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Patriotism, war, the rule of law and gun violence
We’ve given our stamp of approval to war, to unlimited gun violence, to killing brown people fleeing to America for safety, to the death penalty.
Sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes with a bit of reluctance, we approve of, or agree to, accept the unacceptable.
You know the kids joke? What’s the biggest room in the world? The room for improvement.
We have to do better. We have to stop making excuses. We need to stop indulging in bloodlust. The excuses are pathetic and obvious. We are angry, bigoted, fearful, weak and therefore vengeful.
As a society, we get an F. We don’t even get any points for effort. We give up in advance.
There is no serious anti-war movement. (Selectively opposing some people being killed but not others — selective anti-war — doesn’t count.) We don’t have a serious effort being made to end the death penalty. People in both parties believe that unarmed brown families coming into the United States is a crisis. Which is sickening. And nobody wants to challenge the gun nuts and instead passively accept each and every mass shooting.
If this is the best our society can do, we need to remake it from top to bottom. Our values suck. Our systems suck. Our behavior sucks.
