It is time to stop and be better than this

The Virginian Pilot took a brave stance and printed this on the entire front page of today's paper:

US
FOR JUST A FEW days, let’s stop screaming at each other over the omnipresence of guns in our society, over the racist brutality of a few rogue cops, over the fear that pervades too many neighborhoods and communities this day and every day.

Let’s just stop and mourn and wonder how in the world America became this unspeakably, relentlessly terrorized place.

How America became a nation where black men fear for their lives during traffic stops. Where police officers are scared of the skies during a protest in a major American city. Where dozens of gay people can be slaughtered at a Florida dance club. Where children aren’t safe in a Connecticut first-grade classroom, or in lecture rooms at Virginia Tech.

Whether we recognize it or not, that is who we are now. We are a nation at war. With ourselves. Daily. Constantly.

Our divisions are myriad. The common thread remains the lethality of the weapons used, whether with a sniper’s precision or with a spree killer’s mania or with a mother’s ruptured sanity.

We grope for answers and find them in Islamic extremism or racism or mental instability or parental neglect or. Or.

Or, simply, this is who we are now. A nation mourning again. Questioning again. Finding no answers again. Coming together again to mourn our dead. Again.

That union will be too brief, as it always is now, ended by ambitious politicians who can’t wait for the blood to dry. By our tribal politics in which too many Americans will sacrifice too many values for one more electoral victory. As if that defines this nation instead of what we do to comfort each other and end this violence.

We are better than this.


Now, we are five officers dead in Dallas, shot from above by a sniper positioned for maximum carnage. We are a Minnesota man shot in his car, reaching for his wallet, by a nervous patrolman. We are 49 people killed on Latin Night in an Orlando nightclub by a man who professed allegiance to the Islamic State. We are nine people killed at a Bible study in a Charleston church by a white supremacist trying to spark a race war.

We are the dead and the living. We are the mourned and the mourning.

We are a United States soaked in the blood of our divisions. Those divisions will most certainly grow deeper. But we are better than this.

We’ve created and abetted this society, allowed it to be overseen by leaders incapable of inspiring the unity of purpose necessary to end this war among us, leaders who divide us with reckless rhetoric and self-forgiving prayers. People shouting at each other about whose fault it is.

But we are better than this. We have to be better than this.

A choice must be made: We can be the America of constant bloodshed. Of greedy and incompetent politicians. Of tireless division and vituperation.

Or we can be something better. Something glorious. Something united, for a change.

The Virginian-Pilot Editorial Board

pilotonline.com...

This artical has More cheese then on a homeless mans forskin...

I'm not so sure that's "who we are now" or "who we've always been. American lands have been soaked with blood and ripe with oppression since the very beginning of this young nation. As a nation we are kind of in the angst filled teen aged years right now.



We live on stolen lands colonized by people who fled oppression of religion so that they could practice a more oppressive religion in a new land. The railroads were built on the backs of Chinese immigrants who worked for next to nothing, the effects of the slave trade are still reverberating to this day, countless slaughtered native Americans, a civil war and two world wars.

At the end of the day I would say that things have gotten progressively better over the centuries. Maybe not perfect but we have come a long way and still have further to go. It's not all bad all the time, sometimes though bad things happen to good people and it's been like that since the beginning of time across the globe.

a reply to: Pandaram

I disagree.
It is time we give a damn.
Regardless of history, any person's origin, we have the potential,right now, to stop this descent into a failed nation.
Giving a damn matters.
Having a moral compass, how we treat our fellow man/woman matters.

a reply to: Pandaram

You would know?

originally posted by: SeaYote
a reply to: Pandaram

I disagree.
It is time we give a damn.
Regardless of history, any person's origin, we have the potential,right now, to stop this descent into a failed nation.
Giving a damn matters.
Having a moral compass, how we treat our fellow man/woman matters.

now its time huh....
why wasn't it time when 8 year old got shot by cops or cop pulling out gun on kids at swimming pool, or every time a cop feels threatened and kill , killing autistic , tazing guy having heart attack in his car, breaking in wrong houses and killing a toddler, stick ng canine on handcuffed victim, body slamming teenage girl in classroom, or guy spraying a black church with bullets with women and children praying, we didn't need to be better then huh... and.etc. what about those souls...


why is it now we have to be better, why couldn't we be better before.
when a black guy finally loses his sh!t and kills whites, just because of their ethnicity , now we need to be better.
what about like a year ago this time, two years ago this time during a lot of similar events, but reversed... why weren't we crying foul and intervening

a reply to: odzeandennz

Simple answer is white life matters...

a reply to: odzeandennz

It has always mattered, it has always been the time. But courage has been in short supply.

I post this simply because FINALLY there may be enough attention being given to the reality of systematic cruelty. Perhaps NOW (rather than too late) enough people will awaken and say NO MORE.

We exist on this planet ....a messy mix of humans of varying colors and beliefs.
Progress is possible. If there is enough will, we can put our warring tribal ways behind us. If we so choose.

a reply to: Pandaram

All life matters.