Back to Black Joanne Black
How long can Donald Trump keep thumbing his nose at Americans over gun control?
Anxiety remains in US schools in the wake of the Florida high school tragedy but is tempered by the sense that those 17 deaths may yet prove to be a tipping point in America’s gun debate. Here in Montgomery County, Maryland, just over the Washington DC border, another week has brought another email from the superintendent of schools.
This time he reported that a boy had been arrested last week for possession of a loaded handgun at a county high school. The student had made no threat; nor had he indicated that he wished to harm anyone. Perhaps he believed he needed the gun for self-defence. That would be in line with President Donald Trump’s suggestion that some teachers could be armed.
Only Trump and perhaps the National Rifle Association seem to think the answer to guns in schools is to have more guns in schools. The notion of teachers having a shoot-out with a deranged student would be almost enough to make me consider home schooling, except that my daughter would rather take her chances with a madman at school than spend her days at home with her mother. To be honest, I’d rather she took her chance at school than be home with me, too.
But the edginess lingers. When a student’s backpack bumped and set off the fire alarm at her school one day last week, there was an immediate email from the principal to every family assuring them that it had been a false alarm.
Being on edge is focusing minds. I have long thought that in a democracy, it is usually the public who lead the politicians, not the other way around. That is certainly the case here and now. The momentum for change is palpable.
Because I subscribe to the New York Times, I was sent an email offering a complimentary “Google Home” if I switched to annual billing. A Google Home, the email helpfully told me, is “a voice-activated speaker with Google Assistant built in”. It would be the perfect companion to my Times subscription, and to my day, I was told.
I beg to differ. In fact, I beg to differ so much that I would pay double my subscription to guarantee never having to have one of these things enter my home. For a start, I can see it being something that requires you to repeat yourself 10 times and even then never does what you ask – just like having another kid in the house.
And, yes, you may be able to ask it to turn on the radio, but good luck with “would you please take the laundry upstairs”. That is not in its repertoire. Mind you, it seems not to be in the repertoire of my daughter, either, and she has arms and legs, so has less excuse.
Aside from the fact that I do not think it would be useful, this is the point where I say no to the technology and mechanisation that have entered our domestic lives with not so much an insidious creep as a fullon invasion.
If I had my way, I would not have a television or a microwave, either, but to do without those would mean also doing without my husband. That is not an exchange I wish to make.
Although I am not quite at the stage of thinking the microwave is reading my brain impulses, my use of my PC and phone means Google already knows more about me than my family does. A voice-activated home assistant is a line I shall not cross. Did you hear that, Google?
You may be able to ask it to turn on the radio, but good luck with “take the laundry upstairs”.