Looking Into A Mirror, Darkly

Amongst all of the murders, kidnappings, and other gruesome crimes that happens each day in our country we continue to say that we Americans still hold the high moral ground of the world. Our obsession with violence is manifested in most of our television shows, our movies, and our video games which has successfully de-stigmatized our nation and our children. In the past month alone the "Breaking News" has been:

• Two police shootings where four police officers died in California and three died in Pennsylvania with shooters with weapons that no average citizen need. Update: The Pennsylvania shooter claimed that he was afraid that his gun rights would be taken away.
  
• A man kills 13 people and then himself in New York, because he is not liked and recently lost his job. Update #2: He shot 98 rounds in a minute!
  
• A man in Washington kills his five children and then himself because his wife is leaving him for another man.
  
• A young girl in California is kidnapped, killed, and God knows what else.

What makes all of this worse is all of the violence that has not made national news and while all of this is happening the Party of Just Say No is doing just that when it comes to gun control. I must also say that the party of Yes We Can hasn't said or done much either. Oh, I forgot to mention that these weapons were not bought in the ghettos on street corners. These weapons were bought legally in gun shops. By the way for the uninformed, gun sales are up, way up because there are some who fear that the Obama Administration is going to take their guns away and they have decided to stock up.

Last week, the Afghan Government approved a law that made it legal for men to rape their wives and the outrage came from all who heard it. I saw the political pundits and the international community alike say that this was heinously wrong which cause its President to re-look at this this law. This week when President Obama visited Turkey and address is legislature and spoke positive thoughts of Islam, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll was released stating that only 51% of US citizens trust our Muslim country allies and 48% say that they trust our Muslim allies less than our other allies. What troubles me is what if the men who committed the murders of these police officers or the shooting in New York was Middle Eastern would we have called these events "terrorist attacks?"

I am outraged that we don't see our country as it truly is...a crazed violent nation!

We Americans give so much of our opinion on international matters. We state how the crimes and genocide in Darfur are terrible, how the human slavery rate is the at the highest rate in human history, how terrible crimes are happening through out the world (which they are and I will say are awful). The problem is we somehow think and convince ourselves that everywhere else in the world these crimes are somehow savage or pictured as somehow worse because they occur outside the United States.

Remember during Hurricane Katrina some of the news media used the term "refugees" to identify American citizens who experienced and are continuing to experience a terrible ordeal that our government still has not responded to adequately. This was somehow used to make these citizens less than what they were CITIZENS of the United States of AMERICA. I am sure you have seen countless crimes in the heartland, in the suburbs, and in small towns where you can always see some eyewitness or neighbor say the oh so cliche comment, "Things like this don't happen here." The Pittsburgh police chief said it this past Saturday (or words to that effect) at a press conference comparing his city to my hometown of Oakland, CA in the disbelief that a man killed three of his officers. I interpreted it that we here are somehow savages and that other areas of the country have a more moral sensibility.

I have news of all of you. We are not the nation that should condemn or preach to the world about or use OUR religion(s) that we are somehow the moral country of the world. Here is a wake up call, we have more people in prison (2.3 million or 1 per 100 people) than the second ranked country China (yeah the country with the human rights violations we all complain about) with 1.5 million while China has FOUR times the population. Oh, I forgot to mention that when you account for people on probation and parole that number goes up to 7.2 million as of 2007.

An Outraged Thought:

How about we take a break from criticizing the rest of the world and take a very long look in the mirror. How about we take the AK-47 and the other automatic weapons our of that hands of citizens that turn to violence and handle our own house. We need to remind ourselves that the Second Amendment is the right to bear arms, that was a rifle in 1776. I cannot think that the founding fathers intended for everyone to own a weapon like an AK-47 that shoots multiple rounds like a rate of 600 rounds a minute: check for yourself, it's on Wikipedia. We need to take a look in the mirror and take care of our own business before we start preaching to the world again.