T-M-I from T-I-M

12 Random Thoughts on the Uvalde Murders

12 random thoughts on the Uvalde shooting:

 

1. My daughter the student now the teacher:

 

After 18 years worrying about whether my daughter would be killed in a school I will now worry another 20+ years about my daughter dying and being trained to kill someone to protect her students as a teacher.

 

To deny there aren’t likely adverse second and third order consequences to teachers having guns is myopic at VERY best.

 

There are American citizens who believe that we should turn teachers into part time law enforcement officials after a group of FULLY trained officers made MASSIVE errors.

 

Arming and training my daughter to protect her kids as a viable solution is INSANE.

 

And btw, how do you adjust their already ridiculously low salaries for this?

 

2. The surviving children:

 

I have not been able to get out of my mind and heart every minute when those children were in that room with that murderer.

 

I think the children that survived have a traumatic experience that will live devastatingly in their bodies for the rest of their lives.

 

If we really believe in supporting life, every one of those children that survived and parents of whose children were murdered should have access to free HIGH QUALITY mental health support for the remainder of their lives, paid by taxpayers (including me) or other organizations.

 

3. Statistical anomaly:

 

An awful numerical co-incidence: 19 children died while 19 law enforcement personnel waited to act.

 

4. Undeniable facts:

 

It’s undeniable that the murderer bought gun(s) legally and this shooting happened. Many gun murders and suicides of all kinds are done by people who buy guns legally. It’s a fact.

 

To deny that is a part of the issue is myopic.

 

It’s undeniable that some breakdown in the way these murderers are parented/brought up and how they were treated socially plays a role in what they do.

 

To deny that is a part of the issue is myopic.

 

It’s not an “or” it’s an “and”, a flawed legal gun buying system and damaged parental/guidance system both contribute to lost young and older adults.

 

5. The Killers:

 

Adults of every age have to be held accountable regardless of legality buying the gun, social/parental limitations. They MUST be punished.

 

Other than stopping them from killing more innocent people, I’m frustrated when the killer dies.

 

I want to understand them better to stop it in the future and a dark part of me believes it’s more of a punishment for them to live with this rather than die because of it.

 

The part of me that loves redemption stories is really, really challenged to desire redemption for the murderer of innocent children by adults or near adults with guns.

 

6. Lawsuits:

 

I’m in favor of pursuing lawsuits against (YES I get that these are VERY hard to do or even justify):

 

Gun companies that sell high-capacity weapons without increased scrutiny at a minimum.

Parents of people who use guns to kill children (like the Oxford parents were)

Individuals who post threatening content online. (This is starting to happen which I think is worthy although understandably a very difficult needle to thread.)

 

7. Gun Owners:

 

It’s interesting to me how many NRA members actually support thorough screenings that go beyond the current laws.

 

The people who think that our citizenry could POSSIBLY defend itself against our government’s military with a gigantic cache of AR-15’s and more are beyond delusional.

 

Bombs and tanks beat rifles every single time. The argument that this protects us from the tyranny of the government is absurd.

 

8. Politicians Politicize:

 

95% of politicians politicize EVERYTHING. That’s what politicians do, it’s their way to stay in power.

 

Politicians even politicize by accusing other of politicizing!

 

It’s harsh to say it but children being killed is a political opportunity in that the event is a way to enact change. It’s no different than when an illegal immigrant does something awful and that’s politicized.

 

My very cynical side wonders if some politicians wish this happened closer to the election.

 

My even more cynical side wonders if those politicians are relatively comforted knowing that it will likely happen again closer to it.

 

9. Would I?:

 

If given the opportunity to kill this murderer and it was the only option given to stop him if I knew he was on the way to do what he did, I would have a very difficult time saying no.

 

10. Terrorist?:

 

I have a hard time calling this murderer a terrorist. I don’t understand how to frame the Uvalde killing as politically motivated although it did take innocent lives. (those two conditions are the definition of terrorism)

 

I think the Pittsburgh murderer was a terrorist.

 

11. Contextualizing Gun Violence:

 

Gun violence in general is a gruesome issue in our country but:

It’s hard to compare gun violence by gangs against each other (that don’t take innocent lives) to this reasonably.

