ABSURD

50 dead…53 wounded.  The worst mass shooting in American history.

I know this sounds crass… but as I watched the news reports filter in Sunday morning I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

The phalanx of somber law enforcement officials queuing up before the microphone to deliver their prepared remarks.  Condolences for the victims and their loved ones.  Praise for the heroic efforts of those who took down the shooter.  The elected officials nodding their heads like puppets to every spoken word.  We’ve seen this movie all too many times before.

One public official…I think it was the mayor of Orlando…said that the community would come together and rebound from “this unexpected tragedy.”

“UNEXPECTED?”  Are you serious?  Have you been living in a cave?

Mass shootings are no longer “unexpected” events in our society.  They occur almost as regularly as the sun rises in the east.  Mass shootings are so common in our society that we have taken to defining them.  A mass shooting is: “One incident where at least four or more individuals are shot but not necessarily killed.”   

Mass shootings are so prevalent in this country that most of them are not newsworthy enough to make it out of the local newspapers.  Did you know that as of April 30 there have been 107 mass shootings this year?  Did you know that there were 370 mass shootings last year?  Yet here we have the leaders of the Orlando community in shock that such an event could happen to them.

They are just like the rest of us.  No doubt they shook their heads and offered their condolences when they learned about Sandy Hook or Columbine or Aurora or San Bernardino.  And then they went on about their lives having done nothing to stem the violence that festers within the DNA of our society.  It wasn’t until that violence erupted in an Orlando nightclub that they took it seriously.

The only thing more disturbing than the shock and awe of expressed by local officials over this “unexpected” tragedy was the partisan reaction from our elected leaders in Washington.  Before the aforementioned phalanx of local law enforcement could get themselves queued up at the microphone, our cowardly yet opportunistic elected leaders from both sides of the aisle were taking to social media to stake out their partisan positions.  Pro-gun, anti-gun, isolationist, neocon…all getting their licks in while the victims still lie on the nightclub floor.  I didn’t hear this personally…but somewhere I can assure you NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre was bellowing:  “The only thing that can stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.”

(Point of personal privilege.  Note to Wayne LaPierre:  In this case a bad man with a gun WAS stopped by a good man with a gun.  Unfortunately the bad man was able to kill 50 and wound 53 others before the good man got there.  Maybe if the bad man wasn’t able to “gear up” like a US Marine in a combat zone; the carnage might have been lessened.)   

But this isn’t about guns or terrorism or mental health issues.  This is about who we are as a society and what we want our society to be.  It appears to me that we are satisfied with the daily violence that tears apart our neighborhoods because we do nothing to change it.

Because we are supposedly a nation of laws the way to change the violent nature of our society is to enact laws that work toward eliminating or lessening our violent proclivities.  That requires congress to act.   Unfortunately congress is manned by a bunch of ineffective cowards who place their job security above all else. 

They won’t fight the NRA because they fear being primaried by the powerful gun lobby.  They won’t tackle the mental illness issue because it’s too messy and gets all balled up with rights of privacy. And while they rail against ISIS they don’t have the courage to take up a war vote authorizing the president to use whatever force is necessary to bring ISIS to bear. 

These people are ineffective buffoons; and yet we re-elect them to office year after year…decade after decade.  It’s absurd.

We are a violent society.  By our complacency we have allowed violence to become an integral part of who we are as a people.

Those 50 deaths in Orlando are on us.

Let’s stop pretending that we are “shocked and appalled” by these murders.

For if we were truly upset we would do something about it.