Letter to Congress

The following letter which I share with you was sent at the request of a friend seeking people’s engagement on this issue.  We can, and should, do something.
*****
TO: Senator Richard Burr, Senator Kay Hagan, Representative Mark Meadows
United States Congress, Washington, D.C.

There are many substantive issues facing our great country today.  One of the most vital issues is how our country will respond to its growing problem of violence involving guns.  I am writing to you to solicit your responses, and hopefully your support, regarding what I believe is a reasonable set of legislative changes needed to respond to this distressing problem.

I live in a mountain community in western N.C.  I know all too well and first hand that hunting, and the weapons used in hunting, are a long-standing part of the mountain heritage and culture.  For some, it is a recreational sport.  But for many others in these poorer communities, it is still a necessity for putting needed food on the table for families.  There is no reason that either of these endeavors should be prohibited, or that the culture of responsible gun ownership should be threatened.

But the key to our going forward is “responsible.”  American freedom conveys rights, but also demands responsibility in return.  There are no absolute rights devoid of responsibility.  Every right in our Bill of Rights has limits and conditions attached, yet Americans are still freely able to enjoy the essence of those rights.  That same yardstick of balancing “right and responsibility” is also applicable to our 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms.

I believe that a fair and comprehensive agenda about gun violence should be passed to reset this balance of gun rights and responsibility.

1.     Require that ALL gun purchasers undergo a background check, with NO exceptions.  (Supported by over 90% of Americans, including NRA members.)

2.     Dramatically raise the penalty for those who buy guns for ineligible buyers (“straw purchasers”) who subvert the background check and disguise the true owner.

3.     Limit bullet cartridges to 10 rounds.  Any hunter who needs more than 10 bullets in one shooting to kill a small animal, deer or bear has no business being in the woods.  S/he is a danger to all.

4.     Double the sentence for guilty persons who use a firearm when committing any crime.  Extend that same penalty to any accomplice of a criminal whether that accomplice was also armed or not.  It is an extension of the capital punishment concept – raise the stake of punishment for violent crimes.  Punishment, and the threat of it, still works.

5.     Require gun locks, and locked cabinets, for all firearms.  Guns owners must also be accountable for ensuring that the public is protected from the unauthorized use of their guns, just as all of us are held responsible for the unintended consequences of our actions.

There are other proposals that I also believe to be worthwhile.  But I recognize that they will likely go nowhere regardless of the current overwhelming public demand for change.  Nevertheless, the above proposals are highly reasonable and supportable by much of the public – including gun owners.  They deserve your positive and open support.

On your websites, each of you is blatantly silent regarding your positions about specific gun legislation.  Senator Hagan states that she “will fight to ensure law-abiding citizens are not restricted in their right to bear arms.”  Senator Burr offers not one single comment about potential gun legislation.  Representative Meadows posted an article announcing his co-sponsorship of a House bill to replenish funds under the Clinton-era Cops in Schools program to hire more police to be assigned directly into the schools.  On an issue this important, this limited (if not avoided) response is not at all sufficient.

Hiding behind the granite walls of the Capitol and the firewall of the Internet is not leadership.  Nor is it responsive to the public trust you were given by ballot.  True leadership requires that you publicly address this issue and speak to the proposals being offered, not offer bland, vague pronouncements or form letter replies.  Your constituents need to know whether you will vote based upon the next election results and political funding, or based upon conscience, national overriding interest and the best balance of rights and responsibilities.  Because the truly overriding Right is my right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  None of which are to be found at the wrong end of a bullet.

Sincerely, Randy Bell
*****
In 1958, John F. Kennedy introduced federal legislation to ban the import and sale of foreign guns made for military use.  The legislation did not pass.  Five years later, Lee Harvey Oswald bought just such a rifle that would have been banned under Kennedy’s legislation.  Oswald bought it through a mail order ad in an NRA magazine.  That November, he then used it to assassinate Kennedy.

On Tuesday, March 12, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send to the full Senate a bill requiring universal background checks for all gun purchasers.  92% of all Americans now favor such a requirement.  All ten Democrats on the committee voted “YES.”  All eight Republicans voted “NO.”  Who is listening to the American people?

