Trouble Coming Everyday

This has been a rough week for the United States. Murder of Innocents/Innocence at the 117th Annual Boston Marathon, Ricin-Laced Letters in Dodge City, Guns over God in the Senate Chambers and Carnage and Calamity Deep in the Heart of Texas.

I keep telling myself we'll sort all of this out. Somehow we'll bring around the hateful hurtfuls who would rather behave like Kaliayev with the Grand Duke and poison one another through the post office (and USPS thought their operating deficit was the big problem) even if I don't know how just yet. That our better angels will prevail and we will become again the beacon among nations that so many others around the world see us to be.

Maybe, but I'm not sure when but it's not going to be today. It was twenty years ago today, David Koresh and his Branch Davidians at their compound near Waco, Texas, drew their last breaths because anger and distrust moved from abstract discussion to tangible hostility.

It was eighteen years ago today, perhaps to perversely demonstrate every action has an equal but opposite reaction, Timothy McVie blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. One hundred and eighty years, we had Bleeding Kansas, because we chose violence as our voice, a decision we've made over and over since then.

Each of has a Don't Tread on Me tattoo on our heart and in our mind. More and more of us failed in first grade at "plays well with others." We spend all our time shouting and none of it listening. I fear I'll spend the rest of my life trying to slow the speed of the rush to summary judgement because there's no way to delay that trouble coming every day.         
-bill kenny