Someone had to clean the bits and pieces of small children off the walls and floors of those classrooms in Uvalde. Someone had to walk in there with a … mop? Industrial strength vacuum? And wipe up the human remains of kids who would have been starting their summer vacation that afternoon, if they hadn’t been murdered instead. In their own school in their own town, where they, no doubt, trusted the adults around them to take care of them and protect them. Or, at the very least, to help them when they were injured, scared and also, though this probably never crossed one of their 10-year-old minds, lying on their classroom floor bleeding to death.
Somewhere in America in a boardroom or maybe just a room, but probably a nice one, a bunch of guys met to talk about their product, a semi-automatic rifle. They know that no average citizen needs one, they know teenagers are using them to kill other teenagers and little kids. Maybe someone in that meeting suggests they withdraw their product from the marketplace. Afterall, we make plenty of other guns … maybe that person pointed out …
Then someone else said, Nah … our profits are tripling annually, why stop now? And then they all kind of laughed and went back to work making more and more and more guns.
Somewhere in a room, maybe there’s a room behind the actual Supreme Court, probably there are lots of rooms … these people met in one of those rooms and asked each other … Do we dare, I mean … we did take an oath … ? Should we? And then someone else laughed and maybe even raised his or her voice a little when they said, Hell yea! We got the power! We can do whatever the hell we want to do!
Then they went back to work dismantling the freedoms many Americans had given their lives to earn, bit by bit by bit.
Down the hall in the out-of-the-way office the rich white politician met with the lobbyist who had arrived with a suitcase full of money to assure that the politician would help make the company they represented fatter and richer and free of pesky environmental restrictions.
Sure, the politician had been elected mostly by hardworking people who believed he would create policy that reflected their worldview. The worldview they brought with them the day they left their 8-hour shift and waited in line for two hours to vote.
I wonder what my people back home will think … the politician thought for just a moment, until the lobbyist opened the suitcase and said There’s lots more where this came from!
Screw it, the politician thought to himself as the lobbyist handed him the suitcase.
Then the two of them went back to work, screwing more and more and more regular hard-working every day people. And the environment, too.
Every room in Putin’s Russian government is a back room. Everything that goes on all the time is anti-humanity and pro-power and might. Still, one must wonder, when the suggestion was made … Do we? Should we? Run our tanks through beautiful cities, blow up hospitals with pregnant women inside, rape women (snicker), kill kids? Round up thousands and take them to remote locations and torture them, force tens of millions of people to flee their nice homes with gardens and kitchen tables where they sit with their loved ones and enjoy a cold beer? Who gives a fuck? I can hear Putin say, making all of his comrades laugh. Let’s do this!
And then they left the room and got to work torturing, killing, bombing, destroying and terrorizing.
Guys, listen, I know you don’t want to talk about this stuff, but the planet is choking, the rivers are drying up, the lakes are vanishing, every year it gets hotter the one person in the meeting with a speck of a conscious pointed out to the fast food company execs in their conversation about clearcutting rainforests to graze more beef cattle.
Shut the fuck up one of the top brass says in response, we didn’t hire you to be an environmentalist pussy. People need our burgers, it’s the only thing most of them can afford to eat! You think we’re gonna roll back production now? Laugh laugh laugh laugh. Chop chop chop chop chop.
Cheekbones and hipbones! yells the fashion boss person. Jesus Christ, no one wants to see flesh on these girls! I want them six feet tall and no one over 110! Skeletons! I want skeletons!
Someone had to clean the bits and pieces of little kids off the insides of those classrooms. Someone else will have to do that today and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Those janitors will suffer their own special hell for the rest of their lives, custom made by the men who continue to manufacture and sell weapons designed to kill a lot of people in a little time. Little people a lot of the time.
A woman will be raped by her uncle tonight. She’ll get pregnant and have no choice but to carry that baby to full term because where she lives if she attempts to get an abortion, which she can’t because it’s now illegal, but if she did her rapist uncle can sue her and collect damages. That kid (and her mother) will grow up in a particular kind of hell, custom-made by educated, trusted, vetted Supreme Court justices.
A little kid will watch as his father is dragged away by Russian soldiers, tormented for a moment then shot in the head. That kid, if he lives, will carry that trauma into his adulthood and then pass it on down to his kids. He will live his own special hell, handcrafted by Vladamir Putin and friends.