Lock Them Out

In the first days of January 2013, the 113^th U.S. Congress began its turn as the legislative branch of our government.  224 years of tradition precede this session, a track record of great accomplishments, notable failures, and embarrassing mediocrity in between.  Congress has been a forum for great uplifting rhetoric and frightening demagoguery.  It has exemplified the best that is America as well as our worst pettiness, vindictiveness and prejudices.  But what it has always been is contentious.  A battleground for the clash of ideas, at times running leftward on the progressive side of change, at other times moving to the right to slow or reverse those changes.  It has continually alternated among America’s major vested groups, with allegiance to party or interest group (and their money) usually trumping decisions of conscience or the truly national interest.  But somehow collective decisions have been made that have directed the country and kept it moving.

Given that history, what should we presume to expect from this 113^th Congress?  Its predecessor, the 112^th from 2011-2012, gives us more discouragement than hope.  It is already rated by historians as the least productive ever, with a continual inability to make almost any decision unless under a financial gun.  Even then the decision was usually simply to not decide or to postpone until later.  It left Americans discouraged if not outraged, awarding it the lowest Congressional approval rating in history.  It also apparently set the stage for a repetition.

First impressions matter.  In the first days of its new session, the 113^th Congress allowed the country to go over its “fiscal cliff” before quickly restoring tax cuts for 99% of Americans, while leaving some benefit cuts and a payroll tax increase in place.  They continued to dawdle on emergency relief for Hurricane Sandy victims for almost 90 days after the destructive event until public outrage enabled passage – with 2/3rds of House Republicans dissenting.  A month later, the Senate confirmed John Kerry as Secretary of State.  But then, only two weeks after agreeing to limit its use of the filibuster – especially regarding presidential appointments – Republicans dishonestly broke their promise and filibustered Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense for what was finally admitted to be nothing more than “political revenge.”

Then they packed up and went on a week’s vacation, apparently exhausted from six weeks of non-accomplishment.  They left two weeks before an automatic budget cut of around $1T is to go into effect.  Cuts that we will likely survive, but will puncture job growth and economic recovery – two goals all Congresspersons claim that they want.  For this remarkable display of non-concern, hypocrisy and irresponsibility, these national representatives are paid a base salary of $174,000/year.  Except for the big donor individuals, corporations and interest groups on the left and right whose political puppets are doing exactly as they are expected, do any of the rest of us feel that we are getting our money’s worth for this very expensive non-performance?

These impending “sequester” cuts were supposed to be a doomsday device adopted in August 2011 that would be so universally onerous to all constituencies and interest groups that Congress and the President would be forced to intervene and make rational decisions about out budget future.  Except that apparently irrationality is well beyond rational expectations, for it appears that doomsday will now occur as scheduled on March 1^st.  To be followed three weeks later by a government shutdown because of the lack of an operating budget – even though we are already six months into the current fiscal year.

If a corporate CEO went this long without a financial plan, or proposed an across-the-board cut of this proportional magnitude, as the response to a financial shortfall, that person would likely be fired immediately for lack of imagination and an informed and effective strategy.  Only a managerial idiot proposes that kind of solution for an ailing company.  Everyday American families have shown far greater sensibility and accomplishment in dealing with their financial reversals during the past five years.  Most of them do not make anywhere close to $174,000.

There has been a symbolic proposal to suspend Congressional pay until Congress actually accomplishes its job.  At this point, Americans are justified in going a few steps beyond that action.  Someone needs to walk the halls of Congress and spray glue into all the locks to keep Congresspersons out of their offices.  Let them stay on vacation for a whole lot longer, given that they are doing far more damage when in session than tucked away back home where we can keep an eye on them and keep them out of further trouble.

Then let’s rescind Article 1 of the Constitution – the section that created Congress in the first place.  If a less than 10% job performance rating from their “employer” is not sufficient cause to fire these government workers, I do not know what is.  As America’s stockholders and Board of Directors, let’s just elect a President we believe is capable, let him/her do the job, and be fired if they do not get it done.  It is a perfect business model – and “run government like a business” has been a mantra by many (business) people for years now.

Except that many of us still believe that American democracy has not run its final course quite yet.  But the current players and supporting institutions have well exceeded their welcome.  As Jesus had to restore the sacredness of the Temple Mount by chasing out its corruptors, we need to similarly restore the honor of our Capitol by locking out the ineffectual and self-serving.  It is time to: replace this current bunch across the board regardless of their record and past allegiances; ban political parties as being un-American and unacknowledged by the Constitution; expose all hidden political funding and interactions between politicians and their interest groups; let each man or woman willing to offer public service have an equal shot at it; and then limit their time in office against the “career politician.”  As any good turnaround specialist knows, after a certain point many old players and mechanisms just cannot be turned around and made newly functional.

