Lunch with my son yesterday was shattered when he said,”In Mexico they have newspapers that show all the blood. What would happen if we did that here? Look, this is what an AK-47 does to a six-year-old?”
Kids at his school were out at recess when they saw “a suspicious-looking man.” They reported him to a teacher and he turned out to be a parent who had come to pick up his kindergartner.
Those kids were at recess. They should have been playing. Instead they’re monitoring their school grounds for potential danger. And we think it’s covid that’s affecting their mental health.
If people formed human shields around schools every day at every school, would that only accentuate the children’s fear? "Why are those people here every day? Is someone coming to hurt us?"
If the Parkland students didn’t sway politicians from the gun lobby, what will? Maybe the pictures of bodies torn to bits? What paper or television station would have the courage to show that?
But that’s what stopped the war in Vietnam--dead bodies shown on prime-time TV every night. Coverage of the civil rights struggle brought hate and courage into living rooms everywhere. Now we get our news from social media and watered down newspaper coverage. We don’t even have to change the channel. Click the image of a weeping face and move on.
We are a country who has decided murdered children are an acceptable fact of our national landscape. Some of us believe that Sandy Hook was a hoax and some of us have learned not to think about it at all.
This is what democracy looks like.
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