Losing Track While Swapping Out Clips

Life continues to come at me, and all of us for that matter, at the rate of about three hundred WTFs a second, and there's almost nothing we can do if we blink and miss something like I very nearly did again. 

Yesterday, five years ago the Pulse Nightclub shooting/murders happened. (I know: five years ago? Seriously?) Earlier last week, though I'm sure that was just coincidental (where's the big wink emoticon when I need it?), the Governor of Florida with whom I'll probably never be invited to go shoe-shopping, honored the memories of those murdered and those who survived in a typical Ron DeSantis manner.  

All I can offer are words that appeared here four years ago and wonder how many more times a nation that chooses to do nothing about gun violence will shake its head sadly and wonder why there's no way to stop the gun violence. Expect that whole 'thoughts and prayers' schtick would play really well in Austin, Texas, this morning. I called it then: 

Collateral Damage in the Age of Style

There's been so much killing and carnage since it happened I'd almost forgotten. It was one year ago that an impotent, life-long loser murdered forty-nine people in the Pulse Club in Orlando, Florida.

Terror in Orlando

Murder in the Name of the Lord has become practically a daily occurrence and was so even before Pulse but no matter how often it happens, and how great the death and damage, it never, ever starts to feel "normal" or a part of any kind of 'just another day at the End of the World.'

As a card-carrying First Worlder (you didn't get a card? Buddy, you got gypped! We get bargains all over the place and discount everything we see and hear), without ever knowing it or knowing of it, I helped create the world order that has tens of millions, if not more likely hundreds of millions, living in squalor and penury so profound and institutionalized they will never escape it. The world, as they know it, has conspired to leave them with nothing.

The institutions I have created and support have, in turn, constructed protections and insulation for me so that I have as much, or as little (preferably) interaction with or even knowledge of their existence. It's not that I'm not indifferent to their struggle and plight; I am oblivious to it. And they have no personal contact of any kind of me and mine. We are on parallel but separate planets.

Except, of course, we share this one. And because we are our own closed system, one with the other, we guarantee that this dance of death and doom will go on until no one is left standing. When you have nothing to live for it makes death as deliverance attractive. And with nothing to live for, it's easier to find something to die for which is only partial solace unless and until you can make someone else die for it, too.

I'm never sure if God created man in His image and likeness (some things you must take or leave on faith alone), but I'm very sure we created God in ours, leaving me to wonder who will forgive us.
-bill kenny