Yes, pretty crazy ideas.  And they will not happen.  But the responsible Middle American center who still remembers their history and civics lessons needs to take charge once again.  Our American Constitution is still sound.  It is We the People who have failed it.  We need a wholly new set of re-Founding Fathers and Mothers to discipline this unruly child, restore ethical maturity, and set us on the right course once again.

Headlines - February 2013

This is another one of times when I feel there are many topics currently under discussion in our country, but not necessarily warranting a full-length blog commentary.  So I offer instead a multi-topic review of some of our current headlines.

GUN SAFETY: The debate continues.  In fact, perhaps surprisingly, it has grown even louder in the six weeks after the Sandy Hook massacre.  There are four primary legislative proposals that the public appears to overwhelmingly support: universal background checks (supported by 92% of the public and 85% of NRA members); background checks for ammunition purchases; limits on number of bullets in a magazine clip; tighter restrictions on the sale of military-style assault weapons.  An NRA member recently stated, “If a hunter needs a 12-round magazine in an assault weapon to bring down a deer, it means he missed 11 shots and has no business hunting anyway.”

The first three actions would seem to be a no-brainer for almost all Americans.  But for any of these proposals to actually pass Congress, this evaporates as a common sense or moral issue.  As discussed in my blog of 1/18/2013, to make legislative progress this issue has to be dealt with as a campaign finance issue.  The political contributions of the NRA versus the (currently small) political contributions by those against the NRA’s positions.  And there is where we actually see some beginnings of change.

It is being led by billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City’s promise to personally spend mega-millions to support pro-gun safety candidates and expose NRA-funded favorite politicians.  It shows up in Gabby Gifford’s new PAC that has already been promised several million dollars from a few wealthy supporters – supplemented by her willingness to be a personal, public face on this issue.  (See her brief but riveting testimony to a Congressional committee on 1/30/2013.)  This fundraising has already had a direct affect.  Recent TV ads directed to a new Democratic Senator from North Dakota, and to a Democratic candidate in a special election in Chicago for a vacant House seat, have already prompted a public change of their pro-NRA positions.  Money still speaks.  Loudly.  I encourage you to consider donating to the Brady campaign.  Action is (unfortunately) still all about the money.

IMMIGRATION REFORM: Could this logjam finally be breaking up?  It seems to be another area where past paralysis may at last be starting to shift.  We see glimpses of that oft-invisible “bi-partisanship” as various ad hoc Congressional groups are advancing proposals to address this long-standing frustration.  Some politicians are fueled by a sense of humanity towards the untenable living condition we have created here.  Others are blatantly responding to a political reality – a growing voting block that is overwhelming against anti-Latino treatment, legislation, and roadblocks to resolution.

Whatever the motivation, it is a wave we need to surf.  Both sides need to “get” and both sides need to “give.”  We need to secure the nation’s border with all the physical, technological, and human resources available.  We need to enforce – and strengthen where necessary – laws requiring employee checks for everyone to prevent employers exploiting undocumented workers.  We need to institute a responsive and effective “guest worker” program that supports the small businessperson and farmers who are dependent upon filling jobs that resident Americans have proven they will not take.  Last and foremost, we need a defined program by which the people who came here illegally can become legal, taxpaying citizens.  Should they have been allowed to come in the first place?  No.  Are they here?  Yes – almost 12 million of them.  We blew it when we failed to stop it before, and now we need to own up to our own failure as much as theirs.

Our last step is to blot out all of the noise from those stuck in the past who scream “amnesty” as if it was a dirty word.  We need to speak back at them “forgiveness” to those seeking to make amends.  America is, and always has been, an incredibly forgiving nation.  After the American Revolution we forgave the Tories who had sided with the British.  We granted amnesty to all Confederate soldiers (excluding the generals) immediately as the Civil War ended.  We forgave the Japanese and the Germans their horrors after World War II and helped to rebuild their governments and economies.  President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to those who fled to Canada to avoid the Viet Nam draft – and today Viet Nam is one of our “most favored nations” trading partners.  All of these were done to bind wounds and move on.  And still the nation stands, fully intact.  We will continue to stand intact after we bring these 12 million people, including their innocent children, out of the shadows, and welcome them into their adopted country.

