CrazyTown

I don't know what's going on lately in the town I work in, but I wish someone would find a way to put an end to it.  Random people are getting shot and injured or killed; robberies for nothing are happening.  People are getting more and more afraid.  Sales of police-strength mace and weapons are going up. I fear that soon, many, many people are going to be very, very dead, and it may not be any of the people who started the problem in the first place.

Every day, it seems, brings a new horror in the newspaper.  The town I'm talking about is no major metropolitan area.  There are fewer than 100,000 people in it.  It should not be possible that suddenly, everyone walks in fear once the sun goes down, that everyone looks at every person they see in the parking lot as a potential assailant.  A hint of panic has begun to taint the air at a time when people should be gathering with friends, exchanging gifts, thinking with love for all mankind.

Innocent people, as always, are the ones who are being pulled in and made to pay for the actions of others committed in arrogance and hate:  a mother and her babe-in-arms, a couple who stopped because they thought someone needed help, a man who spent his life trying to make sure there was equality for all.  The last is an irony so poignant that it tears at the soul.  He put his life on the line to make sure life could be better, and he's shot by thugs in hoodies for....nothing.  Because somebody refused to cower before them.  Because they think life is cheap, not understanding that life is all the more precious because it can be so easily ended.  Because they happened to have a weapon in their hands, and they've come to believe that this somehow makes them strong and right. They're throwing away their own lives and trying to throw away his with both hands as fast as they can.

It makes me grieve because I have the sick feeling that at least some of the shooters will wind up being familiar faces or names.  It's happened in the past.  It's an aspect of teaching in an urban setting that probably isn't covered in education classes.  It also makes me extremely angry.  What right have these to make everyone walk in fear?  What right have they to believe it is okay to spread their violence wholesale and make what should be a season of peace and hope into an active war zone?

Somebody needs to do something about this.  Someone with right, power, and authority.  It's time for those who can and should put an end to it to stop waiting, fiddling around, turning a semi-blind eye.  It's not a "community problem."  It's an all-of-us problem.  If someone with legal right and power doesn't find a way to end it soon, it doesn't take a genius to see that individuals are going to try to do it instead.  If that happens, well, I think Shakespeare had a quote for that in Julius Caesar, "Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war...."  We all know how those Shakespearean tragedies end, don't we?  With a pile of corpses and shattered potential.