I, along with most of the nation, find myself suffering from what might be called whiplash, shellshock, or PTSD after the events of the past week. As if the natural disasters brought by the hurricanes this season and now the fires in California are not enough, we are being bombarded with news that is incomprehensible and almost impossible to bear. It doesn’t take a crazed gunman in Las Vegas to tell us that as a nation we are flailing, drowning in a morass that is mostly of our own creation.Our cities are becoming increasingly dangerous places to live, with the murder rate in many climbing to historic heights. Even the suburbs, those once safe bastions of the white upper middle class, are no longer immune and neither are the smaller cities like Emporia.
Drugs fuel a lot of the crime as it becomes increasingly obvious that we have lost that war. They are taking a tremendous toll on society. Last year over 64,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US. To put that in perspective, the War in Viet Nam in the 60’s and 70’s killed around 58,220 Americans over the course of twenty years. We don’t have to worry about being attacked by other nations, we are killing ourselves and not only are we killing ourselves, we are destroying the prospect of a healthy life for many of those around us. According to the Center for Disease Control, currently 6 out of every 1000 infants is born with NAS, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, the name attached to babies exposed to drugs while in the womb. What chance do these innocent children have to grow up as productive adults?
Our society is teetering on the brink and yet we are powerless. We hurl insults and blame. It is the NRA’s fault. It’s the liberals who are responsible. It’s the Republicans fault. It’s the drug manufacturers. It’s everyone but us.
I remember being told as a child not to point fingers because while my index finger was pointing out, the remaining three fingers were pointing back at myself. We as Americans, on all sides, need to wake up and realize that we are all part of the problem. All of us! It’s in our attitudes, it’s in our hearts. We no longer care about anyone but ourselves and perhaps our immediate family. We are no longer gracious to each other. We don’t even know what graciousness is. Instead we are greedy, self-absorbed, and celebrity obsessed, driven by making sure that we are protecting our most important possession, ourselves.
During tragedies, like the hurricanes or the recent event in Las Vegas, we come together for a few seconds or a few days, but then we shuffle the responsibility back onto the government and expect that everything will be ok. It won’t. The government can’t fix these problems any more than they can fix the weather.
Do I have the solution? I wish I did, but I can’t see any hope on the horizon without some unforeseen miracle. I think there are several things that might help. I think we need to have a serious discussion about gun control. To have the volume and range of lethal weapons available to the average American, regardless of how law-abiding they are, is ridiculous. Hunters do not need semi-automatics. That is not guaranteed by the Constitution in my opinion.
Along with culling out the guns, we need to guarantee that crazies are not allowed to roam free because people intent on harm can make the most mundane objects such as cars, steak knives or fertilizer into a lethal weapon. We have emptied our mental institutions to save taxpayer money, but we’re paying for it with our lives.
There are no ways to prevent the natural disasters that have been plaguing our country, but we can delve into why we have become so violent. Before we advance the ultimate solution, we should ask ourselves what is the cause of all the anger and angst that is driving the issues we are facing. The former Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, puts forth the postulation that loneliness is a public health crisis. In a recent Fortune article, statistics from several recent surveys put the rate of loneliness between 40 and 43 percent. We are a nation adrift in isolation.
Perhaps the solution is as simple as breaking down the barriers we have erected between ourselves and our community. Perhaps, we need to start holding each other’s hands, not just when there is a national tragedy, but all the time. We need hugs and handshakes, helping hands, handouts and hands up. We need to touch each other. We need to forge connections that create a lasting bond and hold back the forces of evil that would divide us.