Thursday, March 15, 2018

Sometimes, You Can't Make It On Your Own

Everybody knows about the Parkland shooting in Florida where 17 kids were killed recently. 

And everyone also knows about the efforts nationwide in the U.S. to enforce stricter gun control laws to prevent it from happening again. 

It happens every time there's a mass shooting in the States, which is a lot.  But there's something about this event that seems to be resonating a lot louder.  Kids are tired of feeling unsafe in their schools, and they're even more tired of people in authority not doing anything at all, whatsoever (besides bogus lip service), to forward their cause.  Let's face it, it happens with shocking regularity there. Sadly.  And, also, infuriatingly.

There are people to blame when things like this happen.  Victims and their families largely point fingers at lax gun control laws, and a lack of funding for mental health care for people in distress who culminate their free time on earth by easily purchasing an automatic or semi-automatic weapon at a gun show or Wal Mart with appalling ease to carry out their deranged plans.  The NRA and GOP both blame mental health issues and not a hell of a lot else.

I have a friend in the U.S. that I've known for a long time now who's a big proponent of the 2nd Amendment, which grants the people the right to bear arms.  Once upon a time, I was staunchly against gun ownership, outside of hunting rifles, as guns are built for one purpose, and one purpose only:  To kill human beings.  This is true.  They're not built for collectors, gamesmanship, or shooting bottles off of fence posts.  They're made to end someone's life.  Detractors will say it's for self defense. 

My friend explained to me that they live in a rural area where the police would have to take some time to get to them if there was some kind of incident where their property was being invaded, thus, they should have the right to protect themselves.  This makes sense.  If someone's breaking into your house and the police are ten miles out, it's probably far too late for their assistance.  Protecting yourself in circumstances such as this is quite warranted, provided said gun owner is responsible with their firearms.  My mind was actually changed when we discussed this.  It's hard to argue against ownership of a handgun when you're faced with such a dire prospect, even if the chances of it happening are quite remote.  So with utmost care and caution, I do agree with this person's stance.

I do not agree, however, that anyone outside of law enforcement or the military should be able to possess a weapon that can inflict mass casualties in a matter of seconds.  That's just ridiculous.  When it was revealed that the 18 year old shooter of the Parkland massacre had an abundance of them, it left the vast majority of us shaking our heads.  How could a teenager amass such an arsenal of military grade weaponry and not be noticed? 

But that's neither here nor there in the context of this blog.  The fact of the matter is, this individual (who I won't name for various reasons, fame being the biggest) was a sick man.  Barely a man, at that, by any definition.  He was a monster, a deranged villain of the people with a premeditated plan to carry out an attack that would inflict the most carnage possible.  Only monsters can do such a thing.  A sicko with a perverse agenda.

Upon stating that, I either elicited overwhelming agreement from the reader, with furious feelings that would make one call for the death penalty; or, if you're someone like me, you're asking a hell of a lot more questions.  A hell of a lot.

A child is born equal to everyone in God's eyes.  The moment that child is taken care of will help shape his or her destiny in the years to come.  In the post World War II era, people came back from overseas and got the help they needed to set their lives on a normal track.  Manufacturing, steelworking, textiles, you name it.  There was a need for it, and those needs were met.  Good money was made to help raise families and for everyone to prosper.  It's not a perfect world; obviously some will fall through the cracks, but the picture was a lot rosier then when it came to getting a decent paying job and raising a family.

Then Nixon showed up.  The republican party swapped platforms with the democrats.  Kennedy was assassinated.  Vietnam happened and spurred rebellion, which prompted kids then to stage a relentless peace movement across the country (sound familiar at all?).  Things settled down a little in the 70's, until Reagan turned up in the 80's.  Goodbye to unions and manufacturing and the good paying jobs that came with it; hello to trickle-down economics that turned out to be a farce and left millions upon millions poor and broken and homeless.  The 90's saw more war in the Persian Gulf for what was apparently nothing to do with Americans.  U.S. forces returned home with Gulf War Syndrome, PTSD, blown-off limbs and various diseases and largely no support to help them recover, thanks to governments that would not allow spending to happen to make it so.  Democrats would apply bills to the GOP dominated congress for assistance for veterans, only to not get passed, because after all, in the eyes of republicans, more military spending is far more warranted.  Don't forget the massive billions spent on the ridiculous nuclear arms race in the 80's, again pushed by the GOP.  The debt did indeed recover under eight years of Clinton, but once people got wind of a stain on a blue dress, impeachment enters (and fails) and republicans once again ruled the roost in the new century.  The twin towers are annihilated.  Welcome back, middle east war (with the wrong country, no less) and thousands more are killed, maimed, and sent home in the name of profits for weapons engineers like Halliburton, connected at the hip to the vice president.  Only this time, there's even less help and less political will to endorse help for wounded vets.

As is always the case, the democrats under Obama come in to clean up the massive mess.  And, as always again, congress is dominated in the second term by the GOP and stonewalls any democratic attempts to bring assistance to sick and wounded veterans.  But, the deficit again was largely cleaned up, left by the Bush administration, and hope was beginning to set in again.

Enter Trump.  I don't need to go into anything after those two words.

