The following material will probably be upsetting to some readers. At the same time, I been thinking about this for a while now, and I really, really need to get this out of my head and off my chest. If you're easily upset or offended, you might want to skip over this post. Read at your own discretion.
Last week, police officers shot and killed a black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A video of the incident was recorded and posted online. About two days later, snipers in Dallas, Texas opened fire and killed five officers in protest of what happened in Baton Rouge.
This will probably sound really cynical and jaded, but I'm just not surprised anymore. Tragedies such as this, while not the norm, don't have the same shock factor that they might have had years ago. Of course, I'm speaking as someone who was not involved and was not directly impacted by these events, so they don't have the same emotional impact as they would for someone who had lost someone, or at least lived in the community where these things took place. For me, it's just another sad story in the news.
It's not that I don't care, it's just...I think I've gone (at least partially) numb to stories such as these. Things like these have just happened so many times now, a person would have to harden themselves against it. Otherwise, you'd just end up tearing yourself apart in grief.
It keeps happening. It just keeps happening.
A month ago, a gunman opened fire in an Orlando nightclub, killing 49 and injuring even more. This was cited as one of the worst mass shootings in US history, and what changes were brought about in the aftermath? Nothing. Lawmakers have been wholly incapable of coming to a bipartisan agreement on topics like gun control. This makes me feel depressed and cynical, and I just want to write the whole thing off as an exercise in futility. I am given to wondering, how much of the rejections are based on the members disagreeing with what the other side thinks, and how much is them rejecting the proposals just because the other side thought it up? Are they dismissing this because they genuinely think it's a bad idea, or is this dismissal nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction?
It keeps happening, and it doesn't stop.
Someone gets killed. There's a large public outcry. Policymakers pledge to address the matter, and maybe some reforms are made. People settle down, continue on with their lives. (We can't spend all our time being pissed off and protesting. We still have to go to work, take our children to school, mow the lawn, attend book club meetings, etc. Life continues onward.) Time passes. Somethings else happens, to different people in a different location. It all starts over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
In a "Calvin and Hobbes" comic, the comment is made that maybe humans will wise up and stop polluting the Earth before it is too late. The unspoken alternative is that we will end up self-destructing by our own actions. There are days when I think the same thing, but instead of pollution, the problem is our violent, divisive behavior.
Will the madness stop? I hope so, but I doubt that it will. To anyone reading this, I have a single request:
Prove me wrong.
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