Sadness and Safety

 

Hiding from the world
behind a book.

I was horrified a day or so ago to learn that a seventeen-year-old and a five-year-old had died and an eighteen-month-old was wounded in a daytime drive-by shooting in a peaceful neighborhood. Then this morning I read of two more shooting death of males seventeen years old. Put aside the fact that I have four grands who are close to or at that age in my family, I am saddened. My first thought was, “We are shooting our children.” Today I read of a twelve-year-old in California who shot a classmate.

I am so weary of those who proclaim loudly if we outlaw guns, only the bad guys will have guns. Or laws don’t matter. It won’t work. It works in other countries, and it can work here. We have got to get guns out of the hands of young people and the mentally ill. There’s absolutely no excuse for the horrific statistics of gun deaths in this country—so many of them our children. I don’t even know what to say about the greed that perpetuates this killing—congressmen who pocket gun lobby money, gun manufacturers who are making enormous profits. They are all stepping on the broken bodies, slopping through the blood of dead children.

Today I answered a political questionnaire—I usually don’t do that because they always end being a guise for asking for money. This though was from Sarah Longwell, founder of Republicans Against Trump. I respect her common sense, and I knew I wouldn’t feel guilty about not giving money to Republicans, even good ones, so I answered. It was straightforward, asking what party if any I identified with, how I voted in 2020, how I intend to vote in November. Then I was stumped: what one issue was most important to me. I wavered between gun violence and abortion. Ultimately, I chose abortion and now I’m second-guessing myself. The conservative stance on both issues is immoral, selfish, cruel—I could go on and on.

But as most things are circular, that brings me to Greg Abbott. Beto warned us Abbott would dump a lot of money into advertising, and now we’re seeing it. I’ve seen the same ad countless time—a casual Abbott in a sport shirt is sitting in a restaurant. Plastic dispensers for ketchup and mustard are at his elbow. You know—good guy, one of us, eats ketchup on his burger. But one thing is wrong: the restaurant is totally empty except for Abbott. If it were Beto sitting at that table, he’d be chatting with someone, the restaurant would be noisily full, people everywhere, some waving Beto signs.

Consistently I’ve noticed the Abbott keeps his distance. He’s on stage, above the audience, sometimes alone. Beto on the other hand is in the midst of the throngs of people who come to see him. He really is one of us. Abbott is not. Mean, little man. Who favors guns and letting women die from toxic pregnancies. Who knows nothing about medicine, the female body, or the female reproductive process, but oh boy, can he make laws. Why require seventeen-year-olds to take gun safety courses or be licensed? Might hurt Abbott’s big business buddies. Just like fixing the grid would.

Okay, Judith, stop. You’re rambling and getting carried away. It’s easy to do.

Distant thunder rumbled late this afternoon but, alas, no rain. Mary Dulle is back from almost a month at Chautauqua, so we had a happy hour visit, caught up on news. Then she and Joe went off to supper, Jordan and Christian went to a concert, and I heated leftover spaghetti. A thoroughly pleasant evening. Tonight I’ll do some menu planning and then settle down with a cozy mystery. No sign of that rain.

It's nice to feel safe from the world. Maybe that’s fooling myself, and none of us ever are really safe, but for now it’s nice to retreat into a fictional world when reality seems to much with us, from national and local politics to drive-by shootings.