Trouble

Since when did it become okay to shoot people as a means of expressing negative feelings? Every newspaper, cable news network, and website I have seen in the last few weeks has blood and mayhem as the lead story. Blood and mayhem as a result of someone shooting people for no other reason than they were feeling rejected and needed some kind of tangible retribution.

Two weeks ago, I called my son to make plans for dinner that night and he asked me "are you still on lock down?", to which I replied "I'm supposed to be on lock down?". Apparently, there was not one but two gunmen running from back yard to back yard, hiding in sheds and garages, hoping the cops would never find them and arrest them for barging into someones house and shooting them. This all happened less than a mile from my house.

That same week, a disgruntled man who had been recently fired from an accounting firm, walked into his old office in Troy, Michigan and opened fire. He was upset that he had been fired.

We spent last week choking down the glut of media coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting.

What the fuck people?

I don't know who to blame, but I need to blame someone, or something. It's the only way I feel I can even begin to wrap my head around this. If there is a tangible reason, there can be a way to compartmentalize it. The 'lone nut' or 'depressed' explanation will simply not suffice, there needs to be some solid answer so I can fix it and it doesnt happen anymore.

For me, it seems to be related to the fact that many Americans are becoming nutjobs. Politics seem to be at a peak "us vs.them" mentality. "Reailty" TV encourages us to quickly judge people based on the doctored versions of who they are and we get to decide who wins and who gets the boot. Celebrity is based not on merit of craft, but who's husband someone is supposedly fucking, who's in rehab (or running away from it), and who has the best stuff. All of these, I desperately hope not by design, make us regular folks feel weird about who we are and what actually means something in our world.

Along with all these factors, a bull's eye was hit by my friend Champ over the weekend. Us ladies were sitting outside on an impossibly beautiful April evening, discussing the state of the world and when the Virginia Tech shootings were brought up, Champ pipes in with a precise and scathing comment about the state of mental health care in the United States. It is just not there. For anyone. If you are lucky enough to have tremendous health care, you might have access to it at the cost of a co-pay, but that is rare. Most of us just have to buck up and cope in the face of alarming rises in rates of mental illness in our country. Only the rich get to have the luxury of having a clear head, and frankly, after meeting a some of them, they are completely beyond repair anyhow. How sane do you have to be to sit on your ass and shop online all fucking day?

One last thought on all of this. How much is all this technology helping us? We can email at a stop light from our Balckberry, are expected to call people back within moments of getting their messages and can communicate with clients half a world away in two seconds with one email. But I still don't feel enough kinship with anyone to stop wishing horrible things on them when they drive too slow in the left lane, or don't meet my needs, or improperly cross my path. How wrong is that? When I think of anyone saying the things I say to someone I know, I'd hit them with an iron skillet. Or give them a fierce glaring at anyhow. How can we be talking to each other so much yet have no idea how to communicate?