Today I'm consumed by the tragedy in Connecticut, not so much thinking of the children and adults who died but mainly about the manner in which the news of this tragedy has been treated, by just about everyone. I don't believe that President Obama was faking it yesterday, although this has been an accusation by the right, but my reaction is (and was) that he is the most powerful person in this country and has been for four years. He might have prevented this and even if not, at least he could justify the tears if he had even tried. But he didn't try.
Since I got up this morning I've been remembering how I felt after 9/11. I had just arrived in Venice the day before so was not in New York City, but I knew many people who worked in the Twin Towers and I spent almost a week waiting in front of the TV, day and night, for the lost firefighters to be found, and found alive. But even back then in the midst of the tragedy I thought often that we as a country could have prevented that tragedy as well, and I don't mean by more security, but by more fairness in how we as a country treat other countries and other, different, people from ourselves.
I clicked through various TV channels just a short while ago and other than on MS-NBC it's cartoons and repeat sitcoms when I was expecting every channel to be discussing the need for gun control. We are a violent country, and a violent people, and we should expect a similar tragedy again, tomorrow, and if not tomorrow the day after, and we'll do the same thing we did yesterday and today, talk about our own children and how bad we feel for those people who lost their children. Please, let us stop lying to ourselves. We don't feel bad because if we did, we do something to prevent it happening again.
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