You adults have failed us
by not creating a safer place for your children to go to school.
So we, the next generation, will not fail our own kids.
We will make this change happen.
If not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then next year.
Take it from us. You created a mess for us,
but we will make this world safer for our children.
- Florence Yared
Junior, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
Parkland, Florida
Mark Anthony Conditt. He may be more familiarly known as the Austin, Texas, bomber, who, according to the police chief there was a "very challenged young man." But what he's not been known as is the serial killer that he is/was. The question is why?
There are a number of groups to whom the answer is patently - and offensively - obvious. If you're a Person of Color or even a Woke white person, you're tired of the double standard that our media - both the spineless mainstream media on the left and the purposely obfuscatory 'media' on the (alt-)right - has imposed once again: white mass killers are mentally ill and in need of support (whereas anyone of Color is quickly labeled a terrorist for a single killing, much less multiple ones). Oh, yes, and in a doubly cruel irony, when the victims are all or primarily of Color, the focus is on the (white) killer, not his (Black and brown) victims (and, yes, the killer's virtually always a 'Christian' white male).
And yes, too, it's b.s., but, more than this, it's a mirror held up to us at this moment in our journey and the reflection says that we've failed the test of collective character implicit in it.
We cannot solve America's foundational problem - racism and the White Supremacy and Privilege that it creates - if we can't even acknowledge it. And, sadly, Mr. Conditt's 15 minutes of fame (or ignominy) are frightfully illustrative here: not only is he being portrayed sensitively in the media, but the picture of him that's most often used is at least seven to ten years old and one in which he looks decidedly more 'all-American' than a more recent photo might show. Ostensibly so that the nation can bemoan how such a nice and nice-looking young man lost his way? (Grrr.) But I digress....
The truth is that it's not just this latest young white serial killer who's lost his way: it's our country as a whole. Our values - not the pristine ones that we profess but the increasingly tawdry, inhumane ones on display in our actions and in how we live - are those of a declining and lost society ... and we must re-order them quickly if we hope to prevent the demise of what one Canadian observer on Facebook recently termed "the American Empire." How tragically ironic that we have a president who purports to want to make the country great again and yet is bringing out all of the ugliness in us of which too many were previously ashamed to give vent publicly, illustrating just how illusory a goal this is (or, for the more optimistic, how very long a journey this will be). But, again, I digress....
In addition to not addressing and exorcising our fundamental racism - and, in fairness, our subscription to a number of other -isms like sexism/misogyny, religiocentrism, racism in its nativist form (xenophobia), classism, etc. - we've also become a militantly selfish and inhumane nation that is heavily influenced (if not dominated) by those who claim to follow the teachings of a pacifist, nonviolent Middle Eastern Jew. Hmmm. We claim Judeo-Christian values but can't identify them, at least not in how we behave in the public square. And we wonder why we all can't get along....
If America as we dream it truly has any future - which, based on our collective behavior as a society at present, I believe to be a very open question - then we will need what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., termed a "revolution of values" to arrest our moral (et. al.) slide and put us on a better/higher/more humane path.
Thankfully, there are glimmers of hope: Today is the day of the #MarchForOurLives, the national protest against gun violence that's happening in many cities across the country and especially in our nation's capital - where my wife and stepdaughters are now - which is led by some of the survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school massacre (in which the killer was ... aww, you know...). These teenagers have seen through the threadbare illogic and morally bankrupt piety that have surrounded our national conversation (and inaction) on sensible gun control that has left them exposed ... and they are not having it!
That we had to get to the point of preferring our guns to our children so much so that the latter have revolted is yet another of the damning paradoxes in the life of our nation of late: our children feel so betrayed by us, their parents and other adults who are ostensibly dedicated first and foremost to their well-being and safety but who, collectively, haven't done a damn thing to protect them in the wake of dozens of such attacks in recent years, that they are deciding to lead us. Yes, America, look at your shame and glory personified: we adults have failed our children but they are seizing the day to goad us into humane action. If not for the humanity of this younger generation, I would have a hard time being optimistic ... but, today, as millions march in response to their call, I have hope.
Also in this outcome I believe is a bigger message and, perhaps, a vision of the solution to our present and pervasive ills: we have to listen to our children, value them and build a world that we truly want them to inherit, not just one that we leave them - a broken society, especially as exemplified by our shameful (and lethal) lack of address of gun violence - and say we tried. We owe our children - mine and yours, of whatever color, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, etc. - this: that we endeavor to improve the world that they'll inherit, not just survive in it until we pass the baton without having finished the job.
And, today, we get a glimpse of this future in the March For Our Lives. Let us pray that these young people's (hopefully sustained and even elevated) pressure goads us out of our torpor on this first of many issues and returns us to a more proactive fight for the more just, equitable and safe world that they deserve (which, ironically, is the kind of world that we pledged to build, we Baby Boomers, when we wrested control of the societal discourse from our elders in opposition to an unjust war a half-century ago).
Let the children lead us, because Lord knows we need it and them. And let them lead us, too, so that many more of them learn that their voices and votes matter, which, in turn, should lead more of them to choose the common good over the cynical, selfish and lethal entitlement of Cruz and Conditt and.... It turns out our children are better than we've assumed them to be, so let's let them show us how it's done, this re-making of a better world....
We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.
We must rapidly begin the shift from
We must rapidly begin the shift from
a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights,
are considered more important than people,
the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism
are incapable of being conquered.
- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," (April 4, 1967)
