Cup Half Full

[tallcal101]

The events in Tucson were a reflection of our society at large these days. In such a dark time,it 's a blessing we have a leader that can so eloquently speak on all our behalf's to a world that is frankly baffled at what our country has come to.In him,we can take pride that a leader can reassure the family of man around the world that we have not yet lost all our marbles.
He spoke of the dreams and aspirations of the youngster that was taken ,his own daughters age for gods sake. He didn't attempt to settle any political score, rather spoke to us as a father and a caring individual who see's the cup as half full. He knows but for the grace of god that girl could have just as easily been his daughter, or your grand daughter or niece or family friend.He asked us to recoil from the talk of retaliation or placing blame; it's all our fault and none of our fault,we're all in this game together.

I for one found his speech to be comforting on a very personal level. For me, it all comes back to the girl, and her dreams.I don't hang around here much ,drive by poster as Pilgrim calls me, but I've sparred and wrestled here in the past with many of you. So it seemed a good place to ask my friends here if we can we can learn anything from this event? Can we echo the Presidents affirmation of all Americans ,even in our dark hours? Can we consider lowering the blistering and sometimes unsettling innuendos (on both sides) that is regularly tossed about as fact?

We know how words can affect a young and crippled mind.We know how easy it was for him to exchange a few $$ for his weapon of choice.We know of his dysfunction and anger at his own life.What we don't know is how many others there are like him out there.Be sure those young ones you love can tell the difference between rhetoric and hate mongering.

Young minds look to us for wisdom; bless a young person with yours.

TC

 

[greg334]

Andy,
I would think that if this was so important of an event, it would have garnered sympathy from the entire nation while spurring proper rhetoric to solve the problems that we are facing - which it did neither.

We are a nation who is concerned with feelings, not actions, who worries about how people feel about themselves but not about how to fix things the right way.

It is no where near a reflection of our society unless you are talking about the political aspect of it and the need to have the president leverage it for his own poll numbers. Pretty d*mn disgusting if you actually think about it - and it wouldn't matter who the president is, Bush, Clinton or Obama.

Instead we have been hearing 24 hour coverage of the event by the media who analyzed every little detail to tell us what we should think. It is the people in the government who said these two people were more important than the others all the while acting like it was a terrorist attack.

To believe that we are in dark times because of the rhetoric and the division in this country seems to be a bit too over the hill and if it is an illustration of these dark times this means to me that a lot of people are in true denial of what is really going on in our country.

The criminal who committed this act was one who seemed to have mental issues, many of his type scream about the the anarchy that is needed to fix the problems while at the same time taking down the government that we have. Many like him will without a doubt find solace in his actions and may even take it a step further. IT is this problem from the left that is easily identifiable to who and what is going on and how they use violence that they justify in the end, not from the right.

Our congress and this great president has ignored the people, they have spit on those who make the country work, telling them they are not worthy because of their station in life while all the time ignoring the needs of this country. People are fed up with this attitude and this is where the non-violent take over happened in our government, not the violent one as many on the left have called for.

Our president with just being there politicized the event, made it cheap like some pin striped suit hanging in a second hand store window. His speech was written for an occasion long before the event took place and his words, adjusted and crafted, tested by throwing out into a study group to see a reaction was all to make it look like he cared, really cared but it wasn't true. He doesn't care about the little boy who was bludgeoned to death by his mom's boyfriend because he was crying or the girl killed in the drive by, he wants the violence as the excuse to "fix" things, to make things right.

What we learned and what we should have learned are two different and separate things.

What we learned is that people are put on pedestals by the mere fact of their jobs, not their actions. What we learned is national tragedies are common place when they are defined by this standard. We redefined what it means to be embarrassed as a nation, this isn't the dark event that people hoped for but what is a very dark event is what has happened in Arlington, that is a monumental national tragedy but ignored, especially by a president who can't comprehend the importance of respecting those who died for the country.

