After the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and the slaughter of 19 innocent preadolescent children, life goes on! The slaughter continues at an accelerated rate, as though the hunger for blood and sacrifice can’t be quenched, can’t be sated! People are being gunned down relentlessly, as if some dark cloud has descended on earth, demanding retribution, demanding chaos and mayhem, everywhere, including in Belize! We are now living in a time, which Yeats so aptly described in his poem, “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity!” We sit by, we, governments, and we, the people, and let this insanity go on, day after day, week after week, year after year, and we do nothing to stop it.
Do you know how the children of Uvalde were identified by their parents? By the shoes they wore. Their bodies were so chewed up, torn to pieces by the bullets from that unforgiving, high-powered rifle, made to defend us on the battlefield, in times of war, but used as a weapon of choice by those intending to inflict as much damage as possible, on an unsuspecting populace, that they could not be readily recognized by their loved ones! Insult to injury! The same thing happened in Highland Park, Illinois, a couple weeks later, and it’s already fading from our very short-term memories. Life goes on, and we feel powerless to end this madness.
For the life of me, I will never understand why it is so difficult to ban these deadly weapons. They aren’t of any use in civilian life; like I’ve said, they’re weapons of war. Yet, in the United States, Congress does nothing, in the face of overwhelming calls for something to be done, to put in place some measures and pass laws, to ban these weapons. I blame Republicans and Democrats, and we, the people, for all these tragedies! We don’t really care until it affects us directly. I don’t really care about gangs killing each other; they can shoot themselves into oblivion, for all I care. They chose the life they lead, so die with it! But innocents, civilians, in their homes or churches or parks, schools, or at the store? That’s unacceptable in any civilized society! Civilized? That’s another word that has no meaning anymore, just like death, or common sense, or truth, or honesty. They don’t mean a damn thing!
The flowers are gone, never to return, and many more will follow. They have been plucked and scattered and dissected into pieces before they’ve had a chance to bloom, to spread their beauty and scent and goodness into the world. When will we learn? When will we ever learn?
Glen