Way Too Much Hugging

One of the advantages of an anonymous blog is you can say what you're really thinking without worrying about your friends chastising you or your mailbox getting filled with hate mail or rotten fish. 

The fact is, we are going to have to live with indiscriminate shootings of innocent citizens, some of them children, and likely bombings and who knows what other form of mass killings for the foreseeable future. 

So the Phantom would like to explore our options for responding to this new reality.

Let us first explore what we might want to avoid: Grief counselors. 

What, exactly, are grief counselors, who we are always told will be provided after these attacks?  What, exactly do they do or say? Are they certified in some way? Certified grief counselors? Do they do any good at all?  Why do the mayors or school principals always look so upbeat when they announce, well we've had thirty eight year olds murdered, but we've arranged to have grief counselors visit the school tomorrow. So, there: that's taken care of. Aren't I a good mayor?

And shrines. No more flowers or teddy bears left at the site.   Really, who are these messages and toys really for? Spare us. They are simply a mess to clean up and what do they do with all this stuff?  

And no more decals, T shirts or other commercial products like all the "Boston Strong" stuff after the Marathon bombing. What did that mean? Boston strong. "We" are "strong" in the face of two maniacs blowing the legs off innocent bystanders and killing children at the finish line.  Give me your $2 and I'll give you this decal for your car and we can all feel strong and resolute. Pluleeeze.

And, most of all:  hugging. Please.  Do we really need another photo of people hugging and sobbing and consoling each other?  Are we not growing just a little inured to the sight of people hugging?

And the inevitable talk about banning assault rifles. Just stop it. Won't ever happen.  These guns, it turns out, are made for mayhem. Their bullets are high velocity but light weight which means when the hit a human body they tumble and create a big shock wave and maximal tissue and organ damage. You wouldn't want to hunt with one, unless you wanted the animal you shot to be pre-shredded. 

Casting about for models, the Phantom has been struck by the people of London and the way they bore up under the German blitz during WWII.  The Phantom is sure there was a lot of marketing and spin about the plucky, unflappable Brits, when, in fact there must have been great wailing and sobbing and anger not just at Hitler but at Churchill, but that's not what you saw on the news. On the news, they were plucky. And they never hugged. Mercifully, not a single pair of huggers after their home was blown to smithereens. 

That's what the Phantom hopes we can emulate here in America. Plucky post massacre pluck.  No hugging. No bringing of flowers to makeshift shrines. No decals. Just pluck.

Wouldn't that be a better way of dealing?  And, oh, yes, news coverage limited to one day, then move on.  

That way we can be ready for the next one. 

Orlando: Just Another Massacre, As Sure As the Sun Will Rise

Seacoast New Hampshire

When I was growing up, there was no Monday Night Football. In fact, most stores  in my home town closed at noon on Saturday, and all stores were closed all day Sunday. That was normal then.  Stores were closed Sunday, but the Redskins played Sundays and Monday morning you talked about the dreadful the team was.

There were certain things you could count on, like the seasons:   Summer came and schools closed, and community swimming pools opened.  These were things you could count on as part of American life.

Every spring, you could count on the Extravaganza show at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School to showcase local talent and people would talk about it into the summer. 

Small town America, lots of guns tucked away

Now, you can count on the monthly massacre.  

Until San Bernadino, it was always a male with a gun.  That one time a woman got involved, but as a rule, it's still  a male hater/shooter. 

Some times there's a reason given, like the guys who shoot up abortion clinics or guys who murder doctors who are connected to Planned Parenthood. 

Or maybe it's  radical Islam at Boston and Orlando, although you have the distinct impression that was just an excuse to elevate psychopathic rage into a cause. Some, like Sandy Hook or Columbine (remember Columbine?) or Aurora, it was just some white guy with a gun.  Might be a white guy killing Black church goers as in Charleston.  

As Chris Rock has noted, random mass murder does not often get connected to Black men.  Black guy will steal your purse, Rock says.  Someone opens fire on a playground: White guy. Asians, rarely, like that guy at Virginia Tech. Remember Virginia Tech?  

But mostly it's a white guy thing. That federal building in Oklahoma City--you knew that would turn out to be a white guy. Not a Black guy. Not a woman. A white guy. Man with a gun or a bomb.  Impersonal murderer. 

I can't remember all the massacres any more. Just another guy with a gun shooting people who can't shoot back, feeling good about himself, briefly.

Holly, the gorilla, Bronx Zoo

In Europe, they have soccer hooliganism. In America, we have mass shootings. 

It's who we are now.  

Wasn't always that way. Remember when those two thugs shot the Clutters in their home in Kansas and Truman Capote went out there and wrote "In Cold Blood?"  In 1950's America, cold blooded killing was still considered freakish. 

Then came Vietnam and American boys massacred Vietnamese villagers, most famously at Mai Lai, and the mother of one of the soldiers said, "I gave you my son, a good boy, and you made him a murderer."  But that was more comprehensible, how that happened.  Then came Kent State, where American boys shot down students in cold blood. James Michner explained all that in his book. 

Now we've progressed to inexplicable murder. 

But it's just part of American life now. The massacre du jour. 

Dust bowl mother: Didn't have to worry about deranged shooter

As always, they get the Senators on TV, calling for gun laws and the Republicans droning on about how guns don't kill people.  Nothing changing there.

It's a big country.  Car safety has improved. Fewer highway deaths.  

We'll know mayhem and mass murder have really achieved status as the new normal when they stop making the lead news item,  when it's: "Oh, yeah, and thirty kindergartners were shot to death on a playground in Spokane today. In other news..."