The Pulse Massacre, the largest massacre due to gun violence in modern US history, only happened on Sunday, June 12th, 2016. Today as I’m writing this, it is only June 15, 2016, barely three days later. Yet thousands of words, including blogs, tweets, news articles, television news programs, late night comedy shows, talk shows, etc., have already been blasted out on all forms of media. What about taking time out to mourn and to reflect. To listen and to learn? To hear and not speak? To light a candle in the darkness?
All of the bodies were only formally identified in the last 24 hours. It’s still a crime scene. There is some information about what happened, about the shooter, his motives, etc., but we don’t have a full picture yet of what happened. Yet political pundits on the right and on the left are using it as a political football. Pro gun control, pro Second Amendment rights folk, pro Trump, pro Clinton factions (and I use the word pro here deliberately) are using this to force their arguments for their views on others. No one really seems to be listening to anyone else. Everyone thinks everyone who doesn’t hold their opinion is wrong or evil or both. But no one is listening. Or at least very few.
For me, the crucial question at this point of time as we take time to mourn the lives that have been lost, is what kind of country is the United States and what kind of nation do we want to be? And all of us should be looking at ourselves and not pointing the finger at others. It’s a time for mourning, a time for reflection, and a time for self-examination.
The rallies in solidarity for the patrons and victims of Pulse, around the world have been touching. The focus on love rather than hate that these tributes is heart warming as are the lines (queues) of those who want to donate blood for the victims. There have been exercises of humanity in the face of this act of inhumanity and these are heartening.
However, using Orlando almost immediately after the siege ended and the shooter was killed, as a political football, especially by, but not limited to Mr. Trump, has been a national disgrace. The bodies haven’t even been buried yet; there hasn’t been time to properly mourn the horrendous loss of lives. Can we just mourn first? Why does everyone have to have an answer to an issue that they don’t even understand yet?
For me, Orlando raises questions about what kind of nation does the United States of America aspire to be? What is our vision as a nation? Do we want to be a nation of violence and hate, through both our bullets and our words? Much of the words fired over the past 72 hours are bullets. They don’t bring healing, they don’t bring flourishing, they don’t bring reconciliation. Many of the words are bigoted, they bring further division, further hatred and further alienation.
It’s not a question of Islamaphobia versus Homophobia as some have argued. It’s about both these issues, but about so much more than just these two identities, identities which are not mutually exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. Also, it turns out today that the shooter may have been gay himself which adds to the complexity, if not the irony, of the situation. Hatred against any class of people is wrong. There are good Muslims and bad Muslims, good LGBT people and bad people who are LGBT, good Republicans and bad Republicans, good Democrats and bad Democrats. There are good and bad people in every category of society.
What unites us all is our humanity. The people who died are human beings full stop and our compassion for those who died and their friends and family should be unqualified. Under no circumstances is what happened in Orlando justifiable. It is wrong full stop. And it isn’t what any God of any religion would sanction. God is about love and grace. Religion is about how best to flourish.
How can the United States best flourish as a nation? How can all her peoples with all their multiple and fluid identities, best flourish? We are a diverse nation with a great plurality of identities, ethnicities and religions. It’s our greatest strength. Hate and fear divide. What brings us together as a nation? A common love for freedom perhaps? That, except for Native Americans, we are all descendants of recent (and here where I’m writing, in the UK anything less than 400 years is pretty recent actually) immigrants?
My ancestors came to the US for religious freedom. The founding fathers (and most of them were men at that time) believed in religious freedom and freedom of speech which is enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. However, I don’t ever think they meant for Second Amendment rights to be quite so absolute and true for all time and eternity to be interpreted at the expense of those at Pulse, at Sandy Hook, and the litany goes on, who also have the right to live and grow up and have a future and a destiny and to not have their voices drowned out by bullets!
There are situations and circumstances where the right to be free of fear from someone getting access to a gun to promote their freedom of speech at the expense of the lives of innocents needs to be paramount. Is unfettered access to guns really what the founding fathers had in mind? Is that what we the people of the United States really want? Do you really want to go to Starbucks, a university dorm or classroom, a movie theater or a restaurant knowing that there are people there packing weapons? People, who in a fit of temper, might just shoot first and ask questions later? Really? Why is your right to carry an automatic weapon, capable of killing hundreds in seconds, greater than my or someone else’s right to go to a gay night club if we so choose with the knowledge that we are free and safe to enjoy ourselves?
Do we want to be a nation of bigots that look down on refugees and immigrants given we are immigrants ourselves? Of course, unlimited, unbounded immigration isn’t the answer, but neither is walls to keep those others out! Supposedly according to many we are a nation formed on Christian values. Well where is the Christianity in basing one’s security on weapons, fear, bigotry and hatred rather than on love, openness, generosity and trust?
Terrorists win when we react with fear and legislate accordingly. Do we want to become a surveillance society where we are meant to spy on our neighbors and report them to the central government every time they might do something we deem in the slightest way suspicious as one recent Presidential candidate recently suggested. Really? That smacks of life in the former Soviet Bloc. Already in the UK CCTV cameras are practically on every street corner and the thought police are already out there in the form of Prevent in which teachers, university lecturers, doctors, social workers and other heath care and other professionals are meant to report on those they serve (students, patients, people in their care), if they suspect them of radicalization. Do we really want that? Do we want Big Brother to have even more influence. !984 is almost already a reality. Is that the nation we want to be? Really?
Love is a good place to start. What does love really look like? How can we love not just in emotion, but in word and deed? How can we extend grace to those who are not like us? How can we reach out to our enemies and those who would wish to destroy us.
How can we flourish and light candles and celebrate love and live and humanity. It only takes one candle to be a light in the darkness. This person who took the lives of those in Orlando, and I refuse to name him here to give him the notoriety he seeks, cannot and will not win.
Can we all take the time to listen and reflect instead of pontificate? And above all, can we mourn and celebrate those lives that were lost in Orlando please? These peoples’ lives were snuffed out too soon, their stories over far too soon, the world denied the unique contributions they were meant to bring. They had a destiny just as each one reading this blog has a destiny. We are so much the poorer for their loss, the world is poorer for their loss. And the world is also poorer because the terrorist chose to exercise his destiny in a way that he wasn’t meant to. What could he have contributed positively to the world if he’d made different choices?
What happened in Orlando isn’t okay and it isn’t alright and it isn’t what God would have wanted. Good can come from it, but wasn’t the ideal, it wasn’t the plan. But, will these lives have been lost in vain, or will we listen and learn and come together and decide what kind of nation we want to be? Or will we continue to build walls and shout in fear and hatred at one another?