Today, poverty and strife is rampant across the U.S. and is getting worse.  The rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer.  The unemployment numbers and economy are great, though, showing a massive turnaround from the previous decade... but that began under the previous administration, which inherited the worst deficit and recession from the Bush-9/11 era. 

In Trump's America, racism, xenophobia and hatred are king.  It's inevitable with such discord that anger would descend upon American civilians in such a volatile environment.  With the air of such hopelessness flooding the land, it's bound to permeate itself into hostility and anger that, with the readiness and availability of something like guns and ammo present, can only culminate and continue with more desperation and aggression, in this case, in the form of violence against one another.  What a sad and hopeless state of affairs.

In this day and age where bullying is frowned upon and its perpetrators punished, and such measures are clearly not working, a harder, more detailed look at the picture is warranted.  Punishing the bullies is one thing.  It's easy to take a bully, tell him or her that their actions are wrong, and marginalize them for what they've done.  That's one way to deal with it.  But it's not really working, is it?  Maybe it's time to take that skipping record and flip it over and see what's on the other side. 

So once again, a child is born equal to everyone in God's eyes.  Then, it's up to us how we mold that child.  It's the luck of the draw in a world where not every family has an equal shot at doing a good job at raising a family.  In the case of the Parkland murderer, the odds were stacked against him very early in his life.  He wound up not being raised by his parents at all, but shuffled off from one foster home to another.  If children need anything in their lives, it's stability.  And without it, depending on the environment surrounding them, lack of that stability can wreak some very tragic consequences.  None more extreme than what happened in Parkland.  Now there are calls for this kid's head to roll. 

Upon further public investigation, we learn that the shooter had a history of mental illness and a very, very difficult upbringing.  I say "upbringing" very loosely.  More like slowly lowered into the fire.  I'm not sticking up for the kid.  Rather, I'm trying to look closer at the dots in the picture, which too many aren't doing.  I'm asking only one question about this entire affair:  What made this man, who is, again, barely a man at 18 years old, become the notorious murderer that he's become? 

Victims and their families are entitled to be furious at the event that took place in Parkland.  Even locally, the people have the right to have their emotions upended in the face of such shocking, ugly tragedy.  If your child was murdered in school by a sick (literally) individual with a gun that should never have been available in the first place, you'd likely wish for the same fate for the gunman.  I probably would!  Thus, the death penalty is being sought by prosecutors for this heinous event.

But we as a civilized society need to find the strength to look deeper into the abyss that is the mind of a killer.  We need to know what made him tick.  What led him to do the terrible things he's done.  Would he have done this had he been born into a family with more stability?  If other kids hadn't made his life the hell that he supposedly lived?  Would he have done it if he wasn't able to so easily acquire a weapon like an AR-15?  I sincerely doubt it.  So do you, deep down, even if you disagree on the surface.

Moreover, he was afflicted with mental illness that he wasn't born into, but developed under the circumstances that his life dropped on him.  He was a mentally ill person for a long time who needed help.  The signs were already there that he could be a problem.  Even the FBI tremendously dropped the ball on stopping this outcome in its tracks.  It has ignorance written all over it; it'll go away if we just don't pay attention to it.

The big reveal here is, to those who don't know me, that I'm a sufferer of mental illness myself.  My upbringing was rough.  I was bullied, had an alcoholic father, was brought up poor, suffered numerous serious injuries both accidental and self-inflicted, did poorly in school because of it all, and may well have turned out quite differently if not for the iron wall of support that was my mother.  I still suffer today and deal with it on a daily basis.  In fact, as I write this now, I'm on leave from work due to my illness.  The differences between the shooter and myself is, there was help readily available, though our mental health processes here in Canada need some serious tweaking; but I got it - and it may have made a massive difference that guns aren't readily available like they are down south, or I may have done myself in very long ago. 

Most people who know me will tell you that I'm a pretty nice guy, that I'd do anything to help, not to toot my own horn.  But that's how my mother raised me, and my siblings set the same example.  I was fortunate to have a support system that the mass killer apparently didn't. 

So to hear the NRA trumpet in the media along with Trump and his cronies that the Parkland killer is a 'monster', 'crazy', a 'maniac', and a 'mentally deranged sicko', make my blood boil.  They are essentially telling all of us dealing with mental illness are crazy sickos, ready to shoot up the town if we can get a gun.  This is the most intolerant that people in authority could possibly sound in the face of such a crisis. 

We with mental illness are definitely ill, and need treatment, and maybe medicine.  Some of us need supervision.  But to say that I am mentally ill, with the connotation that I chose to be that way, is absurd beyond levels I can't describe.  And watching Trump and the NRA spew their hatred toward people like us, and re-marginalize us after much progress has been made, is both heartbreaking and infuriating.  True to most GOP standards, it turns the clock back on any progress that has been made in recent years, and incites more hatred, fear, aggression and ignorance toward us.

I guess the reason I took to writing this is, to anyone that it may reach, that if you do not suffer from mental illness -- you need to seriously consider matters far more deeply than just what you see on the surface before you pass judgment.  Please.  Those of us with mental illness issues did not ask for our condition, and don't want it.

To those of you that do suffer, you need to know that there are others out there that are looking for you, and looking to help you.  You need to talk to people.  Get help from a professional, because as a famous band once said, sometimes you can't make it on your own.  But get help, do whatever it takes to get it.

Because you matter, and you WILL make it.


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