I've never been fond of celebrating or commemorating death and loss, but I understand that it's important to look back and determine where you've come from to understand where you are going.
Yes, republicans! Once again, the nation is engaging in another conversation about the lack of your concern for disadvantaged people in moments of crisis. Even before the smoke of the WDBJ7 killing had cleared, gun restriction proponents screamed foul... .......again, and cried for a fix.
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| Was Valvano talking about a good day or the essence of mental health? |
We all should be crying for this FIX because its right before our eyes.
Coach Jim Valvano was really on to something when he declared that a full day means to think, to laugh and to cry. The more I think about those words, they make me laugh and cry regularly. I laugh at the struggle we endure to uncover solutions that lie at the tip of our nose, while I cry at the pain we experience from enduring life without solutions. Whether you agree with what represents the fullness of a day, it is certainly mentally healthy to think (rationally) to laugh (heartily) and to cry (from empathetic tears preferably) as often as you can.
MORE GUNS CAN FIX THIS PROBLEM?
(IS THAT A PROVEN THEORY?)
I'm not sure if anyone is giving the news a fair view or review, but the most recent story of vigilantism against terrorism is the fabulous story of those American boys in France.
Not one of these men had a gun in hand when they accomplished their victory over the man with all of the weapons. The NRA and those who insist we must arm ourselves for the challenge before us have to recognize that George Zimmerman remains the poster child for this failed approach, and until someone- not in law enforcement or hired for security duties- pulls the trigger on terror, this peculiar theory remains just that, a theory.
The brutal, live recorded murder of the television journalist Alison Parker and her cameraman Adam Ward has, once again, stretched the theoretical potential of terrors reach, adding to the imagination of the kind of people who mimic these types of behaviors.
If Dylann Roof indirectly pulled down that Confederate flag, seeing Parker and Ward die this way should somehow begin the process of some reasonable gun restrictions.
Shouldn't it?
I will go down this road once again with my strong opinion on gun restrictions only because I can't let Andy Parker (Alison Parker's father) fight this fight alone. He understands that each of US who really decides to get serious about this fight might need to arm ourselves and add to the gun industry in the short term just to prepare for the risk of fighting guns with words.
The fact that gun sales rise every time opponents fight too hard to limit them is a distorted behavior all by itself. The very inclination to reach for a gun with so little evidence of vigilantism's success is a sign of our own mental illness or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), probably caused by the unsettling violence of the world in which we now live.
Regardless of which end of the lens you are viewing from, the story of mental illness offers enough context clues for us to follow the pattern and at least lay down the first few blocks on the trail we should follow. How we ultimately fix this will be solved by collective resolve, stubborn resilience and powered by an agreement that we must do something to dig our way out of this mess, and it probably should begin where the soil is softest.
How we impose restrictions on free American citizens just because they've shown signs of mental illness is a complex question with no easy answer, but so is democracy; so is the challenge of breaking down the powerful obstacle that political lobbyist have become towards fixing problems.
Nothing seems tougher than getting people to act for the greater good before a crisis hits, but ten years later, New Orleans used a corp of engineers and a brand new billion dollar levy system to finally repair the failed one.
Given the televised death of two local news figures and the impact its having on the media fraternity, can we now encourage one of those engineers and a few other really smart people to sit down with the research and the data and uncover the question:
Are more guns really the answer?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Gun Deaths Total deaths Homicide Suicide Accident Undetermined
per 100,00 people (combined)
____________________________________________________________________________
 United Kingdom | 0.26 (2010) | 0.05 (2010) | 0.17 (2010) | 0.01 (2010) | 0.02 (2010) | Guns in the United Kingdom[67] |
 United States | 10.64 (2013) | 3.55 (2013) | 6.70 (2013) | 0.16 (2013) | 0.09 (2013) | Guns in United States[68] |
What's more expensive than buying that gun is spending the money it will take to learn how to properly shoot it since a short little course will only do so much for you. Eventually you have to pay to master the art of shooting, especially under stressful conditions, or you yourself become an accident waiting to happen and not the weapon of defense you intended.
As we start to get ahead of this problem, we might discover a value for both mental health care and free gun education for all of the mentally ill being bred in our violent society. instead of absorbing the cost of restoring those lives when environmental hazards move and clarify social divisions.
In reality, it was always going to cost too much and take too much time to fix the future of the poor families in New Orleans. What I inspire in my children today might finally take root in my grandchildren or in their children because, before we become parents ourselves, most of us endure parenting rather than embrace it.
Stop Blaming Katrina
Katrina washed over one of America's greatest cities and uncovered what the folks in Louisiana wish we'd stop blaming on Katrina.
Stop blaming the revelation of a problem on the water that revealed it. Children who live in areas with lots of death and violence grow to suffer mentally, creating a barrier between the good choices they would love to make and the hopelessness that makes it hard to remember why choices matter.
Katrina victims NEVER needed Governor Bobby Jindal to be a proponent of the frivolous lock up of drug addicts and mentally ill people who only became more ill after the trauma they experienced; they needed mental health care to combine with that gumbo of resilience they brewed out of the remaining bits and pieces of their storm tattered lives.
Residents of New Orleans had seen plenty of storms and never failed to fix up and move on. In reality, the worst of Katrina mostly missed and should have left New Orleans in water up to their ankles.
If only those levies did not break.
This was and always will be a failure of infrastructure, one that we will likely repeat if congress continues to block the jobs bill that would fix bridges and roads and other weak areas of infrastructure that will also falter sooner or later, as will the excuses for why we waited to respond to this well known potential crisis.
