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Drop by drop

Posted on January 13, 2011January 13, 2011 by Staff

Shocking, sickening, saddening – these are the common initial reactions to events of the past weekend.

The shootings in Arizona reminded many of us of the same kind of senseless loss of life we’ve seen here and, because this act was political in nature, reminded those of us old enough to remember of days when madmen with guns changed everything.

There are several threads to this story – guns, vitriol and, most importantly, mental illness. Their confluence is never good.

The focus, at least in the first few days, has been on the hate-filled discourse permeating political debate. For now, we have no way of knowing whether the young man accused of this horrific massacre was motivated by the animus that swirls thick in the desert air. But hate and its various handmaidens certainly have mainstreamed the idea of “Second Amendment remedies,” ramped up fear and glorified the notion of taking up arms against a government elected by the people. We may find that what finally drove this young man over the edge was not politics, but that doesn’t make this act apolitical. It happened at a political event and the victims included federal officials and a group of citizens assembled peaceably to interact with their representative.

And it is undeniable that keeping firearms – including those with 33-shot clips – easy to obtain and the neglect most states have shown to the treatment of those with mental illness are the results of politics. Decisions, like the one to allow the assault rifle ban to expire, are the direct result of heavy lobbying and campaigning by the gun lobby and the successful exploitation of the issue to gain political advantage. Had that common-sense law stayed in effect, there likely would have been 20 fewer bullets sprayed through that Safeway parking lot.

And if politicians would have considered funding an adequate mental health system rather than constantly shortchanging it, perhaps the entire incident would never have taken place. Those in this state contemplating further cuts to mental health programs ought to think twice about that.

The sad truth about the Arizona shooting is that at second glance it is not so unbelievable. There are unstable people in our society, readily available guns and no shortage of ranters ginning up hatred against the government. We can and should do something about all three parts of this equation. For the saddest thing is not that the actions of a madman changes everything. The saddest thing is if those actions change nothing.

On Monday, we remember a man of peace cut down in his prime by a man seething with racial hatred. At the time, it seemed like the death of Martin Luther King Jr. was the death of the idea of nonviolent change itself. On that awful night in April, riots spread across most major cities in this country. There was a notable exception.

From a flatbed truck parked in the heart of the black community in Indianapolis, Robert Kennedy, who himself would die a few months later from an assassin’s bullet, informed the gathered crowd of King’s death and then gave what is among the greatest soliloquies in our political history. He quoted Aeschylus:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget/falls drop by drop upon the heart,/until, in our own despair,/against our will,/comes wisdom/through the awful grace of God.

Kennedy spoke of his own pain and anger over the loss of his brother and offered this simple remedy that is as true today as it was then:

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”

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