I usually try to wait and calm down before I write about
major news stories. I try to gather the facts and carefully construct my
argument, but now is not the time to be careful.
Yesterday, I awoke to the new American norm: 20 people had
been killed in a mass shooting. I thought it was sad but I didn't cry because
20 people dying in a mass shooting is no longer a shocking event. Later in the
morning, I watched a press conference and it was announced that at least 50
people had died and 53 people were injured. I cried as I listened to the rest
of the press conference. I was angry and confused. What type of person kills 50
people? Why was 20 just another news story, but 50 was a punch in the gut?
I found myself praying to a God that I only sometimes
believe in and I also found myself waiting to see how far the different sides
would go to blame each other. This act of terror was not the fault of the
democrats or the fault of the republicans or the fault of religion, or worse,
the fault of every Muslim person in the world. This act of terror was the fault
of a single gunman who was filled with hate. A gunman, who despite being an
American citizen, was willing to terrorize his own people on behalf of ISIS.
Make no mistakes, we are his people and whether we like it or not, he was our
brother. The worst mass shooting in modern America was not carried out by some
foreign born terrorist, but rather, by one of us, and yet, we spent most of Sunday
pointing fingers and arguing over semantics. We can blame radical Islam and
call him a Muslim terrorist, an anchor baby, the son of Afghan parents, a
Jihadist, an ISIS inspired terrorist and whatever other name we can think of to
make him different from us, but the fact remains that until 2:00am on Sunday
morning, this hate filled man was one of us. Do not mistake this for me blaming
society because we are not to blame. He is to blame. We can't teach our
children personal responsibility then blame everyone but them when they do
something wrong.
What I'm trying to say is that we were too busy focusing on
things that didn't matter. 50 people were killed. That's what mattered. 50
people will never go home again, 53 will always have the scars, hundreds will
suffer with knowing that they survived and the rest of us are left to try to
imagine the unimaginable. That's what matters. Yesterday, I didn't care that he was
registered as a democrat or that everyone wasn't saying "radical
Islam" or that we needed to ban semi-automatic assault weapons or that
Trump said something stupid or that Hillary's comments were more
"presidential." I didn't care about any of that garbage. I cared
about the families and the victims. How can anyone view 50 dead people as an
opportunity to take jabs at the other side in order to earn more votes? How
have we, as a society, reached this point?
Yes, in the big picture, the reactions of our presidential nominees
matter, but I wish that we could have been united yesterday and that politics
could have taken a 24 hour break. For just one day, I wished that the talking
points focused more on those who were hurting and less on the commentary of
people hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of miles away. I wished that we
could all stand up and denounce the gunman and ISIS while keeping our fingers
in our pockets unless we were extending our arms to offer hugs or a helping
hand. I wished that we could all cry as a nation for our loss. I
wished that we could all care about the victims and their families. I wished
that we didn't minimize their suffering by immediately making it about our
personal politics.
Some of us spent Sunday in mourning. Some of us rushed to
donate blood and money and to send flowers and organize vigils and other tributes.
But far too many of us spent the day fighting among ourselves and taking
figurative shots at the "other side" as if 50 people had not just
been killed. To be honest, I'm not surprised because that's what many of us do
as Americans. Many of us make every tragedy about us and our movement and our
agenda. Many of us don't care that people are hurting or that families spent
the entire day in that awful gray area of fearing the worst but praying for the
best. Our news coverage of this tragedy is a sad testament to the state of our
country.
In the age of sensationalism and sound bites, I fear that we
are slowly, but surely, losing our humanity.
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