America needs an intervention

Larissa Sneider

October 7, 2017

America needs an intervention

The insanity has gone far enough

intervention

1 the act of intervening

2 any interference in the affairs of others, esp. by one country in the affairs of another

3 an organized confronting of a person who has a serious problem, as an addiction to drugs or alcohol, by friends and family assembled to urge rehabilitation, etc.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary

A person whose behavior is out of control may be confronted to seek treatment for their addiction(s) by family, friends, employers and medical professionals.  The question is who can intervene in the United States’ addiction to violence and guns.  Too many citizens in the US bought into the myth of the gun culture.  Who is left to do this intervention?  

Incident after incident, each more horrifying than the last has plagued our society yet no one is able to bridle these barbaric tendencies.  

In police drama’s on television the investigator often states there are three criteria needed for conviction: means, motive and opportunity.  We have millions of opportunities to create havoc.  They are everywhere people gather.  Motive is a little harder to define but the common link seems to be the acceptance of violence as a way of life in the US.  It is demonstrated in a thousand ways each day in abusive relationships; husband/wife, parent/child, employer/employee, bully/victim, etc.  Too many seem to need to dominate and often resort to violence.  Too many turn a blind eye to this violence.  That blind eye extends to our society when it comes to our national need to dominate in the world.  It also extends to mass violence committed with weapons intended for wars.  The addict has no boundaries.  The national addiction does not limit itself to practical weapons, if they exist.  No, gun “rights” activists, like the addict, refuse to be limited in any way.  Also like the addict they deflect the blame for the consequences of their addiction.

Denial is a term often the butt of jokes but it is a very real part of this dilemma.  We have a mass blindness to any responsibility for our part.  Whether it is just complacency or if we are actively engaged in the fight to make weapons of mass destruction available to all, including the mentally ill, as recently voted by Congress, we are guilty of this mass blindness.  We allow lobbyists to actively bribe our politicians.  We tolerate rhetoric that extols perverted definitions of “rights” never intended by our founders.  We turn our backs to violence in daily life.”It is none of our business” is no longer a valid excuse, if it ever was.  We tend to allow violence against certain classes of people whether it be because of bias against a race or class and excuse others because they are “like us.”  We tend to let others denigrate with impunity.  

We are a ghetto country.  By this I mean we tend to separate into distinct groups; whites, blacks, red, yellows, men, women, ins, outs, rich/ poor, straight, non-straight, etc.  We choose sides.  We don’t define ourselves as human but choose our subset of categories and separate ourselves in subtle ways.  We demonstrate intolerance or an attitude of being somehow superior.  We have allowed that in recent years to escalate into a violence that is being exaggerated in the “social media.”  It has shown up in our politics, the last place it should ever appear.  Lately it has even been exacerbated by interference from foreign sources.  

So who can intervene on this mess?  We can in our individual lives but on a national level it is going to take a large uprising and uproar that we are not going to tolerate it anymore.  We won’t tolerate the division, the violence, the belief that some are better than others.  We then need to take action to limit or eliminate the means, motive and opportunity.  The means may mean limiting the “rights” to own any type of weapon imaginable.  The motive may mean stopping the hate.  The opportunity, well, there will always be opportunities.  We need to become members of the world, not masters.  We need to find love in our hearts and dispel the hatred.  We need to become truly human.