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A huge thank you to all of you for your kind comments and for keeping Tucson in your thoughts these past few days. When I posted, we didn't know what was going on; we were waiting for the hospital press conference. The local news just kept repeating that their sources were telling them that Giffords had died and I was so scared. It wasn't until
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I don't really remember much about Columbine - I don't think I was entirely able to grasp what had happened at the time - but I do remember the feeling you described when my school went on lockdown on 9/11 and a few months after when we had a bomb threat. It was surreal and almost laughable, at the time - like, how do you even pretend there's a plan to follow in a situation like that? Listening to the stories of witnesses, all I kept thinking was "if I am ever in a situation like that, I'm going to drop on the ground and try to cover the crown of my head with my hands to minimize potential brain damage and try to face my spine away from the threat." Which is as devoid of logic as any other thought, but all that could come to mind.
Final thought: Jon said that rhetoric is, at the core, only rhetoric and crazies will find direction in anything from Catcher in the Rye to the voices in their heads to certain half-governors' websites, and that we shouldn't cast blame for things that aren't based in reality (or something like that). At the same time, the pure venom in US politics, particularly in AZ recently, is really appalling. People really need to snap out of it and back to reality: even the most loathesome politicians and pundits are human beings. It's ridiculous to be acting like those people on the corner with their "the end is near" signs.
I'm sending psychic karma waves out to AZ both for the victims and their families and to hopefully chill the state out a touch.
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It's scary to even think about sometimes, isn't it? And we have absolutely no control over something like that, so we try to think about the things we *could* control...and we usually come up short :) it could be paralyzing to think what little control we actually would have in those situations...and so we just have to keep going. And I really don't know what I'm saying :))
I get what Jon was saying, intellectually. I know there's no easy, straight line; if there were, we could actually take steps to make sure that this didn't happen again. I agree with how he said what comes out of the mouths of those who are mentally ill shouldn't so closely follow what comes out of the mouths of those on the far-right (exactly what you're saying--they are acting like those people with 'the end is near' signs!). On the other hand...what happened wasn't so completely outside the realm of possibility, down here. There was a build-up. And I really don't know what people are playing with when they say "if ballots don't resolve this, bullets will" and that their supporters shouldn't "retreat" but "reload" and that their supporters have "Second Amendment remedies"--and I know they're not talking about a well-regulated militia. They're not saying this stuff in a vacuum. Violent rhetoric has led to a sharp increase in threats before this happened, and it could not have helped that the shooter had his delusions somewhat supported by the venom down here. But I don't have perspective, so there's that.
ANYWAY, thank you so much for the karma waves. So many people need them out here (and, yeah, the state really does need to chill out. the "dry heat" is warping people's sense of what's reasonable and proportional :) Thank you.
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I like this. I support this. And I want the t-shirt.
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