Internal paralysis versus fixing the world

The peculiarity of our system

Regardless of your views of Musk, Twitter remains valuable as an indicator of topics under consideration in the world. Twitter also has an array of phenomenal photographers who populate it if you’re into that field. Today, however, Twitter alerted me to something quite moving and, tragically, all too common in any part of contemporary America.

(The Daily Tar Heel, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 30 August 2023)

The Daily Tar Heel, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s campus newspaper, had a painful cover yesterday. The entire front page was a long series of texts students sent as they frantically struggled to ascertain what was occurring during Monday’s three hour campus lockdown. Ultimately, police identified the murder of Applied Physical Sciences Associate Professor Zijie Yan by his graduate student Tailei Qi as the cause. The texts, likely only a small sample of those exchanged over the period, are heart wrenching because they draw us to the scene, reminding us of the potential vulnerability of our own loved ones or even ourselves.

The raw, perplexed, searing personal sentiments illustrate the confusion and disbelief repeated almost daily in the United States as personal differences—to whatever degree—result in gun violence in seemingly ever-increased numbers. This incident at the flagship North Carolina campus is hardly new in our society or in higher education. The April 2007 mass shooting by an undergraduate at the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech resulted in thirty-three deaths. Just over six months ago, three people died at the hands of yet another shooter in East Lansing on the MIchigan State University campus. In short, universities may be sites of higher education and exploration but they too suffer the plague of conflict resolution by gun murders.

I think we have actually redefined mass shootings to include not only those directly involved in the act of shooting, whether victim or perpetrators, but also the communities affected by the associated lockdowns.

Post offices, elementary schools, synagogues, grocery stores, neighborhood streets, high schools, military bases, churches, birthday parties, casino entrances, graduation celebrations, festivals, and on and on and on and on are the tip of the iceberg on gun violence. These are merely a short list of locations for recent mass shootings rather than the day-to-day one-by-one shootings so common but no less violent and disruptive throughout our history.

I don’t pretend to have anything extraordinary to add to the woeful tale except one simple observation. A reporter for a Southeast Asian newspaper called me this afternoon to discuss defense spending, how we see ourselves in the world, and topics seemingly divorced from what happened in Chapel Hill Monday afternoon. In the course of our conversation, I commented that our culture is prone ‘to fix the world’, meaning outside our borders. We rarely see a problem or challenge that we don’t think we can improve upon if we put our best effort against it. There is definitely an arrogance in this view but it is how we see things and often set out to fix’ them.

The reporter noted a few minutes later that a Southeast Asian ambassador made precisely the same observation to him several years ago: the United States relishes fixing things while, the ambassador reminded the reporter, Southeast Asians often prefer to put things off as too hard, or they hope the problems will resolve themselves. We agreed this is a major cultural difference between the United States and Southeast Asia.

I cannot ignore the irony of how willingly we jump at solving problems overseas, often with sustained resources. It’s seductive to say we do that because we are determined to control the world. Possibly. Similarly, we often say it is to make the world a better place. Yes, perhaps. As I mentioned to the reporter, we genuinely believe we have been so successful at addressing formidable challenges in this country over more than four hundred years since Europeans arrived. We are a bunch of DO-ers, often with positive outcomes as occurred in the Apollo 13 case which I mentioned only yesterday. But not always.

Juxtapose this ‘can do’ activism against the insanity of our mass shooting problem plaguing the entire nation. I fear no one can ever feel completely safe from these events, regardless who or where one is.

But, the national failure to create a solution after decades is literally unbelievable. I knew in December 2012 that if we did nothing after Adam Lanza mowed down 26 pairs of bright shining, hopeful eyes at Sandy Hook Elementary that we had given up; Uvalde fifteen months ago sickeningly reinforced my sense of incredulity.

Of course some of the shooters are mentally ill but that doesn’t mean you surrender to their illnesses when we chased Usama bin Laden for a decade or invested trillions in reshaping Afghanistan, does it? Of course we have constitutional differences over interpreting the Second Amendment’s intent but we deal with differences in interpretations on everything hourly in this country, often (I can no longer say certainly) without violence. Of course the National Rifle Association is intransigent in the face of overwhelming popular opinion to administer even the most minimal background checks but isn’t the legislative branch supposed to pass laws that the majority of the population supports, even if the numbers were close (which they are not in this case)? Isn’t that how governing is supposed to function?

I fear we have surrendered our power of analysis on the tasks we see in a most peculiar manner. The United States eagerly takes on finding solutions for other nations’ problems while abandoning any pretext of solving our own. Joanna and John Q. Public are worn out, appearing to accept the argument they don’t have the power to change the system.

Seriously? That’s sure what it appears.

I don’t care what your particular views are on guns; they are yours and I support, as distasteful as they might be in my humble opinion, your right to hold those views. I don’t support perpetuating a system whereby we have ignoring Constitutional (the document that the vast majority of Liberals and Conservatives claim to revere) missives from the Preamble to include

‘…Insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity…’

We have a multitude of issues to solve domestically but we are failing entirely at tranquility, common defense (domestically defined), general welfare, and the blessings of Liberty such as walking through our daily lives free from gun violence.

Perhaps we as a nation ought think about prioritizing this challenge relative to the other policies. Perhaps we should vote for (and hold accountable, if elected to office) those who share our views rather than allowing a minority position to be the answer because we can’t seem to find more reliable representation.

Part of the challenge is we think we have to have it all done in a single fell swoop. Every steps towards preventing a repeat of that Daily Tar Heel page would be a step forward in my book.

Perhaps we ought define ‘pro life’ as being for protecting citizens from gun violence as they go through their days.

We spend billions overseas on issues of importance with the smartest minds in the security field. Are we seriously doing the same on gun violence or have we decided, in fact, to take the position that it will solve itself? I simply reject that we are totally powerless. I will take gradual improvement, the Japanese kaizen, on this any day.

Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences today. I am pleased someone else signed up as a reader this afternoon. I continue thanking my paid subscribers from the bottom of my heart. Please feel free to restack (there is a button below) or send to others who you think might find it worth their time. I do read your email messages (drcynthiawatson@gmail.com) or comments here on substack. Your comments frequently lead me in new directions.

August is over so enjoy the fleeting longer days. Be well and do be safe. FIN

The Daily Tar Heel, front page, 30 august 2023, retrieved at pagehttps://s3.amazonaws.com/snwceomedia/dth/a05ac798-5a0a-468c-b74d-4db0a2a8b559.original.pdf

Hannah Schoenbaum, Gary D. Robertson and Sarah Rankin, ‘University of North Carolina graduate student left building right after killing advisor, police said’, apneas.com, 29 August 2023, retrieved at https://apnews.com/article/university-north-carolina-chapel-hill-shooting-a5eb7268934f7f416b7cfa2e2e3e24db