I kind of had a feeling that today was going to be a day like this, though I hoped that maybe we’d be allowed just a moment longer to grieve.
When I finally went to bed last night, they had only identified something like a dozen of the victims, and when I woke up today, they were just about done. A lot of people, myself included, are still kind of in shock with it all, and yet out come the opinions…
Yesterday we already had to hear Donald Trump flapping his mind-numbingly ignorant jaw, and today the rest of the pundits jumped on the bandwagon with presumption and finger-pointing and the full force of what the 24-hour news cycle does worst. The NRA predictably said that it couldn’t have been the gun’s fault. Ted Cruz blamed political correctness. Geraldo Rivera said that the victims should’ve fought back!
As the day moved on, the headlines got uglier and uglier as our media proved to pin the crime on something. And from the right angle, I get that drive because understanding the motive helps us work through the pain just the same … at least it does when we’re actually sharing facts and well thought out reasoning to get there, that is…
But that’s not what happened, and instead minute threads of suggestion were spun into fact and then amplified into fear and anger, which sadly is what America does best in the wake of tragedy. We get riled up, and we beat our chests until the next thing comes along to get riled up about, and then we start the cycle all over again, never actually resolving the things that are causing so many of our problems along the way.
I don’t claim to have the answers, and frankly I’m not even ready to start talking about that anyways.
They literally just finished identifying the bodies of the victims this morning.
Can’t we take a few minutes longer to grieve, and to come together as people, and to let the professionals gather the facts before we start this whole bitch fest about Obama manufacturing this whole thing to come take away your guns or how President Trump will solve everything by deporting all of the Muslims on day #1???
We’re all tired.
49 people died yesterday.
The City of Orlando, its citizens and its neighbors, and anyone sympathetic to the tragedy that they’ve just endured … they all deserve a chance to grieve.
Without all of the politics and the ignorant Facebook comments … without the blame game and the hypotheticals … without all of this NOISE that we always have EVERY. GODDAMNED. TIME. THIS. HAPPENS.
There will be plenty of time to do this thing that we’re inevitably going to do, but can’t it just wait a couple of more days while we try to breathe and collect ourselves and sort out whatever the fuck just happened?
Maybe we never learn from these things because we don’t take the time to pause and gather ourselves and really understand what actually happened. 😥