What We Have Wrought

I feel I should apologize for the errors in yesterday's post. I hit the publish button too soon, and when I tried to go back to edit I was for some reason unable to get there. I'm not great at the tech complexities of this blogging thing yet. I do know how to delete, but I decided to let it stand, errors and all, because even with the mistakes -- maybe especially with the mistakes -- what I wrote was truly reflective of my state of mind yesterday.

I'm a bit better today, thinking more clearly. Maybe I can type more clearly too.

I just posted a comment on Lionel Shriver's commentary at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, which related to what I'm about to write here. Shriver wrote a novel titled We Need to Talk About Kevin, which centers around a killer not too much unlike Young Cho. In her commentary she said she believed the videos that he sent NBC should not have been aired, and in fact if she could personally repress all knowledge of school shootings and shooters she would, because the publicity tends to engender more of the same. That is, to encourage copycats. In my comment I said I disagree with her, because I think we Americans need to be forced to see and hear the consequences of what we have allowed our country to become. Some of us have allowed, some of us have created -- but we are all responsible.

Yesterday I felt more than a tinge of despair over all this. As was evident from what I wrote here. Today I'm not quite so much despairing as ready to do whatever I can in whatever time I have left. But it's hard, harder than ever before.

My generation was hopeful, we started out optimistic about what we could do in America, with our relative wealth and our liberty and our democratic way of life. Some of us became diverted down the drug path during the 60s, but most of us remained optimistic even after JFK was assasinated, and then RFK, and finally MLK. I would add to that Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and author who has now been very nearly forgotten; Merton was said to have died in an accident while on a world tour for peace, but I've always thought he was killed too, because he represented a reconciling element and he had the power of words and religion both behind him.

Needless to say, I am not optimistic any longer. I doubt any of us are. I cringed -- literally, physically cringed -- yesterday when I was driving on a street near the court house and passed a woman on the sidewalk who was a certain type. She could have been me when I was just a few years younger. I knew before I could even see her clearly that she had been at the court house to protest something, just from the gray of her streaming long hair and her jeans and long jacket and the assertiveness of her walk. I cringed because I felt she had been wasting her time, that we have all wasted all our time, all these years. What did we do wrong? Why couldn't we prevent the situation we now have from developing? Didn't we try hard enough? Did we put our efforts in the wrong places, go about them in the wrong way?

The facts are staring us in the face: In the United States we have created a culture of incivility, of violence, and of greed. I wrote as much to one of my wise friends -- the one who suggested that violence comes from fear. If ever there was a direct illustration of how right she is about that, it's in the videos Young Cho left behind. Yes, his mental illness had progressed to the point of psychosis, which sets him apart from the mainstream. But the way he chose to deal with his psychosis was purely, entirely American. Do they have school shootings in any other country? I don't think so.

Last night, trying to blank out a bit and get away from the news coverage, I watched a movie titled The New World, which was about the Jamestown Colony. I'm a little fuzzy on this period of American history, but I think Jamestown happened before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. At any rate, it was early in the 1600s. This movie - - too Hollywooded Out to be called a film -- was more historically accurate in its costumes and setting than most. They even managed to find a young actress who physically resembles the portrait we have of Pochahontas, when she went to England at the invitation of the King and Queen. When I was watching the movie's depiction of the settlers squabbling -- hell, they were killing each other -- as they struggled to get their fort and houses etc built, this thought came into my head: "What can you expect from a country that was settled by petty criminals and losers?"

Is that our problem? Do we have ugliness here, now, because of that? I don't really think so. I hope not, because my own ancestors on both sides of the family were here by the middle of the 17th century and so, are among those earliest settlers. On one side they were Scots, who came here via Ireland, having been starved out of both places; on the other side they were English who somehow got to the Outer Banks -- I've thought they might have been pirates who jumped ship. Anyhow, they were all losers and maybe some of them were criminals too.

At this point in time, none of that matters anymore. What matters is that we look our present situation squarely in the eye and acknowledge that things have gone too far. Are we going to be able to face this reality?

I changed the title of this blog to The Compassionate Curmudgeon for a reason. I am not psychic, I didn't have a vision of the Young Cho's existence or what his plans were; no more had I a vision of Don Imus (now there's a scary thought) doing his foul-mouthed thing when he did it. But my timing has proven fortuitous. There's not much I can do as only one person, and a person, at that, who no longer has a current book contract or a website except for this one. (Though a few days ago I purchased the right to my old domain name, dianneday.com, and could put up a website if I want to.) But I can keep opening my cyber-mouth in whatever forum I find myself, I can post comments that are both compassionate and consistent with my belief that we must take these things as signs that change is more than ever necessary. We must see with clear eyes, listen with open minds, and find still the love in our hearts. And we must not be silent.