WOMEN IN COMBAT: With almost no forewarning, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the military Joint Chiefs officially announced the end of the restriction against women serving in combat.  Coming on the heels of lifting of the ban on gays/lesbians serving in the armed forces, our military once again has become a surprising driver for America’s promised equality for all.  Just as they were for accelerating racial integration when President Truman desegregated the military in the late 1940s.  There will be no rush to implement this change; there is a three year timetable for preparation, and there will be no lowering of standards for eligibility and performance.

Of course there were some of the expected opposition cries about women being inherently emotionally incapable of performing a combat role; women unable to physically carry a wounded 250- pound buddy to safety (hell, I couldn’t do so either even in my best youthful days!); where will women go to the bathroom in a shared foxhole; and, of course, the “inevitable” lowering of morale and probability of sexual affairs and assaults; etc.  It all sounded as such a frustrating echo of the 1980s when women pushed to be cops, fire fighters, construction workers, and executives – all jobs most Americans do not think twice about now.  Can we not move on from these Neanderthal arguments once and for all?  Yet the pleasantly surprising good news is how quickly this political/media discussion has come and gone.  Done.  Quiet.

So I guess we are making progress after all.

An Unfair Gunfight

It has been five weeks since the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut.  Perhaps surprisingly, the ensuing national dialog about gun responsibility following that slaughter of 26 innocent people is still actively continuing.  The far Left has reacted predictably by calling for a ban on virtually everything guns – a both inappropriate and ultimately unsuccessful position.  The far Right anticipates a federal seizure of public arms and is seemingly ready to shoot the next federal law enforcement officer that comes their way – an equally inappropriate and ultimately unsuccessful position.  Meanwhile, the vast middle class has collectively said “enough” to this indiscriminate violence, and wants at least something done about it.  But as usual, the substance of “something” can have many meanings, so we await a consensus on definitions, and are then dependent on some ONE(s) to actually do that something.

Most responsible people are coming to the same three overall conclusions on this topic.  Our gun violence centers around: 1) the weapons involved; 2) the people involved; and 3) the cultural atmosphere that disseminates and glorifies violence.  So the search for solutions involves looking into all three aspects to find the pieces needed for an overall reduction in the violence.  Good and new creative ideas are coming forth, as well as some very bad ones.  But as that search for substance continues by many, the purpose of this blog entry is not to debate specific proposals (although that might be appropriate for a future blog).  Rather, this blog is about looking ahead and saying, whatever ideas and proposals are arrived at, what is the chance of anything actually changing?  Sadly, I confess I believe the answer is “No.”  Why?  For several reasons.  And all of those reasons spell m-o-n-e-y.

The Constitutional arguments are not the problem.  The Supreme Court has clearly pronounced that the First Amendment protects free speech (and hence media/entertainment violent content), but that freedom has limits and is subject to some practical restrictions.  They have said that the Second Amendment protects the right to own firearms, but that right also has limits and is subject to restrictions.  So the Constitutional questions will be around where the limits can be set.  The action issue for Americans is simpler than complex legalities: it is, simply, who has the most money to demand the greatest influence on the outcomes of our discussion?  That answer is a) gun manufacturers and b) the leadership of the National Rifle Association (NRA) – as distinguished from the NRA rank and file.

Virtually all meaningful and substantive responses to gun violence will require action by Congress.  States can choose to be more or less active on this issue, but state laws are virtually meaningless with today’s cross-border gun trafficking and mobile buyers.  In today’s dysfunctional and ineffective Congress, there is simply too little interest in the national will or the national best interest.  It is all about personal political power and status.  Personal power starts with being elected and getting reelected.  And elections – as we have so recently seen – are all about raising money.  Lots of money.  And one gold mine for election money comes from appealing to gun corporations and their surrogate, the NRA.

Create enough fear of an adversarial federal government and gun sales will skyrocket.  Organizational groups stoking that fear and vowing to fight that threatening government will similarly watch donations and memberships rise.  Plus, in this economy, corporations can choose to play the “jobs card.”  The Colt gun corporation situated outside Hartford, Connecticut has already threatened to move its operation out of state if new regulations are passed, and Connecticut lawmakers have stalled consideration of such new regulations.  Similarly, the Remington corporation in upstate New York has threatened to move elsewhere if New York threatens their manufacture of the assault weapons used in the Sandy Hook and other shootings.  In this rural Republican county, job losses carry weight.  So once again we see that “hell hath no fury like a corporation whose profits are jeopardized.”

