The people who live in my Independent Living building have a close connection with Michigan State University where the latest in a long line of mass murders occurred earlier this week. We even fly their flag on game days, we have viewing parties in our cafe and people walk around wearing their Spartan Green. But this week The Six Degrees of Separation Theory was on full display around here and both their flag and our American flag are flying at half mast. The joyful connections with the university have been replaced with prayer vigils and having clergy available to give grief support to those who need it. Many residents here have grandchildren who attend MSU and one of the five kids who was shot and is still in the hospital fighting for his life is the great-nephew of a couple living on the floor above me. My next door neighbor’s granddaughter was supposed to be in the class on the campus where the shootings took place but she had skipped school that night. Her parents didn’t know she was safe for quite awhile, though, so they are processing how close they came to her going through a horrendous experience at best or dying at worst. Her grandmother said, “We’ll deal with her skipping classes later.” They didn’t know she did that sort of thing.
The first time I wrote about a mass shooting was in December of 2012 when 28 people were killed including twenty kids between the ages of six and seven at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. And here I am over a decade later. The names and ages changed, the problem of gun violence in America just keeps getting more and more frequent while (mostly) Republican lawmakers sit on their tusks offering thoughts and prayers. Although they don’t do that so much anymore since the Democrats recently called them out about their useless prayers and thoughts when they are in a position to actually do something to keep guns of mass destruction out of the hands of those who should not have them. We’ve all become numb by mass shootings just like we’ve become numb to the gridlock in Washington.
As long as Kevin McCarty can still stand behind a pathological liar like Republican Representative George Santos and a self-described Christian Nationalist and Conspiracy nutcase like Majority Taylor Green this country can no longer claim to a be a moral country. Whether you believe we lead from the bottom up or from the top down, when our lawmakers don’t seem to care about Ethics and Truth we are going to keep getting ruled by the self-centered people with the deepest pockets and right now that’s still the NRA and the Ultra-Far Right.
I’m glad Nikki Haley threw her hat in the ring but her pitting herself against seniors over 75 isn’t going to endear her to the aging Republican Base and it made her a prime target for 76 year old Trump. Who knows, maybe that’s the secret master plan in the party, let her take the first volleys from the x-President then let someone else step into the race who can be an actual, serious candidate. Does anyone really believe a woman could become the President of the United States in this day and age? If half the country doesn’t trust a woman to make her own reproductive decisions why would they trust a woman to sit in the Oval Office?
Enough politics, let’s talk about the parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It was developed by three college students back in 1994 and it’s based on a discussion Kevin had on TV and the six degrees of separation theory that goes back to 1929. It speculates that any two people on earth are only ever six or less connections apart, only in the game you had to link anyone in Hollywood to the actor Kevin Bacon with lowest numbers in between. Since he was a prolific actor for decades when the game was developed it was fun for movie buffs to play and my husband, while not a movie buff, was obsessed with the theory. Here’s an example from Wikipedia: "Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit (1969) with Ed Asner Ed Asner was in JFK (1991) with Kevin Bacon. Therefore, Asner has a Bacon number of 1, and Presley (who never appeared in a film with Bacon) has a Bacon number of 2." As long as I’d known my husband he could meet a stranger and after talking awhile he could more often than not come up with a connection. It helped that my husband had a scary good memory and never forgot anything he’d ever heard, saw, read or experienced.
You don’t need a good memory to see the Six Degrees of Anguish I've seen in recent days regarding this latest school shooting. My neighbor used to be a child psychiatrist and I have no doubt she knows the full range of trauma her granddaughter is going to be dealing with in the weeks to come, just knowing she should have been in that room where her classmates died. My neighbor is the sweetest, most grounded person living here and I hate this for her and for all the other relatives who are only one degree away from those who died and those who survived. ©
I'm so sorry.
ReplyDeleteMe too!
DeleteThis MSU shooting has been deeply disturbing to me as well. My youngest did her undergrad there and it’s just so close to home for all of us. I had trouble sleeping for a couple nights after this. Really, really disturbing to picture classrooms of innocents being shot randomly for no reason at all.
