Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
We are the problem
“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” You may recognize that lyric, from Taylor Swift, the Kansas City Chiefs’ most famous fan since she started dating star tight end Travis Kelce a few months ago.
It takes on new meaning after a shooting spree at the Chiefs’ victory party killed a female Tejano disc jockey and wounded 22 other people, including 11 children.
Today, we can all sing along with Swift.
Except now it’s we, hi, we’re the problem it’s we.
Within hours of the shooting, calls went up for responsible gun control in America. They always do.
“Jill and I pray for those killed and injured today, and for our country to find the resolve to end the senseless epidemic of gun violence tearing us at the seams,” President Joe Biden said on X, formerly Twitter.
He was predictably met there with a chorus of boos from those who tell us — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — that “an armed society is a polite society.”
I guess this time, that old chestnut is kind of true. The shooter (or perhaps shooters) were polite enough to at least wait until the parade and party were winding down before shooting up the crowd. Baby steps.
The shooting took place at the intersection of Valentine’s Day, when we celebrate love, and Ash Wednesday, the day millions of Christians go to church to embark on 40 days of reflection, confession and offering apologies to God.
We have a lot to be sorry for in this year of grace.
As much as we’d like to convince ourselves otherwise, the United States of America has turned mean.
Our society has become so toxic and so willing to solve personal grudges with firearms that it’s getting hard to consider us a developed nation.
Much of the country is in denial or indifferent.
Others actively root for the anti-hero (another lyric borrowed from Swift, sorry). Their tactic du jour is stoking fear by scapegoating the so-called “invasion” of our southern border.
I pulled these gems from the responses that Biden got when he proposed we finally try to do something sensible about gun violence:
■ “Close the border!”
■ “Maybe start with closing n the boarder (sic) and keeping violent people in prison you useless x”
■ “Maybe if Democrats actually enforced the laws and stopped letting known felons onto the street this wouldn’t happen. Also, maybe it’s a bad idea to leave our southern border wide open allowing criminals to flood onto our streets. Follow if you agree.”
Sorry pal, I’m not following. I doubt you or any of your fellow keyboard heroes of the Republic have ever seen the “invaders” up close.
I have. While in Chicago I walked through the immigrant detention area at O’hare Airport, where they process the people that governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron Desantis herd into buses and ship north as a grotesque publicity stunt.
What I saw was a mass of people in obviously donated clothing sitting and lying on blankets on the floor, as their children played with donated toys.
There were chairs where these unfortunate souls could fill out paperwork detailing the horrors in their home countries that brought them here seeking refuge. There was a long line to turn in the forms at an understaffed card table.
Despite the unmistakable misery, they were calm, polite and orderly, which actually set them apart from the people using the airport for its regular purpose.
I had a hard time reckoning them with the terrorists, murderers and rapists that GOP politicians make them out to be. And they certainly don’t deserve to hear the hordes of Americans who cheer whenever Abbott floats deadly razorwire booby traps in the Rio Grande, or when his troops block Border Patrol agents from trying to rescue drowning women and children.
Although it’s been eclipsed by the parade shootings, another major story this past week was the congressional impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mayorkas isn’t charged with being too vicious in his pursuit of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers — he’s charged with not being vicious enough. Voting for cruelty won’t diminish the popularity of the Congress members who voted for impeachment. It will enhance it.
Taylor’s song is just the gift that keeps on giving: “Did you hear my covert narcissism, I disguise as altruism? Like some kind of congressman, tale as old as time.”
Our problem isn’t just guns. It’s that too many of us are too angry at the wrong people and too frightened by the wrong things.
My overwhelming sadness in the wake of Wednesday’s Super Bowl party shooting is that I remember a time when America wasn’t like this.
The American people were hopeful, optimistic, courageous and compassionate. When we erred, and we did, it was on the side of good intentions, not malevolent ones.
Those traits, writ large across our national character, made us a beacon to the world — and not coincidentally allowed us to go to parades without fear of dying in a hail of gunfire.
I’d like to live in that America again.