In addition to these overt corporate threats are the more subtle (and hidden) support gun manufacturers give to the NRA leadership team.  The NRA claims to have signed up 200,000 new members over this past month, but fail to mention the 70% fee discount offered to stimulate enrollments.  Nor do they mention the various polls that show a majority of their general membership favor reasonable new gun controls.  (They have spouses and sons and daughters, too.)  NRA leaders versus rank-and-file members should not be seen as all of one mind on these issues.

Nevertheless, the dollars speak.  Exact numbers are hard to come by.  But for 2012, the NRA and its PAC affiliates had approximately $200M in revenue, a $300M budget, spent $2+M for lobbying, and spent roughly $18M to influence political decisions and elections.  By contrast, the leading gun control organization – the Brady Campaign – had a paltry budget of $4M, and spent $60,000 on lobbying and $50,000 on political initiatives.  This is not a David and Goliath battle.  This is a baby David versus a whole army of Goliaths.  So when a Democratic or Republican Congressperson – who often may care less about the 2^nd Amendment versus getting reelected – goes looking for campaign money, who do we think they will be listening to?

Until the financial rug is finally pulled out from under this dead weight of the NRA that has stifled considerations of any reasonable steps for reducing gun violence, then all the planning discussions will be for naught.  Vice President Joe Biden talked to all kinds of people with all kinds of opinions about gun violence.  But he never talked to the fundraisers of America about how to even the political odds for doing “something.”  The shame of our time is not our self-inflicted violence from killings.  Our shame is that we have reduced it to a financial argument over clout, a financial argument that will wait in line behind Congressional impasses over a debt ceiling, sequestration cuts, federal budgets, and a list of other issues.

The truth is that guns will always be a part of America’s heritage and cultural life.  And that can be perfectly OK.  Does any reasonable person really believe that banning weapons designed specifically to kill lots of people quickly is going to prevent my friend Larry from shooting a deer so that his family can eat venison all winter long?  Regrettably, some people will on occasion be killed by an angry or sick person or a criminal; our reality is that we have no absolute protection of safety over our lives.  Yet in today’s environment, there are far more controls, protections and tracking systems for buying and operating an automobile than in buying and owning a lethal weapon – yet in spite of such controls people are still able to successfully own and drive their cars.

This fight is only minimally about the Second Amendment; it is really yet another fight about the horrors of our political campaign financing.  Until gun safety forces raise enough cash to create a level (or better) playing field, the stark reality is that there will be no reduction in our gun violence.  No change in our environment of private one-person armies.  And where that non-action may continue to take us is ever more scary to contemplate.

Decline Of Leadership

Remember once upon a time when “America” and “Leadership” were virtually synonymous?  For our first 150 years, America was pretty much a rogue upstart in the family of nations.  An object of curiosity, an attraction to many who would come here, yet a model that few nations cared to emulate.  Instead, they were busy playing out their historical roles of kings and empires, living on the myth of a past history of leadership that was in steady and irrevocable decline.

Then came World War II.  America stepped into that chaotic horror as the sleeping giant now awakened, acknowledged by all as the latest big kid on the block.  Even America’s one-time ally, the USSR, would ultimately capitulate after 45 years of competition with America for supremacy.  By demonstrating its economic and military supremacy, America’s unique governmental and social forms became the ideal to follow, the model to copy.

America led.  Led the way in such things as human rights, economic growth, manufacturing, distribution of wealth across its citizenry, entertainment forms, republican style of government, rules of fair play and social conscience in the workplace, and in science and technology.  Almost as proof of our leadership, we landed two men on the moon; fantasy became reality, expanding our collective soul while fulfilling the imaginations of eons of dreamers.  We were a nation, and individual persons, that seemingly could achieve anything we put our mind to.

In fairness, it was not done without some stumbles, mistakes, wrong turns, and great resistance along the way.  We inappropriately meddled in other people’s governments too often.  We fought a stupid war in Viet Nam, learned little from it, and fought two more stupid wars two generations later.  Realizing the promise of equal rights had to overcome frightening and recurring violence, and these efforts to make these things right still continue.  Government irrevocably lost its aura of idealism late one night in a dark office building called Watergate.  And economic growth repeatedly veered in and out of downturns as large American corporations became increasingly more concerned about executive wealth and short-term corporate earnings than providing good products and services inside strong, long-term balance sheets.  In spite of the shortcomings, we still led.

