Sunday, July 17, 2016

Just another morning in America

Horrific news out of Baton Rouge this morning: 3 police officers are dead and more are in critical condition after being shot in the street by an unknown gunman.

Gregg and I just heard about this latest tragedy over our breakfast toast and coffee. What awful news to wake up to.

Oddly enough, we were watching Sky News from the U.K. when the story broke, and when we went online for more info, the U.S. news sites hadn't posted anything about it yet.

Gun violence and mass shootings are an every day occurrence here, but racial tensions are reaching a boiling point and making everything so much worse. Violence is never the answer to injustice. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as the old saying goes.

Just once, I wish we could go a whole week without news of more bloodshed and hate here in America. Where will all this end? I don't want to live in this kind of place where violence and racism and hate are every day news and innocent people shot dead isn't even surprising anymore. What has happened to us?



9 comments:

  1. It's not just America Jennifer. The badness has leaked out everywhere. I was just saying to my son on the telephone - wouldn't it be nice to have just one quiet news week with no killings or other atrocities. I am getting weary of all the horror.

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  2. If we didn't have access to news reports I guess we wouldn't know about all the horrors of the world. Sometimes I think I just don't want to know because there's nothing I can do about it. So much underlying tension, it's scary.

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  3. Yes, there is far too much news this Summer. May we live in less interesting times.

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  4. Sometimes police get shot in this country when the go to the door of the wrong people to investigate a call out. We sent two female cops to one of these call outs and they both got shot dead as they stood at the door.

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    1. This latest shooting and the one last week in Dallas were sniper type situations picking off police officers who were out in public in groups. The 5 killed in Dallas were there keeping everyone safe at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. They were just doing their jobs. I know there have been several killings of young black men by police in the news, and I understand the outrage over that, but killing innocent police officers over the actions of a (very) few is horrifying and isn't helping anything.

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  5. "Just once, I wish we could go a whole week without news of more bloodshed and hate here in America. Where will all this end? I don't want to live in this kind of place where violence and racism and hate are every day news and innocent people shot dead isn't even surprising anymore. What has happened to us?"

    I feel the same way Jennifer. It sickens me. I think these issues have existed for decades, but social media and easy access to guns exacerbate the problem. There aren't enough people who can take a step back and figure out a solution, everyone is too busy pointing fingers and blaming one side or the other. I'm not usually one of those "blame the media" types, but the 24/7 coverage doesn't help. It only builds more division and outrage.

    I can't even watch the news anymore. It's pretty much: body count, sports scores, weather, updated body count. Sigh. Depressing.

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  6. It's not even headline news in the on-line paper I read; which just goes to show how used to such events we've all become.

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  7. Your blog is the first time I come across this news from Baton Rouge, Jennifer. I've been in my happy escapist bubble all weekend, with O.K. visiting, enjoying a family meal to celebrate my parents' 51st wedding anniversary, and going dancing with RJ on Sunday night.
    My weekly paper gives me news filtered by time (just once a week, of course with a delay of a few days to one week) and analysis. Sometimes, that is really very helpful. The latest issue has the current racial tensions in the US on the front page, but I have not yet started on reading it. It is difficult reading material sometimes, hard to digest, but a lot better for being able to process such horrible happenings than being flooded by "live" images of terror 24/7.

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  8. The right to bear arms
    An ok right in the 1700s

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