A Festival of Sadness
On the heels of my New Year’s resolution we come upon a few stories that have circulated over the past month. My response to these stories used to be anger. I would rant and rave about this and that to my friends. I suppose I may do some of that, but the reality is that I am just more sad than anything. There is a feeling of hopelessness that is just overwhelming.
The first story involves the all too familiar. There was yet another mass shooting this weekend involving an AR-15. So, why the sadness? Obviously any senseless and arbitrary loss of life is sad. If you aren’t sad then you are probably angry. If you are neither of those things then your humanity is slowly slipping away.
Of course, that’s not why I am sad. I’m sad because we will go through the cycle of thoughts and prayers, ringing of garments over easy access to guns, the ensuing arguments over what AR stands for in the AR-15 and whether that even matters in the question of whether anyone should own one. We will argue about whether it’s guns or mental health and of course those that argue mental health will offer absolutely zero ideas of what to do about it. Someone else will say we shouldn’t politicize this tragedy and that the time to address these things is some undeterminable time in the future. We will wait several weeks and then there will be another one almost like it.
The second story that brings sadness is the continued arguments over COVID treatment and vaccines. At this point, it is not an argument I want to participate in. Are these vaccines dangerous? Ineffective? Are the over the counter or prescribed treatments effective? These are all important questions and they are questions I don’t have answers for. I’m not a medical doctor.
It is the fact that these things are being debated in political circles at all that is the depressing thing. We have medical experts. There is a learning curve for them just like there is for us in our chosen profession. As they learn more, treatment improves. It is the same cycle for any other disease we have discovered. Politicizing science is just so damned depressing.
Finally, we get to the George Santos/Matt Gaetz/The Former Guy portion of the proceedings. I suppose we can throw in the Bidens just for fun. At this point, this shouldn’t be difficult. If you committed a crime you should go to jail. That includes the Bidens. As we know, there is no proof of a crime on their part, but that’s usually when these things break down. In these other cases we know full well. In some cases there are four or five different jurisdictions standing around and wondering if someone else will relieve them of their burden. They just hope that some court, some prosecuting attorney, or the grim reaper himself will just fix it.
Add these all up and you can hopefully see why the anger and outrage has shifted to depression. Things just seem to be getting worse. Things just seem to be hopeless. The only solution/advice I have is that paying attention only feeds the hopelessness. Maybe it is time to unplug for awhile.
Unplugging can be a very good idea. Its wht we moms and gandmoms do when we go to a spa even for an hour to get a manipedi. Put your feet up! Enjoy thje peafe and quiet.
1Too true, Nick. This is supposed to be the Lunar Year of the Rabbitt. By tradition a lucky year. 33 mass shootings less than 23 days into January. So far not feeling very lucky.
Living “country” has its advantages, yet Jane and I are seriously considering options for sending our boys to school and end their home schooling. We want them to have comradery, social skills, sports and what pre-schools once offered. Our interim solution has been hiring a nanny/tutor combo in the interim. Not ideal. But she is a dynamo. The lads are learning 4 languages while outside in the fresh air. lol Yeah. My personal prejudice for schools – those chairs have not evuh been designed for the human butt since the days of the one room schoolhouse. But. Chairs aside. Jane and I have a very real problem with the thought of either of our boys being shot out of their chairs.
Too much. Too soon. And Monterey Park, California; cheap thoughts and useless prayers now being rushed to the scene. Again. It’s just so frustrating. We really could fix this particular issue ***if only*** the GOP would act as a governing party.
2Nick: What the news has reported is it was a semi-automatic pistol, not a “long gun”.
3Here’s from the NY Times: “The gunman used “a magazine-fed semiautomatic assault pistol” that is probably not legal in California, Luna said.” Luna is the sheriff of Los Angeles county.
Thanks for the clarification Larry, but as I said in the article. This will be a bone of contention as if any of it really matters.
4My escape mechanism for the present state of the world is to become a cheerful pessimist. That is to say, I fully expect things to go wrong, and on those few occasions when they do NOT go wrong I am so happy.
5If I’m being shot at, randomly, out of the blue, I’m probably not going to wonder whether the gun aimed at me is legal, or if the shooter procured the gun legally, whether it’s short, long, semi-automatic or not.
I’m probably going to wish that person didn’t have a gun.
We could start from there.
6Again. Great points, Nick. The GOP stance appears that not all changes to gun safety are perfect. We’re not asking for perfect. We are requesting a start to sanity and revisions as necessary thereafter. C’mon GOP. A 6 year old gains access to his parents’ guns, and they’re responsible gun owners knowing their child had significant mental health issues requiring their presence in his classroom? gmab Questions there – how did the child access their gun and why were they not present as required in the classroom that day? Or as with this latest mass shooter in CA with a record of domestic abuse. I’ll give the GOP a booster shot, no we cannot 100% rule out everyone who should nevuh possess a gun. But. We can make a fine start removing weapons from the hands of the 90+%
7Jane&PKM~~
With 100,000 public schools in America, the chances of your kids getting shot start at 1 in 100,000. Refine the odds from there.
8Rapture Ready or not I feel your pain Nick. Sometimes it helps to unplug for awhile but you will be missed as I enjoy and value your comments. One thing that offers me hope is a little humor and music and at times like this I relish the immortal musical genius of Zappa,
More Trouble Every Day (Live/1974)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x80av2qgdu8
“So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’ Hopin’ for the best
9Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay that trouble comin’ every day.
No way to delay that trouble comin’ every day.”
cgregory @7. Thank you for the numbers. Those odds suck for parents and kids everywhere. We actually live in Nevaduh so we are not happy playing Las Vegas odds with kids’ lives. Des Moines, Iowa 2 students killed today. When will we evuh learn? Weapons needs to be secured and out of the hands of children. Is it too much to ask to secure the weapon, insure the weapon, and have effective background checks?
10First of all, considering the number of school shootings the odds might be closer to 1 and 10,000, but that’s like saying one in ten thousand Skittles will kill you. I’ll just say no to the skittles.
Also, thank you for the kind words to those that have commented. I’m not taking a full on sabbatical but probably avoiding the heavier political stuff for now. Maybe some lighter social commentary for a little while.
11Half Moon Bay, CA- shooter kills 7 in 2 different locations today.
12And it’s not even “several weeks later” – another mass shooting, with seven people dead in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco, as Steve (12) said. We don’t know yet anything about the shooter in this second event, but the reports on the first one described him as having a hot temper, and as having claimed his family was trying to poison him. California does have a red-flag law that would allow police to remove guns from his home, but it’s not clear he’d have met criteria. And even if they did, it would be all too easy for him to get another, even if he had to drive to Arizona.
13As within news-papers – Bad news sells .
14I wouldn’t say there is no proof of crime amongst the Bidens. There seems to be substantial evidence against two of the children, although most of the crimes tend not to be pursued after an elapse of time.
The gun crimes might be an exception.
15rending of garments (sorry!)
16cgregory: are those odds 1 out of 100k over the full 12 years of pre-college, or 1/100k per day? That makes a big difference since on average a kid goes to school 12*180 = 2160 days (excluding sick days and occasional hookey-playing). That brings the odds up to 2.16%, and that’s when I’d start thinking about dropping out and going to Plumber’s and Pipefitter’s Training Center instead.
Maybe it’s worthwhile to calculate the odds in detail; that might convince some that it’s time to take action on the problem, and just putting cops into schools is not a solution. Actually, given the number of “school safety officers” that assault and sexually molest kids, that’s a non-starter.
17Not everything- I just got 3 physics-type magazines and everyone features an abundance of female scientists. I knew ONE in college (and I was in a large physics department).
18