After the shooting

Like the country he leads, Joe Biden looked and sounded exhausted. The United States president was obliged, yet again, to ‘address’ the nation in the blunt-force-trauma-like aftermath of the murder of schoolchildren in a small Texas town – Uvalde – that few had heard of, but that now joins the gruesome roster of other towns that will always be synonymous with foul and sudden death.

Newton. Parkland. Aurora. Charleston. Boulder. Roseburg. On and on and on.

Biden didn’t ‘address’ America. He mostly whispered to America, punctuated by bursts of familiar exasperation, outrage and futile calls to “do something” in response to this latest act of still incomprehensible terror.

Nineteen kids and two teachers were slaughtered inside what should be a happy place filled with joy and the raw, unspoiled energy of a classroom where boys and girls learn and play. Perhaps it was fatigue. It was, more likely, defeat. Biden’s grim tone and forlorn posture conveyed a quiet resignation. Despite his immense power, Biden understands, I think, that there is a sickness in America that is beyond any rational remedy or cure.

There is a sickness in America that is unique to America. No other country convulses with such premeditated violence so often against so many innocents at school, at work, at church and what seems like just a moment ago, at a grocery store in Buffalo. More innocents were picked to die in that place, at that time, by a calculating, hate-filled murderer because of the colour of their skin.

Yes, there is a sickness in America.

A country has to be sick if it permits its children to be murdered at school, in playgrounds, at home, on its streets and does nothing about it. A country has to be sick if it shrugs and “moves on” after such killings. A country has to be sick if it prefers to watch silly games rather than acknowledge that it is sick. And, of course, a country has to be sick if it values its guns more than it values its children’s lives.

Yes, there is a sickness in America.

So, in the sad days ahead, America and the rest of us will watch and listen to the same pantomime we have watched and listened to before. The same scenes. The same grief. The same fury. The same vigils. The same funerals. The same questions. The same answers. The same politicians spouting the same mephitic excuses. Guns don’t kill children; people do. A bad guy with a gun can only be stopped by a good guy with a gun. A merciful God is preparing, once more, to welcome his bullet-ridden children to a better, kinder place.

Yes, there is a sickness in America.

Given that Texas is a ‘red’ state, the politicians doing the talking on TV these days are largely white Republican men. They are the same white Republican men – a governor, senators and representatives – who lecture and scold a rainbow of women about the sanctity of life, of the unborn ‘child’.

Excerpted: ‘There is a sickness in America’.

Courtesy: Aljazeera.com