09.18.13
The Damaged Tribe
Taken by the New York Times a week ago in Missouri and used as the leading photo for a post-Navy Yard massacre piece on gun control, it’s a photo that, coincidentally, powerfully illustrates a central social problem in this country. And so it requires emphasis and republication.
The photo is WhiteManistan and the need to escape it, perfectly captured.
With hands over hearts the people are not heart-warming. Quite the opposite. In their desire for an unbridled gun culture, they provoke fear and loathing, having brought on the convincing reality that when they get any of their way worse inevitably follows. Nothing can be done and nothing will be done about gun violence because more guns must be bought, they save lives. Everyone is made prisoner to gun hoarding manias, paranoia and regular gun bloodbaths as normal in American civilization.
Mind-numbing, it’s a tableau of the old, irrational and anti-civilization, a collection of my mentally troubled tribe in Jefferson City, Missouri, hoping — of all things to hope for — legislation to nullify federal gun control.
It’s a damaged group, perhaps successful in their lives with grown children, loving pets and all the possessions of American middle class life. But there is something very wrong inside and it can’t be fixed by reason, only endured. Worse, these broken people cannot recognize their mental trouble.
When I see these pictures, now commonplace, I see people the same color, who look the same as my parents, who looked like the people with which I grew up. But we share nothing.
Massacres will continue until morale improves.
From Der Spiegel: America’s unhindered gun mania.
Hat tip to Frank at Pine View Farm.