What we should have learned is the division comes from mainly one side, the side with the violent intent - those left leaning people like this criminal and many many of those who came before him. We should have learned that this division comes at a price, the sacrifice that we need to fix it will hurt all of us but it will be a non-violent hurt, not one that people wants but has to happen. We should have learned that we can't come together after years and years of the being told one group is wrong and many are just too dumb to understand things all just because someone decided to kill someone else. We should have learned that we can't be a strong nation until we have strong leadership or at least to continue on after these small events happen without a self-examination of ourselves. We should have learned to see why it happened without first blaming someone else. AND as with 9/11, we should have just moved on, not reflected on it as some national tragedy but as something we are strong enough to absorb it, try not to let it happen again and worry about the safety of those in our lives that we are directly impacted by.

Who's fault is it?

No one's.

The breakdown in our society that is being claimed to have happen, hasn't as many people want us to believe for political or personal gains. It is just the opposite, there is more unity that has happened in the past three years because of political issues than there has ever been in my life time but because the media is complicit in their attack on the opposition to stop this unity, they vilified those who are united by their beliefs and this has caused more friction and division.

We don't have a resurfacing of the violence from those who are left leaning country hating people as we saw in the 60's and 70's. God help us if we were facing that type of violence with the numerous killings because we are too weak, too soft and too politically correct of a nation with no leadership anywhere to be found that we would have a hard time getting through our daily lives.

 

[chefdennis]

A month from now it will be business as usual in all aspects of life here in the USA...if it even takes that long.....

 

[tallcal101]

You may be right Chef, you may very well be right.However,if the face of Christina can be be a simple reminder to turn the sizzle down to a slow burn, she will not have been taken in vein.If the media on both side will just take a step back, even a half step, it could be called progress.It's entertainment people,their all actors with soap and beer to peddle, yet we sometimes think of them as prophets.
They and their boss's must understand their words resonate with the fringe. It's the fringe, both mentally ill and just plain stupid,that seem to become loose cannons when the stuff hits the fan.Then the guns come out, and in the blink of an eye we're back to square one, with yet another body count.
Again, both side share responsibility, equally. There's simply no cause great enough to be slaughtering our children in the streets, even in Tucson, the "wild" west,with their loose gun laws.
It 's crazy.

 

[chefdennis]

No one is going to say that this was not a terrible act, but is the taking any of these lives is any worse then any one of them as an individual...yes the fact that a child was killed is bad enough, but is her life any more important that any of the others? She was just younger and had more life to live....

Everytime something like this happened, there is all kinds of bs that comes out that we need this or that and that maybe we will now get commonsense gun laws and that we need to be a kinder and gentler nation and hopefully this act will change our country.

I took this next paragraph from another article and i will provide the link below...but after reading it, everyone has to agree that what we are hearing now is nothing new and has been said before...o where is the change? Where has any law enacted changed anything? It hasn't and the fact is as I said in my post above...in a month or less we will be right back where we were as a nation , business as normal...and that is not a bad thing...because each of these type of acts are committed by either an individual or a few people that have bonded together in an effort to commit a single act of terror based on personal beliefs, not something that they we lead to do...teir own mental instabilty was responsible, not our action as a nation....

Taken from the article linked below, and that article is also well worth the read:

This was a period that included the Oklahoma City bombings, the Olympic bombings, Columbine (Colorado), the Unabomber, the anthrax mailings, the Virginia Tech shootings, the Capitol Police attack, the Arizona train derailment, Paducah (Kentucky), the Amish killing rampage, Pearl (Mississippi), Fort Hood, the Arkansas military recruiter, Springfield (Oregon), the abortionist killed in Wichita, the abortionist killed in Buffalo, the Haley-Bopp Comet cult, the fire at Freddie's, the Crown Heights riots, the D.C. sniper, the IRS kamikaze plane, etc. The list goes on and on.

In each of those acts, we were told that we needed to change what was being said and by who and that we needed more gun laws and that we as a nation needed to change....just as we were with this Tucson shooting...yet in each case, we were back to normal everyday life within a short while, and there was another case...we can't control what "individuals" do with mass changes in laws and how society speaks or does things....individuals will do as they will do no matter what laws are written or who says what....

This is also from the same article linked below:

The pro-Constitution, pro-liberty voices on the air do not promote upheaval. They promote a vision of liberty to pursue dreams. Healthy dreams, my friends, not twisted fantasies; ballots, not bullets.

You can read these quotes in their original context and the complete article they were taken from at this link:
The American Spectator : Quite the Opposite