NEWTOWN: We’re there already…

We always have our high and mighty words to fall back on. Quotes from great orators, Founding Fathers, People who Matter. We read passages from our religious texts. See? Deep down, we’re good people… really, we are. Yet we’ve built a society that is so in thrall to the gun and munitions manufacturers and violence as entertainment, that we sacrifice our children. Our children.

Our leaders scramble again to find soothing platitudes, but everyone knows that meaningful action against this latest unthinkable act with guns will be deferred. Will be excused, or mollified, or passed on to the next round until angry voices again rise, demanding that the people we elect to protect us do what they are paid to do.  But it’s just become a cycle. Repeating, in the background, like a low hum we hardly notice.

I overheard a TV news sound-byte of an interview with an aunt of the shooter, when she explained how, at their last, face-to-face meeting, they were preparing for “down the road… when the economy breaks down…” as a way of explaining why there were so many firearms in that house. The shooter’s mother needed guns for protection, but in the end, her concerns and actions did not protect her community from the guns she laid by.

If we are unable to protect our children, then we have effectively ceased being a viable society at all. The conspiracy theorists’ scenarios of anarchy in the streets could not be any worse than the reality of twenty dead children, lying on the floors of their school. Down the road has caught up with us. We have arrived.