ReplyDeleteAfter Sandy Hook, my oldest went to NYC to work for Michael Bloomberg’s efforts on gun control and his attempt to outspend the NRA into some kind of progress. After that basically failed, he tells me he’s not sure there is hope for a solution. But I’m an optimist by nature, and I keep hoping that the next generation will be able to do what we couldn’t. Right now, though, I’m still feeling down about the whole thing.
Hard not to feel down. But I really do believe the younger generation will be more savvy at the voting booth and researching candidates and issues. They'll be more connected to causes and will be able to break the NRA's hold on this country. It shouldn't be this hard but way too many people don't follow politics deep enough to understand what is going on.
DeleteJean, you said what most of us feel that enough is enough! No more people should have to die because someone felt they had the right to take a weapon and open fire on innocent people. It has to stop 🛑 Whatever it takes, whoever it takes, no more people should have to lose their lives because politicians can’t stand up for those who put them in office and say NO MORE!
ReplyDeleteAmen!
DeleteAgree, agree, agree. IT'S THE GUNS. And once I saw that more than a dozen dead children in Sandy Hook wasn't enough, I knew we were doomed. I just don't understand.
ReplyDeleteAnd as if the deaths of those children wasn't enough they had to live for years with Alex Jones spreading conspiracy theories about the whole thing being staged. Their lawsuits are just this past year being settled while he moved his money off shores to try to keep it for himself instead of paying out the settlements. I'm hoping he won't get away with that, the judge is not having it of that...
DeleteWhile I have hope that common-sense gun laws, at least, will be embraced at some point, I don't see change in risks happening in one generation. My late brother, who did believe in common-sense gun laws and wrote letters to the editor urging for them, owned enough guns and ammunition that he could have armed a squadron. He had three televisions connected to a security system that he watched much of the day and night. My brother-in-law gives a long gun (sorry, I don't know enough about guns to call them by their correct names) to each grandchild as soon as its born. I don't believe in owning guns at all, but my husband has two now, one gifted by my late brother just before his death and one by my brother-in-law, who learned how deprived his brother was. Fortunately, I managed to keep guns out of the house while the children were growing up. We live in Texas, of course. All those gun owners are not going to freely give up their guns, so even if all sales were magically stopped or better managed, there are enough guns circulating that I believe we'll see mass killings continue even if some weapons are banned. But these common-sense rulings are an important start.
ReplyDeleteMy husband was a gun owner too but fully supported the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Bill back in its day that was enacted in 1968. Since it sunset-ed out you can see in the statistics the sharp increases in handgun violence. We need it back! My husband owned over a dozen guns and he broke his life-long association with the NRA over their fighting against sensible gun control like the Brady Act. Lot of gun owners within RNA don't agree with their leadership's all or nothing stand. Compromise has become a dirty word in the Republican party and we can't survive as a ethical nation that way that way.
DeleteJean, I am sorry for all who have suffered loss because of the terrible shooting at MSU. Such a senseless waste of life and love and dreams--for so many people. Whenever I think about the fact that countries that do not allow weapons have much lower crime rates, I ask myself Why? Why is it that a few greedy, headstrong people get to decide? It doesn't take half a brain to figure out that our nation values the ability to purchase guns and ammo much more than we value human life. I wish we could be confident that our political leaders will resolve things, but we know the truth.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're feeling better Jean. How are your ribs and ankle doing?
Sadly I don't think the gun violence issue will get resolved in my lifetime but I do think the younger people coming to the voting booth for the first time, who have lived with this the whole lives WILL be able to change things.
DeleteOn a personal level, I'm doing well. The PT just signed off on my case early as of yesterday. She was cleared to keep me until March first. The nurse might sign off on me next week which would also be earlier than predicted. My pain level is pretty low in the day time and I'm not taking anything for it until bedtime when it still bothers me to find a good position to sleep and breath at the same time.