New Orleans is a microcosm of an upcoming crisis. Like our tattered roads and bridges, we have mistook standing for sturdy. The people of New Orleans are the reason for the success of this story, and with no great thanks to their resilience. In fact, some residence feel that the appearance of sturdy resilience is often the excuse we use to avoid fixing the problems of roads and bridges or social disparity in New Orleans and across America.
Had the folks in New Orleans rolled over and coward themselves, would WE have been more aggressive with help?
Resilience is certainly the excuse we keep using for how WE the People are to endure another terror shooting, seeking to drown our lack of wisdom in a double dose of resilience.
Doesn't resilience mean I am enduring something abnormal? When do WE stop applauding the resilience of New Orleans and start applauding our commitment to remove their need for it.
Fixing levies and economies is the easy part. Mostly these take a lot of money and a little math. Fixing disparity and terror caused by mental illness is tough because "How" is typically the start and end point of this conversation.
Republicans believe that no gun law would have stopped Vester Lee Flanagan from losing his mind and murdering Parker and Ward on camera that day. Its right to wonder how we can easily limit law abiding crazed people from getting and using guns; or how can we finally end this hurricane and remake New Orleans with both the flavor and spice from pre-Katrina?
These are real challenges, yet not tougher than the promise of democracy which could not have started before women had the right to vote (1920), and may never begin if voting restrictions persist and strong lobbyist keep controlling our power over reasonable change.
As we start to get ahead of this problem, we might discover a value for both mental health care and free gun education for all of the mentally ill being bred in our violent society. instead of absorbing the cost of restoring those lives when environmental hazards move and clarify social divisions.
In reality, it was always going to cost too much and take too much time to fix the future of the poor families in New Orleans. What I inspire in my children today might finally take root in my grandchildren or in their children because, before we become parents ourselves, most of us endure parenting rather than embrace it.
Stop Blaming Katrina
Katrina washed over one of America's greatest cities and uncovered what the folks in Louisiana wish we'd stop blaming on Katrina.
Stop blaming the revelation of a problem on the water that revealed it. Children who live in areas with lots of death and violence grow to suffer mentally, creating a barrier between the good choices they would love to make and the hopelessness that makes it hard to remember why choices matter.
Katrina victims NEVER needed Governor Bobby Jindal to be a proponent of the frivolous lock up of drug addicts and mentally ill people who only became more ill after the trauma they experienced; they needed mental health care to combine with that gumbo of resilience they brewed out of the remaining bits and pieces of their storm tattered lives.
Residents of New Orleans had seen plenty of storms and never failed to fix up and move on. In reality, the worst of Katrina mostly missed and should have left New Orleans in water up to their ankles.
If only those levies did not break.
This was and always will be a failure of infrastructure, one that we will likely repeat if congress continues to block the jobs bill that would fix bridges and roads and other weak areas of infrastructure that will also falter sooner or later, as will the excuses for why we waited to respond to this well known potential crisis.
New Orleans is a microcosm of an upcoming crisis. Like our tattered roads and bridges, we have mistook standing for sturdy. The people of New Orleans are the reason for the success of this story, and with no great thanks to their resilience. In fact, some residence feel that the appearance of sturdy resilience is often the excuse we use to avoid fixing the problems of roads and bridges or social disparity in New Orleans and across America.
Had the folks in New Orleans rolled over and coward themselves, would WE have been more aggressive with help?
Resilience is certainly the excuse we keep using for how WE the People are to endure another terror shooting, seeking to drown our lack of wisdom in a double dose of resilience.
Doesn't resilience mean I am enduring something abnormal? When do WE stop applauding the resilience of New Orleans and start applauding our commitment to remove their need for it.
Fixing levies and economies is the easy part. Mostly these take a lot of money and a little math. Fixing disparity and terror caused by mental illness is tough because "How" is typically the start and end point of this conversation.
Republicans believe that no gun law would have stopped Vester Lee Flanagan from losing his mind and murdering Parker and Ward on camera that day. Its right to wonder how we can easily limit law abiding crazed people from getting and using guns; or how can we finally end this hurricane and remake New Orleans with both the flavor and spice from pre-Katrina?
These are real challenges, yet not tougher than the promise of democracy which could not have started before women had the right to vote (1920), and may never begin if voting restrictions persist and strong lobbyist keep controlling our power over reasonable change.
Mental Illness Is a Sign Of The Times
Ironically, mental health care will provide the answers to fixing New Orleans as well since so many disadvantaged people also have histories littered with drugs and violence within the home and in their neighborhoods. Violence begot violence, thus the only cure for the PTSD and mental instability that produces generations of bad decision makers is recognizing the signs of the time.
5 years ago, the folks rescued on that train in France might have all died because none of us readily recognized this new revelation of mental illness and its schizophrenic effect on society as a whole. Today we are more comfortably paranoid, yet no better at seeing the signs and symptoms of psychosis that produce terror, or social disparities teetering a broken levy away from disaster.
New Orleans will always be uniquely hot, though it might not ever get back it's old spicy flavor. Some folks are pleased with this change of recipe feeling that downtrodden places like the 9th Ward had been too bad a blemish on the community anyway, and fixing them too costly in more ways than one.
Pain & Providence
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| Maybe we will laugh when we realize how crazy we were before our mental health care initiative. |
Ferguson was but a straw to the back of an old weary camel
The founder of Black Lives Matter actually credits the Katrina crisis for inspiring this new camel currently carrying the burden of change. As we reminisce on the good, bad and ugly of Katrina, some have theorized that without Katrina, there would have probably been no Barack Obama who was a major beneficiary of post-Katrina anger that found its voice in the ballot box.
Will the empathetic tears we are crying from the deaths of Parker and Ward be enough inspiration to get us thinking of a fix? Some of us are hoping beyond hope that this is that moment for gun control and mental health care to converge and change America for the better.
No laughter.
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