The Desensitization of America
Where did empathy go?
Every time a school shooting takes place it brings me back to a very dark day. Where my own life would be impacted by gun violence. Sandy Hook would change my life. It would change the lives of many of my friends as well as we all watched in horror as one of our high school classmates was gunned down while trying to protect her classroom of first graders.
It is not something you ever think will touch you or the people you know. But our Stratford High School graduating class would know the pain. Her smile was infectious. Her kindness knew no bounds. It was no shock to everyone when Vicki became a teacher. It was the job she had always been cut out for.
I was lucky enough to know Vicki. We met in middle school, would share many of the same friends from then on out. Come high school she would be one of the regulars at our lunch table teaching me the joys of ranch dressing with my dry lunch lady chicken sandwich.
I never realized how much those small things would matter in the end.
Since Sandy Hook we have watched shooting after shooting across our nation. Children have come to live in a reality in which active shooter drills are a part of their existence in a public school. We are the only country in the world that continues to suffer from such a preventable epidemic that is killing our children.
In fact, the number one killer of children in America isn’t cancer or car accidents… it’s guns. Preventable gun related tragedies. We live on a constant loop of thoughts and prayers and the news coverage of the day with another city and school to remember.
We live in a nation where they will ban Tik Tok before fucking guns and that in itself is wild.
It wasn’t until yesterday that I started thinking about it on a deeper level. Watching David Hogg throw his name in for the DNC Vice Chair made me so proud that he would be making such a step. We watched him and other victims of the Parkland school shooting here in Florida live through a tragedy but turn their experience into activism.
That shit right there IS the spirit of America.
These kids asked adults for one thing. Safety in school.
Yet here we are years later with no changes, no answers, no legislation, no plan to fix this problem. It is the definition of insanity to ignore this as it continues to take our children. When will it really be enough?
In turn for asking for change… survivors like David Hogg got harassed by fucking grown ass adults. People like bottom dweller Marjorie Taylor Green who followed him for blocks harassing him when he was barely an adult. What kind of behavior is this? Harassing kids that are asking for us to keep them safe?
What kind of fucking upside down did America become?
Glorifying kids like Kyle Rittenhouse while demonizing activists asking for a better future?
What kind of piece of shit adults find that to actually be a rational line of thinking? Oh, well… we have the answer to that in this election.
We’ve become far too desensitized in this country.
Compassion is a thing of the past.
We need to do better before it is too late.
Teach your children empathy and compassion for other human beings no matter who they are or where they come from. Because at the end of the day we are all just human beings trying to do the best we can with what we have.
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Happy Monday and welcome to the newest shit show of a week. With the holidays around the corner the fuckery is at an all time high. With everything going on we were a little late recording our newest episode of Oz After Dark last week but it is officially available now!
America is the bad place and it’s about to be the worst place. I’m afraid of how bad it’s going to be.
The most recent shooting tells us just how ill our country has gotten. I am pretty much in despair now all the time unless I don't look at any news or online anything and how realistic is that. It is so disheartening as you say this road we have taken away from decency, from compassion, from humanity. And ahead of us only an administration that will take us further away. One of the richest countries in the world and we will not take care of our suffering Americans who cannot climb out of poverty or homelessness without help. We have lots of money to kill and go to war but no money for our communities to thrive. I teach seniors and it is so hard not to talk about things w them everyday and just let be kids sometimes. It is so hard to be looking out at a sea of faces, half of which are young women who have to continue to be subjected to sexual harassment and sexual violence because we just can't figure out how to protect girls and women and now incels and little andrew tates are springing up everywhere. Women are dying in red states (and teens) and it is already normalized, we can't even pass the ERA, won't guarantee reproductive rights, all men in new administration have two things in common money and sexual assault. How do we keep our head up. How do we come to terms with the fact that so many people in our country are essentially happy to support monsters. How do we reconcile their hypocrisy about freedom when they are hell bent on stealing it.