I don't understand who votes for those crazy people like Santos or Greene or the former president.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you. It's the people who brag about never watching the news and/or who just want to see someone blow up the government. The latter sees it as entertainment. I talk to people living here all the time who don't have a clue what's going on in the House and Senate yet they vote the party line when the elections come along. They don't see anything below the headlines. A perfect example is how they view the president and x-president's handling of Classified documents. They see these two cases as exactly the same which if you do a deeper dive you'd see that Trump didn't want to turn over the documents and fought it for over a year while the president freely invited the FBI in to search. It's hard to discuss current events with people who dismiss the nuances and degrees of criminal or bad behavior intent. The nuances of any topic are important.
DeleteYou said it all so well. My heart just sinks every time I hear the first reports of another shooting. It's nearly constant these days. Many of us will never understand how things came to be this way....but we see clearly why it continues. Too many people are unwilling to rise up and demand change from those politicians who stand in the way, even celebrating their recalcitrance, to pass gun safety laws that are meaningful. Every single person who wants gun safety laws to pass should be bombarding their (generally Republican, but whoever their reps and senators are) with phone calls, texts, letters, and visits consistently calling for them to step up. Too many Americans are so full of hate and fear that they demand their rights to any weapon they choose to have and they have the loudest voices since others are feeling too helpless and hopeless to take action. I often wonder how future generations will look upon this time in history -- I hope they see it as a time of great darkness and ignorance around this issue. For that's what it is. My heart goes out to all of you who are near and dear to MSU.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how future generations could view these times as anything but a time of great darkness and ignorance. Going back to the Wild West mentality should not be our only option here.
DeleteWhen my neighbor was telling about her granddaughter is when it hit me that I'm only two degrees of separation away from gun violence! My great-niece is a school teacher and it would be the same if something happened in her school.
Your third paragraph says it all….
ReplyDeleteAnd there’s something about old people watching nothing but Fox News that is a serious obstacle to us ever getting out of this hole.
I know! I see it here every day. Even when details of Tucker Carton admitting in a recent court case that they knew at Fox that the "Election Stealing" was a lie Fox viewers won't hear that on their station.
DeleteWhat really gets me is the solution gun owners propose to end gun violence is...MORE GUNS. Oh yeah, if only more people were armed, then law-abiding gun owners would shoot down the crazies is their thinking. Do they really want a country where everyone is packing an assault rifle? Some do, I guess. My relatives were friends with a couple from Michigan who were so pissed they couldn't bring their guns to Canada for a visit. "How are we going to protect ourselves?" they asked. My BIL told them: "It's Canada. You don't need protection here." The woman wouldn't even go to the grocery store without putting a handgun in her purse first. I felt kinda sorry for someone who lives in that much fear. And don't think I feel all superior about Canada...we have those gun lovers here too, squeaking about their rights and freedoms at every opportunity...no one outside of the military needs an assault rifle. If you want to play GI Joe, go enlist and get it out of your system! OK, rant over...
ReplyDeleteDeb
I fully support your rant and agree. What gets me is how are all the so-called good guys with guns going to know who are the crazy ones and who are the other so called good guys with guns? And when the police arrive on the scene how are they going to know the difference?
DeleteExactly!
DeleteThis is so beautifully and poignantly written, Jean, and I extend hugs to your neighbors whose grandchildren and others were so immediately threatened, simply by going to (or not) a class on a campus that always felt safe. You know how I feel about this, living only a couple of miles away from the campus, hearing sirens and police helicopters as I saw glued to the local news. I had classes in the building and when I worked did more than one video shoot there. And of course, the Union. Your six-degrees is an apt thought. As someone on the news (somewhere here) said -- "Somebody knows somebody who went to MSU or had a child there or a friend who attended. What felt more abstract felt very real with this." Yes, it did. It must change... but will it and when?
ReplyDeleteI thought of you right away when I first heard about it, knowing how close you live to the campus and how you like to walk it. Never did I realize the connection would be as close as my neighbor.
