My husband and I sat in a sushi restaurant on Friday, watching the live news conference regarding Fort Hood. Interspersed through the live updates were the briefings on the Orlando rampage. We just sat there.
“You ever think,” he started, “that sometimes these things are a domino effect? That the Orlando guy was just BARELY holding it together when he saw the Fort Hood thing? And maybe he COULD’VE just avoided it, but he saw that guy go nuts and thought, Aw, fuck it?”
I nodded. Of course I thought that.
I have this very macabre theory, but I see it playing out.
You know how, in 1929, the stock market crashed and people jumped off of buildings?
Dude, we’re there. But this time, you can buy guns at WalMart.
We’re coming into a holiday season where the US has an abnormally (if not historically) high unemployment rate. People are suddenly unable to support their families. But the media is still there, pounding material goods into our hearts and heads and making us think that our children will feel lost and unappreciated if they don’t get that Tickle-Me-Elmo this year. And our new generation doesn’t necessarily feel a personal sense of responsibility for the situation.. perhaps, rightly so. Let’s face it; the majority of this financial crisis was created at a level much higher than any of us will ever have a gamble in. We’re just at the bottom of the shit snowball.
So where people used to feel desperate and think that THEY should suffer, personally, and they would go topple off a building, now people are looking for vengeance. They’re looking to exact a right for the wrong that they suffered. We’ve got a nation of vigilantes that are just LOOKING for the switch to flip.
I firmly feel, in an ominous and foreboding fashion, that we’ve not seen the last of this. The closer we get to the holidays, and the steeper the unemployment numbers, we’re going to see more acts of desperation.
Having said that, we all can do something to help.
People who do things like this don’t wake up one morning and decide. They’ve thought about it. They’ve most likely put out warning signals. They’ve tried to ask for help. They’ve been shunned by their own villages.
As we come into the holiday season, let’s look past our own fences into our neighbors’ worlds. I’ve mentioned a few posts back that one little puppy has suddenly introduced us to our entire street of neighbors, and it shouldn’t have taken that. I plan to bake cookies for each house on our street this season, so we can take it over there as a family and wish them a happy holiday. Cause why wouldn’t you?
We all have our own village to support. And just a little more support .. a hug, a pat on the back, a snarky email for laughs .. can mean such a huge difference to one person. And that one person may breathe a little easier for it, and wake up that morning to decide that today? Today is NOT the day that they want to lose it all.
Around Halloween Neil (@neilochka) tweeted that he wondered if anyone ever taught their kids to go around the neighborhood taking things TO neighbors instead of FROM them. I thought that was brilliant tweet and we definitely plan to do that around the holidays. We still barely know any of our neighbors and that needs to change…
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Great post! I haven’t thought about giving the neighbors a little nudge. We always put up a ton of lights. The neighbors never complain and seem to enjoy it. I guess we have always considered the lights our gift to everyone for Christmas as we don’t take up donations or anything for the cost of this, and I mean it is an very intense light show animated to music. I should take the time to thank them all for allowing the hectic scene around the holidays as they travel our busy little street.
Thanks for sharing your post.
I see what you’re getting at and don’t fundamentally disagree. But add to it the instantaneous nature of mass media with the in your face nature of so called citizen journalist (of which, you and I are members) and you have something that never existed before. Instant death on our TV’s newspapers laptops and phones.
Never before in mankind’s history has so much information and misinformation and quite possibly disinformation been so readily available so quickly. So Bryan’s scenario isn’t just likely, it’s inevitable. If it didn’t happen this time, it will.
These kinds of acts of violence are not unusual in society. We just hear about them so much quicker and with far more information than ever before. So it is bound to happen, someone contemplating something awful will be pushed over the edge by something else that happens, and is covered ad nauseam, by CNN, Twitter and the blogosphere.
I love this post. I think it’s so very true. Things are just TOUGH right now, I don’t care what the papers say about the recession being “over.”
I’m inspired by this. I’m managing the adoption of one local needy family for this Christmas, but the baking and taking ’round sounds like a phenomenal idea as well.
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