Is America Close to Overdosing?

Why School Shootings Change Nothing 

and a Solution to Create Immediate Change

The facts are clear and overwhelming!  America has lost control and our life is unmanageable.  

The crisis of violence in America is faced by leaders in the same way a child faces their parent who drinks 18 beers a day.  In the face of drunkenness and chaos, verbal and physical abuse, the parent says, “I have no problem!”  

America has the solutions to deal with its problems.  Ask any competent addiction counselor, someone who has heard hundreds of people sharing their stories of addiction, someone who has battled addiction in their own life and is sober for years and you will get the truths we need to provide solutions.

The first step in the Anonymous groups is;

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

American life has become unmanageable!  

How can Senator McConnell after another school shooting say that we need to not politicize this recent shooting in Parkland, FL taking the lives of 17 souls?  How could Senator Rubio say we can’t rush to make policy until we study the facts?  House Speaker Paul Ryan said Congress needs to “take a breath and collect the facts.”

If I was to give credit to a politician, it would be Chris Murphy, a republican who wasted no time addressing this issue almost in real time as students were running for safety on campus!

The tragedy of Columbine took place over twenty years ago!  Since, the number of public shootings in America has rose to outrageous levels.  A list of all the major shootings (major, not ALL) since Columbine have been documented.

List of the major 25 shootings since Columbine

The first step in the Anonymous groups is;

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Clearly, we are not admitting the first step even after 20 years of shootings!  This is as gross a denial as someone in and out of 20 rehabs, 20 DUI's, 20 arrests who still says, "I need to study the facts!"

I used to think politicians were cowards.  Now I agree with Senator Chris Murphy that they are complicit.  Yes, because of their positions of leadership, they are indeed guilty of bloodshed by doing nothing to protect the very citizens they serve!  Senator Murphy, like Senator Jeff Flake recently broke rank and decided people are more important than politics.  

When politicians cannot state the obvious; “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable,” then we are in a crisis of deep denial.  

Our politicians are addicts!

There are two proverbs that are at play here.  Thinking them both through will give us an understanding of America’s mental health crisis.

The first is that of cowardice and serving an idol;

“You can’t get a man to understand something when his career depends upon him NOT understanding” --Upton Sinclair

The second is the Frog in Water;

“If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.”  (this isn’t a debate of whether a frog can actually jump out of a pot)

Combine both of these ideas and we can start to dial in on America’s dysfunction.

We have politicians that are serving idols (political party, NRA, gun lobby, constituents, fear of reputation, pick your idol) and we have a culture with almost no muscle-memory, distracted by the next story of “hot water” and no action takes place despite the outrageous facts!  

America is being boiled to death with the reality of shootings and cannot jump out of the hot water!  Worse, it does not even recognize it is being boiled to death!!

What happens when outrageous facts do not penetrate one’s conscience?  This is no different than an addict being confronted with a needle hanging out of their arm saying more research is needed to determine the problem!  This is American culture today!

Imagine someone visiting America and after they showered, had a good meal, sat on your couch and you told them that in the past 45 days of 2018, there were 18 shootings BEFORE the Parkland School shooting killing 17 and injuring many others right before our eyes in real time on TV?  Your visitor is literally watching the news coverage LIVE on TV!

A healthy response would be, 
“Wait, are you telling me that there is a shooting in your country almost every other day?”  

How many American’s know this?  How many Americans have no reaction to these facts?  As bad as this is, there is a far more scary reality!  What if Americans cannot even recognize facts anymore?  If our culture is so numb to facts, then the culture as we know it will decline rapidly in every aspect of life!  Is this a conditioning process that has risen to dysfunctional proportions?  It appears so!  What is the solution?

We need is a cultural intervention!  

I believe the following should take place.  

American schools, grades 9-12, should take one day for all students and write an essay titled, “Why do people shoot schools and public places?”  

Then there needs to be another essay titled, “How to prevent school shootings?”  

We need to LISTEN to our students!  By giving our students this opportunity, we are sending the message that they have dignity and have a voice!  This in itself will heal.

I believe if all these essays were read and a database was developed to list what our students have to share we would get one of the greatest amounts of pooled data to understand what young people carry inside, how they think, and solutions the adult community has failed to determine.

We will get far more wisdom from students ages 14-17 then our governmental leaders!

American politicians are numb inside.  It will take our youth to create change!  Politicians follow the crowd.  They are cowards, and cowards will capitulate to pressure.  Politicians have one hope--people will forget and move on!  If people do not forget and do not move on they have to listen.  We have learned the power of change with the “Me Too” movement.  It was fast and concise!  The same can happen as our youth lead the way to speak out loudly!  

What we need is a cultural intervention!  

The time is NOW and unless action is taken, this tragic shooting will simply be another fact that will not be recognized, like a commercial interrupting a great dramatic movie, we will get distracted and forget until the next shooting.  Yet we already know this because Columbine was 20 years ago!

However, people become numb each time trauma takes place until they go into deep denial, like that boiling frog, then, we can no longer “jump out.”  This is no different than an addict who takes more powerful drugs to get the same high until someone overdoses.  

America is very close to a cultural overdose!  

How many more students will die before we get out of denial?  If we did not get out of denial after Sandy Hook, the needle is hanging out of America’s arm and we cannot even recognize there is a problem!  We must listen to what our students have to say or we will lose this generation to nihilism!

I urge the education system to STOP with your classroom activities and take this action.

I urge college students to help pool this data into categories of thought.

I urge leaders to share these responses.

I have NO DOUBT that American students, both high school and college can change this INSANITY, demanding the "adults" listen to them!  These students will not read about history, they will write history!