DeleteThe high school students in my town held a rally on the Capitol steps because they were upset by all the school shootings. The rabid adult gun owners were across the street, fully armed, heckling the speakers, one kid a mass shooting survivor. The only solution of the hecklers was to arm the teachers. I see few, if any, scenarios where a teacher could outgun someone with an assault rifle. One of the hecklers wore body armor, carried an assault rifle along with several handguns and knives prominently displayed. Nobody needs a license or training in my stat to carry a gun, even concealed.
ReplyDeleteWow, I don't know what to say about those rabid gun owners who would try to intimidate a group of high schoolers like that. To arm school teachers is crazy. I feel so badly that kids have to worry about this sort of thing!
DeleteThat theory should be put to rest now that a six year old has shot his teacher! I cannot imagine any teacher I have ever known who would shoot a six year old, even if that kid was pointing a gun at them.
DeleteNina
And that teacher would have gone to death row because no one would have believed her life was in danger from a six year old.
DeleteThere are far too many mass shootings which is sad and distressing
ReplyDeleteOne is too many unless it's the very last one we ever have.
DeleteI have put my time and money into anti-gun supporters. But shootings seem to be getting worse instead of better. More frequent for sure. And it seems to be happening in other countries as well. What on earth will it take to STOP this murdering?
ReplyDeleteI wish I had an answer....
DeleteHere's an example where our government could actually accomplish something meaningful (implement universal background checks, ban assault weapons) but they don't want to piss off the unreasonable sector of their voters. Verrrry concerned about life before form or awareness; not so much about random death of the fully aware as they go about their lives.
ReplyDeleteThank you for adding this to the discussion.
DeleteI'm so sorry to hear that your community has been so strongly affected by this latest in our national shame of mass shootings.
ReplyDeleteI see two intertwined problems. The first is the insane number of guns in the United States; I believe we now have more guns than people, which makes it all too easy for someone who wants to do harm -- to other people or to themselves -- to get hold of one. (As horrific as our gun murder numbers are, I believe that the gun suicide numbers are about twice as high.) The second is our epidemic of anger and the idea that violence is an appropriate expression of anger. Donald Trump encouraged violent expressions of anger (telling rally-goers, for example, to punch protestors), but I think he was popularizing something that was already there. In Maine this past year, two brothers, ages 18 and 20, got into an argument about one wearing the other's t-shirt without permission. One got out a gun; when the smoke cleared, a toddler in the family was dead. It used to be that our mass shootings were almost all perpetrated by angry young men (an age/gender group with notoriously bad judgement), but now we are seeing mass shootings by angry older men.
BTW, my father shared Don's talent for finding connections with almost anybody he met. After he retired from his work as a tool and die maker, he got a winter-season job at a supermarket in Florida taking out groceries to people's cars. It was a perfect job for him -- so many strangers to meet and find points of connection with!
Don was a tool and die maker too as was my dad.
DeleteMaybe the anger and meanness of people was there before Donald Trump popularized it BUT that only means that these guys COULD control their anger if they had not been given permission to express their anger in inappropriate ways. Peer pressure can be used for good and bad and Trump followers use it for bad which ramps them all up higher and higher.
So long as those who are more interested in protecting Guns than protecting Victims of Gun Violence, things are likely going to be controversial about that topic. Following the Money of Social Ills is usually the best way to gauge how successful or unsuccessfully change will take place... if it's madly profitable, it is not likely to change at all. I'm so very sorry that this most recent tragedy has hit so close to Home with Residents in your community. I Hate that I have to discuss School Shooting scenarios with my Teenager who is still attending School and that all the Students must go daily knowing it could happen where they are trying to be educated. Or, where they Worship, Shop, go to a Concert, Play... ad nauseum, becoz too many very Violence prone people are armed with Military Grade Weaponry that never should be in the hands of Civilians and during Peacetime serve no purpose at all. They aren't needed for self protection or hunting Game Animals, they are meant to kill as many Humans as possible and they are highly effective at that... even in a War, the carnage from this grade of Weaponry leaves many casualties of War... and it's always horrible.
ReplyDelete