Letters to Holly

Tuesday, January 11

Watching and Blinking

The crushing snowfall has us huddled in the cave. Your Sister jumped at the chance to shovel the driveway -- as the snow continued to fall -- just to get exercise. The dish service never cut out, and I didn't go on the roof. I bought a water gun to knock off the snow from the dish if needed, but the gun doesn't have enough distance to it to reach the dish from the ground. If we have to clear it, we must go topside. Well, I must go topside.

We've spent some time talking about the shootings in Arizona. I happened to flip channels Saturday when the news broke and watched the rumors and reports slowly congeal into fact.

It's difficult not to jump to conclusions. But I'm partial to the theory that political rhetoric influenced the shooter. The 2010 campaign was ugly, especially on the west coast, and the rhetoric got heated. There's a video spreading online of the Congresswoman speaking against a PAC campaign map that put her district under a crosshair. she said someone would get hurt. She was right.

Various accounts say the shooter fixated on the Congresswoman, possibly because he didn't get the audience from her he wanted, possibly because he blamed her for supporting the healthcare reform. He seems to have prepared for the day, and that suggests he wasn't as crazy as some need him to be. But how many people who commit mass shootings are sane?

Still, a political component can't be dismissed. He chose his target and disqualified those he knew personally. He filtered out those closest to him. He didn't commit a similar act before this. If he snapped, if he reached some point where he was nudged toward the violence, did that happen in a vacuum? I tend to doubt it.

What I hear and read now is a desperate effort for nothing to change. We should still apparently sell extended magazines for handguns. We should still use outrageous political comments to scare audiences. If he was crazy, as they argue, why should we change anything? Crazy people can't be stopped from being crazy. Except we've militarized airports because of crazy people. And we've detained suspects indefinitely because of crazy people.

I have the same stance on the environmental/climate debate: Maybe we can't alter the weather by being cleaner, but why can't we be cleaner because it's what responsible people do?

So we talk, and our voices echo off the walls as we watch the snow fall.

We cleaned out the TiFaux list by watching the Crucible. She'll watch anything with Daniela Day-Lewis. I had seen the original Wicker Man a few weeks back, and the two films make a strong argument against zealotry in all dogmas. We also watched Vantage Point, a clever political thriller buried under a needless gimmick of multiple perspectives.

I'll work from home a bit before attacking the driveway.

Picture of the Day
I can't quite make the joke between stitches and sutures.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

following up on your home sweet home touches, check out this artsy wallpaper that'll look great when Roo's nursery is converted to a lil' boy's romper room...OF SCIENCE.

http://streetanatomy.com/

-you might have to scroll down to Tuesday's posting to see