Thirteen years ago, we passed into a new year, a new century, a new millennium.  With the occurrence of such a rare event, we could not help but collectively expect that a time of big change might likely be beginning.  And in fact, the last decade has proven itself to be such a changing time for Americans.  Unfortunately, it has mostly been a time of negative change.  Two wars have exhausted and nearly bankrupted us.  A constant threat of danger from external terrorists and internal psychopaths, both armed to kill innocent bystanders in large numbers, have left us in an ongoing, often-times irrational, fear of each other.  We have had an extreme economic collapse that has harmed versus rewarded people with no sense of fairness, nor accountability for those who caused it.  The “can do” America we have known has become the “can’t do much of anything” we know now, paralyzed by an inept national government representing a country divided in its sense of direction and solutions.  It is not clear we are even unified in our goals, hence no common ground seemingly can be found in our proposed solutions.

Yesterday, America fell over a cliché called the “fiscal cliff.”  The cliff was a self-imposed, suicide bullet of artificial legislation that was supposed to force unwilling lawmakers to come together and do something together in spite of themselves.  Instead, it has simply declared for all to see how far we have fallen from our high place of leadership.  Leadership by example has been replaced by Failure by example.  The small-minded thinkers who now occupy our Congress and statehouses will likely stumble and bumble their way to some small countermeasures to mitigate some of the possible consequences of this fall.  But they will be actions of retreat, not actions of leadership.

We have been so quick to arrogantly criticize other nations as they have grappled with their economic struggles, their governmental changes, their Arab Spring revolutions.  But we have very visibly lost our claim of a leadership role either internationally or here at home, because we have become a nation of problem makers, not problem solvers.  It is all our separate parts continually fighting with each other in a “no surrender” death spiral that has crippled our country.  We must stop this madness, and come back to our overriding commonality that honors and benefits all.  A shared willingness to let each person have a piece of the action and the reward, and to leave each other alone towards finding their own form of happiness.  Doing nothing, staying on this course, American leadership will continue a steady march into irrelevance.  Like the European nations of a hundred years ago, we will become another nation living on its fading past history instead of being an energized, driving force toward greatness.

This is the leadership cliff.  It can be a long fall from a high place of honor, respect and emulation.  Leadership, like reputation, is a fragile thing.  So very hard to first achieve; so easily and quickly lost if not cared for highly responsibly.  Today, we are treating our leadership highly irresponsibly.  It is reversible.  But our margin of time to do so is getting shorter with each day.  We will likely not even realize that it has passed us by until well after the fact.  Turning around this big ship of state to a new course will not be easy.  It will not be quick.  And it will require a great number of us to accomplish it.  But it all needs to be soon.  This is the challenge of, and the needed resolution for, this New Year of 2013.

Violence Towards Our Children

“Sometimes I would like to ask why God allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when God could do something about it.  But I am afraid God would ask me the same question.”  (Anonymous)

This is a quote that has been circulating the Internet of late in the aftermath of the tragedy that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut.  It is another one of those times when we search to make sense of the insensible; to understand what eludes our understanding; to comprehend what is incomprehensible; to find reasonable answers out of unreasonable circumstances.  But little seems to be forthcoming that we can adequately get our arms around.  There are only the continuing pictures that unsettle our emotions and bring us increasing tears of sorrow for victims and compassion for survivors.  Down deep we know they could have been us.

Some feel the need to speak out immediately and call for action to be taken.  And so MoveOn.org immediately blasts out another one of their daily petitions and requests for $5 donations, this time for greater gun control.  On the other end of the political spectrum, former governor Mike Huckabee inexplicably tries to explain away the incident by saying that it occurred because we have taken God out of our schools.  Both of these actions and statements are vastly inappropriate to the moment, along with other similar speechmaking from the legions of national commentators (including perhaps this author).  Instead, this is time when respectful and contemplative thought are the better choice.

We try to understand how a young man could take up arms and so seemingly easily kill his mother, 20 small children, 6 protecting adults, and then ultimately himself.  They were all totally defenseless and unthreatening to him, and – except for his mother – likely completely unknown to him.  We wonder how someone could take another life, let alone 26 such innocent lives cut so very, very short.  How could one be so unfeeling towards others?

