Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The Lesson of the Oklahoma City Bombing

I'm not going to link to articles or information about this event,pretty much everyone who follows American current events knows what happened on April 19, 1995.If you don't,Google it fer chrissakes.

When I was in school(back in prehistoric times)we learned something when it came to America:
We are too powerful to be taken down by outside forces.Mostly because we have a bad ass military,and Americans were known to have each other's backs during a crisis.We also happened to be rather innovative and smart.The thing we,as citizens,have a duty to do is to keep destructive forces from taking over FROM WITHIN.Or you get precisely what we have now,criminally insane and greedy people in charge of the government and those that cheer them on.The Founding Fathers were not stupid men,despite their many asshole-ish tendencies.Being powerful guys themselves,they knew how easy it would be for that power to be abused.Hence all those checks and balances,a few common sense hard and steadfast rules,with a sort of open ended understanding that this system would be able to progress forward.To adapt to the needs of a growing Superpower while keeping the general population fairly well off and Free.Or that's the gist of the whole enterprise that we call America,you get the idea.

I think the whole damned country is suffering from PTSD.So many of us have suffered traumas,often violent ones at the hands of another human being.I figure that has one of two outcomes for a person.Someone either remains Damaged(which festers into bad,very bad,things)or they work very hard towards Healing(which mostly results in compassion,empathy,a desire for peace and a wanting to do good).This is a fairly universal experience,trauma of some sort and the resulting road back.Maybe it's not so much a good vs evil thing we have going on here,but a Healing People vs Damaged People battle?Is it emotional and violent physical trauma that is the cause of evil? And if that's the case,should we not be devoting time and massive resources towards stopping violence,suffering and abuse?

For America's reputation and trustworthiness to be restored,I firmly believe a kind of national reckoning,nurtured BY our so called"leadership"at the federal level,HAS to happen.We'll never be seen as"good"again by the world,or by ourselves until we do.And we can multi task here,it's not like the country has to come to a grinding halt while we work on this.

Of course,this is just my opinion,I could be wrong.What do you think? We have a fair portion of our citizenry who are addicted to hate,and it's officially out of control.How do you reign that in? I just think that we have to face our own cultural/societal flaws and try to rectify them as best we can before we go bossing the rest of the planet around.Our corporations also mimic this type of cold,calculating hatred,think about it.Or maybe I'm just a hopeless bleeding heart liberal,lol.

Sorry for blathering,this seems a bit disjointed perhaps. Something has to be the impetus for violence,that's a learned thing.Babies aren't born evil and mean.You just don't decide for no reason to set off a bomb that kills 168 people,something bad has to happen before a person can go there,right? Why is it that America seems to have so many walking wounded who act out in heinous ways?

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