Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Watching San Bernardino
Here’s how I feel tonight.
I feel like it’s 1955. The polio vaccine has just been invented. People are dying from polio. Kids are in iron lungs. My sister is upstairs in her bedroom and the doctor keeps coming and going and my parents won’t let me go up there.
I feel like the United States government knows there is a polio vaccine but it won’t do anything to help people get it. It won’t help manufacture it. It won’t educate people about it. It won’t do anything to save people from dying and being in iron lungs even though it could.
That’s how I feel tonight. Our government is just abandoning us. Even though it has the power to save us.
When polio threatened to kill and cripple us, the government acted in all our interests. The public health departments of every city swung into action finding common cause in a common enemy. Every child got vaccinated. It was the right thing to do. It saved our lives.
Now, people are getting maimed and murdered by guns. Every single day. And the government does nothing. Just leaves us to fend for ourselves. I feel abandoned by the government that is supposed to protect us. If the government does nothing else, it is supposed to keep us safe. But it’s not.
I feel like I’m waiting for polio to take me.
7 Comments on “Watching San Bernardino”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
The view from across the 49th parallel is of never ending disbelief that this goes on and on and on. I echo Bea. Where is the common sense?
I wish I knew. It is incredible to me.
Strong piece, very well put. The view from outside the USA is total incomprehension and disbelief that your government just won’t take the necessary steps to ban the free sale of guns. Unless I’m mistaken, overall polls indicate that after never-ending episodes of shootings, at least half the citizens want laws banning guns (is that correct?). I know about Congress and lobbies, but how about common sense?
I share the sense of total incomprehension. I can’t even describe how incredible all this seems – that policymakers could see all this terrible violence and mayhem and not act responsibly. Shameful.
Reblogged this on Praying for Eyebrowz and commented:
I fear we are all being held hostage by the NRA and their puppets in congress. Here’s how redswrap.wordpress.com feels. Great piece.
I feel like a captive of the NRA and their congressional puppets.
I’m not supposed to comment because I’m not American, but I’ve posted a blog on this. I’m pretty sure if I were you I’d be beside myself with rage. I’m not exactly sanguine as it is.