The only way to understand a seemingly irrational act is to think outside our normal rationality.  Because to a shooter, the act has become perfectly rational.  These mass shootings are not acts of violence, though violence is its by-product.  Rather, they are acts of power by the powerless.  They come from the frustration, loneliness, self-deprecation of a life felt to have been neutralized and marginalized by others.  Left to churn inside, that sense of powerlessness, valuelessness, and unworthiness finally erupts and looks for compensating expression.  And the greater this sense of lacking and inability to change that, the greater the need for a major demonstration of reclaimed power over “the outside world.”  So the scope of the drama necessarily gets bigger and bigger.  One killing is not enough; it must rise to 26 (or more if enabled) because the place of powerlessness has sunk so very deep.

So in the shooter there is no remorse for those who are his victims.  No regrets about the seeming inhumanity of his actions.  Because humanity is that sense of connection that makes us bond together as a community – and for the shooter, connection has long been lost.  His victims have become merely faceless props in his script, supporting actors in his personal stage play who have no voice.  For one who lives in humiliation and submission, what could be more redeeming to one’s soul than feeling the absolute power over another at the point of his gun?

Most of humankind find far less destructive ways to respond to those moments when we feel neutralized.  But these series of shooters can find no other way out of their feelings of desperation.  We cannot possibly know what brought this particular shooter to this depth of his despair.  But we can recognize that in his suffering he is also among the victims of this tragedy.  The future promise of his life also goes unfilled too soon.  We do not condone or minimalize what he has done.  But we are reminded once again of the Dalai Lama’s challenge to us: “Love the person.  Resist the act.”

And so they all now reside in the lap of God.  We leave it to God’s greater vision and understanding of the life purpose of each of us to make sense of all of this.  To do what is right for all involved, gathered together in the place after life that is God’s home.  Later we may choose to write our letters, sign petitions, sit in public vigils demanding a change in our social contract.  We may do this even knowing that, in today’s polarized America, it is highly doubtful that much will change anytime soon in our laws and arguments about guns and violence in spite of our immediate passion “to do.”

Maybe the real lesson being taught to us from that school in Newtown is not an argument about laws and processes and social responsibility.  These are simply arguments of the mind.  Perhaps the scale and profoundness of these 20 young children are there to speak instead to our hearts.  Speak in a way, and with a force, that the everyday singular acts of violence towards the innocents that we hear about do not seem able to do.  Before we engage the brain we need to wed with the heart.  Instead of closing ourselves to this inexplicable violence, we may need to open ourselves fully to the empathy and motivations that lie in our hearts.  We may need to eliminate our denials and intellectualization of what is happening around us, to us, and allow ourselves to be fully overwhelmed by the emotional power of these events and the suffering they bring.

We need to make it personal.  Because as long as we keep it a (ir)rational debate over petitions, we avoid the need for genuine action from the heart, touched into our soul.  Little of true significance in our relationships with each other will happen until we break through our hard exteriors and move inside of us to that place of genuine humanity.  Nothing will stop the shooters until we end their separation from us and help to restore spirit, rather than cold materialism, into their being.  So let us spend time making Newtown personal.  Personal to the parent, sibling, and neighbor that resides in each of us.  That is the place from which our future actions should come.  That is God’s challenge to each of us, and the challenge from the kids and teachers of Newtown.

The Republican Divide

In 1961, after the United States’ disastrous defeat of its covert attempt of a counter-revolution against Fidel Castro, newly-inaugurated President John Kennedy famously said, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”  After this November’s election, Kennedy’s words seem highly relevant.

Mitt Romney and his Republican Party lost.  And lost big.  It was a big loss not necessarily by the absolute numbers.  Republicans got 48% of the vote, and in a number of “swing states” they lost by razor-thin margins.  But the end result was devastating in the poplar marketplace of perceptions and expectations.  With a weak economy, the incumbent’s base seemingly “disappointed,” a high number of vulnerable Democratic Senate seats up for election, and a chorus of right-wing billionaires ready to ante up unheard of sums of money to the cause, “How can we lose?” was the overriding belief.

But lose they did.  They lost the presidency to the incumbent, losing all but one of the swing states and substantially the Electoral College by 332-206.  They not only failed to gain the Senate but went down two more seats.  They lost half-dozen seats in the house (though still retained control of that chamber).  It was an across-the-board rejection of the party, its candidates and its presidential nominee.  And so the orphan of defeat is now adrift, barely visible within the ensuing sea of rationales, excuses, and finger-pointing.

The loss was partly attributable to Obama being a more formidable candidate than Republicans / Romney anticipated.  A steadily improving economy; an overwhelming “turn-out-the-vote” ground game; targeted and effective advertising to the current demographic profile; a genuine record of accomplishment; a consistent set of beliefs and principles espoused by the candidate; all served to pull the rug out from under the Romney strategy.