A teenage girl looking at images of emaciated women wearing cool clothes will decide she’s too fat. She’ll stop eating dessert, then she’ll stop eating breakfast then she’ll start throwing up what little she does eat. She will feel ugly and worthless and though she will gnaw with hunger every day, she won’t stop until she is laying in a hospital bed, being force-fed through a tube. This young woman’s private hell is brought to you by Vogue, Inc.. Thank you, Anna Wintour and pals, you deranged and unfazed promoters of the ubiquitous concentration camp style, for setting a standard no young woman can ever or will ever meet without first torturing herself until she is as close to invisible as possible without actually dying.
Every single person on this planet has been traumatized in one way or another by their parents and all the other adults who are and were supposed to take care of them.
Every one.
Some far, far worse than others.
The suffering is immense. We humans are terrible. The things we do to each other are terrible.
The driving forces are clearly greed and power. Relentless, bottomless, insatiable. Greed and power.
There are counterbalances, no doubt, everywhere, simple people trying to do good things, toiling away, being nice, making cookies, showing up, holding hands.
Is there hope?
I don’t know.
I dig holes in the garden and plant flowers and they are beautiful, quiet. I eat the lettuce and radishes and strawberries growing there, still amazed that a bunch of tiny seeds could become my lunch.
I walk down the dirt road in the evening and swing on the neighbor’s tree swing. They’re never there, they live somewhere else, but they have two good tree swings and I like the way it feels to swing.
The birds still sing every morning. They must know something, right?
The man working at the cash register when I buy more flowers is nice to me, even though he’s probably not making much money working all day at the hardware store, on his feet, selling stuff. I’m surprised by how kind he is, even though I know deep in my heart I shouldn’t be.
The lady who owns the little market is kind when I buy my coffee, even though she’s worried about the rising prices of everything and the lack of affordable housing here that makes it impossible for her to keep staff. There’s nowhere for them to live in this rich ski town.
Still, she smiles a lot and is always nice to me when I’m there.
I don’t know.
I’m not sure.
Can we save ourselves?
Thirty-five years ago today I got hit by a car. Every singe year on this day I have felt lucky to be alive. Now I’m not so sure. I can feel the hope draining out of me like it’s a liquid and I have holes in the bottom of my feet.
Can we pray our way out of this? Marches, protests? Do we need more of those?
I’m not sure.
I’m going to keep keeping it simple: tend to the garden, dig in the dirt, visit with the old folks, swing on the swing, ride my bike, swim in the lake, make another plan to get people together to eat together, get some musicians to play, pay attention when someone is talking to me, say grace before dinner, say thank you, tell my kids they’re amazing, maybe adopt another dog. Thank the flowers for being so beautiful. Give someone some money if they’re having trouble with their bills, make sure everyone knows they can borrow my car or use my house.
That stuff, I guess. That’s all I’ve got. I hope it’s enough.
Amen.
The writing was at your depth of feeling and resenated with many of us. I believe my soul is saved in nature. It is the only meaningful and safe place for me to trust my spirit to good will. The physical world has gone crazy. I can not tolerate the indiffernce of companies and the government any longer. What course of action is there? Protests only benefit the protestors. Politicians do not listen to them or care. Marching, standing up, speaking up, all of it is in vain as far as I am concerned. The police force in Uvalde Texas was useless. How could anyone know children were crying and begging for help and DO NOTHING? Eventually justice may raise her head, like she did after World War II, and after millions of Jews died. But she is long in coming and do we have enough fo American individualism to STAND UP, and we the people do something to change the World Order? I am 77 years of age and no longer can hold the shield high. I can still pray and make offerings but I can not take up the banner now. What good force will come along to change all the dark energy that exists now? Yes, the world is made of darkness and light. Darkness is now upon the Earth and ruling. What will chase the Dark Energy away? God help us all.
Poignant. But maybe, just maybe, if we are kind as the people in your story are; if we find joy in nature, and if we embrace all that it provides us when we listen- and find a sense of love and peace in it….. maybe, just maybe our collective kindness, joy and love will make a difference. After all, that is why we are here. Sending love & joy to you every day.