He proved to be terrifyingly efficient. By the time he was done, according to current reports, 26 people were dead, 20 of them children. One of the six adults was found at what police are calling a "secondary location." Apparently only one person escaped with wounds. It was not a spur of the moment thing. It had all the trappings of a well planned terrorist assault.

According to unfolding reports on all the major networks the shooter was named Adam Lanza. He was in his early twenties. He's dead now, raising the body count to 27. One has to assume he killed himself, although we can always hope a cop whacked his sick ass. His mother taught a kindergarten class at the school. She and a number of her students are among the dead. One of his brothers might have been the victim in the "secondary location," but no one knows for sure. As always confusion and conflicting information are swirling about like a strong wind whipping trash through an alley.

The president of the United States of America, the father of two girls, just spoke to the nation and delivered a brief, but emotional statement. He had to pause several times and more than once wiped at tears in the corners of his eyes.

He offered no specifics about what can be done to address this sort of monstrous bullshit, other than saying "we need to come together and do something meaningful about it despite politics."

At this point I would normally rage about how easy it is for an evil fuck like this to get his hands on deadly weapons. But you know it is too easy all ready. If you don't you're a complete idiot. And the guns aren't going to go away. In fact tomorrow gun sales will soar just as they did right after Jimmy Holmes opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado theater a few months ago.

Twenty families, many of whom probably have their Christmas trees up and presents for their kids wrapped and hidden away, will now have to bury their children. There is nothing that can be written, or said that will ease their pain. There is nothing that will be uncovered, or reported that will sufficiently explain this ferocious insanity to them. There is no why, there is only what happened.

The fact is we're nuts, dangerously nuts, and we all have guns. To paraphrase Jim Morrison, "our brains are squirmin' like a toad." We'll kill large numbers of our fellow human beings in malls, schools, movie theaters, and on the street. We'll kill babies.

We are, in the end, the sum of all our fears. Merry Christmas, America.


12-14-12


updated reports have been incorporated into the original draft of this post.