But whatever the strengths of the incumbent, they were matched (or surpassed) over the long campaign by the substantial weaknesses of Romney.  Just being “against Obama” was not enough of a campaign basis, combined with his lack of connection with the average voter.  Even his Republican base never warmed to him, giving him the nomination only because of an almost comical pool of primary opponents.  This was followed by a seemingly never-ending string of missteps and misstatements: the botched overseas trip; the premature Libyan criticisms; the constant “clarifications” issued by his campaign staff of his impromptu comments; his “let the auto industry go bankrupt” posture; and, most notoriously, the “47%” denigration of the voters.

Combined with the Romney weaknesses were several years of consistent hostility by the Republican Party to gays, Latinos, women, African-Americans – all growing electoral demographics.  Add in the perception of the extremism of Tea Party advocates with “flaky” candidates that have clearly cost Republicans the capturing of the Senate; a consistent “legislative NO” and “my way is the only way” attitudes expressed by Republican Congresspersons, and an assault on voting access in many states solely for political advantage.  With that combination, you have a Party that is not perceived as welcoming to the very voters needed for electoral success.  How the Republican Party responds to this outcome will be very important to the Party’s relevance, our ability to address the many issues of our day, and therefore our collective future.

Republicans can be angry and retrench kicking and screaming even deeper into the hole of defeat, blaming everyone else for not seeing the rightness of their cause.  Or they can thoughtfully figure out what went wrong, learn from the results, and meaningfully and honestly adjust accordingly over time.  So far, both options are being pursued by the various players.  Romney has blamed his loss on Obama’s “gifts” to the voters (reminiscent of his “47%” stupidity); others have blamed everything from Hurricane Sandy, Chris Christi’s praise for Obama’s relief efforts, the villains of “urban voters,” and of course, the “liberal media.”  Karl Rove is dancing fast and furious to explain to his mega-donors why $300M did not buy anything that was promised.  And John McCain embarrassingly continues to try to spin much noise about the Benghazi tragedy in a losing attempt to find a new political relevance.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the discussion, thoughtful Republicans like former Bush advisor Karen Hughes threatened to “cut out the tongue of any white, gray-haired male who talks about rape ever again”; Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal pronounced that “Republicans need to stop being the stupid Party … we need to end dumbed-down conservatism by putting a stop to offensive, bizarre comments … and stop insulting the intelligence of the voters”; and former First Lady Barbara Bush simply observed, “The people spoke.  Move on.  Get over it.”

Whether the Republican Party will face up to their shortcomings and the new realities of America, or continue to run headlong into a brick wall of its own making, is unclear.  There is a legitimate conservative program and message that could be of benefit and interest to Americans.  But it is not the program and message that has been coming from today’s Republican Party.

The night after the election, commentator Rachael Maddow observed the significance of the outcome, and Republicans’ disbelief of it, and their history of continuous negative disbelief in our American reality, as follows: “Ohio really did go to Obama last night, he really did win.  He really was born in Hawaii, and he really is, legitimately, President of the United States – again.  And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.  And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.  And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats.  And [pollster] Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad; Nate Silver was doing math.

And climate change is real.  And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.  And evolution is a thing!  And Benghazi was an attack on us, not a scandal by us.  And nobody is taking away anyone’s guns.  And taxes have not gone up.  And the deficit is dropping, actually.  And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.  And the moon landing was real.  And FEMA is not building concentration camps.  And UN observers are not taking over Texas.  And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.”  Maddow posed the fundamental question for Republicans: are you going to continue to be exemplified by the fringe, the conspiracists, the lightweights, and those who think leadership is about who can simply say the most outrageous things?  Or will you meet Americans where they truly live – in that broad space both just slightly left and slightly right of the middle?

In 2008, Americans were sick of eight years of Republican governance and wars, and overwhelmingly elected a sweeping Democratic majority.  These Democrats thought they had a license to do anything, and spun the country Left too far and too fast.  In 2010 the voters “corrected” that excess by swinging back to the Republicans.  And those Republicans responded to the Right just as stupidly as the 2008 Democrats of before.  So in 2012 the voters had to correct the politicians again.  The vast majority of Americans are not interested in extreme politics.  They want working governance, from intelligent and reasonable people, providing effective solutions derived from working together for everyone’s benefit.  Which party, which politicians, are finally going to understand this?