 

Innocent people killed in inner city gun violence when they are bystanders to gang violence is not the same either.

 

The innocent people in these inner-city murders are NOT the target. In Uvalde the innocents WERE the target.

 

It doesn’t mean these killings aren’t equally important (and the innocent children in particular killed are a tragedy) but to call them the same is not accurate.

 

Even that sentence is a little dark.

 

Suicide by gun can’t be compared to the Uvalde killings either. Having personal experience with this I can assure you it is simply not the same.

 

All four categories (the three above and the original issue) are issues that I’d hope we’d address and have some of the same approaches on legality of gun purchase and family/system upbringing as well as mental health.

 

Economic disparity is a notable issue for the inner-city killings that most people honestly don’t care or act like we care about if we’re being honest.

 

12. Random final thoughts:

 

I don’t know what it will take to wake us up collectively in a way that we do SOMETHING different.

 

While it’s not a white male thing exclusively, it’s astounding how often the worst of the worst events (Parkland, Columbine, Vegas, etc.) are perpetrated by white males and this one wasn’t.

 

This event blew a substantial hole in the let’s have good guys with guns there to handle it.

 

I actually hate that every once in a while I have to share “random” thoughts on topics like this but I do anyway.

 

Tom Hanks & Dave Eggers @ SF City Arts

Reflections on Tom Hanks interviewed by Dave Eggers last night (who was an incredible interviewer, weird Tom Hanks pic in that link btw) in no particular order:

Tom Hanks had a mix and match upbringing in the Bay Area that included his “original parents” as he said getting divorced.  He said he was kind of big deal because his parents got divorced at a time when only people named Zsa Zsa got divorced.

At some point during his youth, he realized that acting was not just something to goof off and have fun with but something to be studied.  He talked about a class where they read a play, went to see it and wrote a paper on it and that was part of the transformation.

He said he thought one movie could be done over and over:  That Thing You Do!  He also talked about the inspiration being a song called Little Honda by the Hondells and how they got sick of singing that hit song.  He kind of wanted the movie viewers to get tired of the song “That Thing You Do” in the movie. 

My truth is I wish he would have played the full song every time because the camera work each time they did it and the setting of the story was different each time.  I also binge listened to that song with my daughter when she was like 10 and we loved it.

He talked about how he writes pages and pages of backstory for characters when he does movie that go beyond the script.  I didn’t even know actors did that.  The idea is to create a past story for the context of the current character’s motivation.

This is probably really basic for most, but I didn’t know that each scene in a movie has a purpose:  to move the story forward.  He talked about how one director told him they need to find the “Red Dot” in the scene.  (I couldn’t help but think of the Seinfeld Sweater episode or a few of my married Hindu friends)

He has a book of short stories and so many of them are founded either in history or in the lived experience of both discovering our tiny part of the universe and the related gigantic reality of our lives in that context.  I really appreciated how he shared that he doesn’t feel drawn to the classic protagonist/hero narrative. 

He told the story about how his Father In Law came to America which was a compelling 2 hour chat.  When he mentioned how incredible the story was to his wife, his wife said basically I’ve never heard the story, what was it?  It’s funny how we have people in our lives where there is tons of back story that we may not even be aware of.

He did a great physical imitation of writers who are confused and uncertain.  About that time, he also touched on how a writer thinks a story will go one way but upon writing it, the story follows tributaries to the river down all kinds of other paths.

This is not an exact quote, but he sort of said “Hubris and celebrity are not qualifiers for leadership” or something like that as he reflected on politics.  Not long after that he responded that he would not run for President.  He said that the level of commitment and ideological certainty at a minimum don’t fit.

One of the best stories was when he shared about the scene in John Adams where Adams was the lawyer for the British Soldiers who shot into the mob.  It was a substantial reframe of a historical event for him.  It is a totally compelling scene from a series I’ve watched twice from beginning to end.

He brought up how when he watched movies he assumed everything was totally accurate.  (he told a really funny side story about how he talks to people he portrays in movies saying he’ll do things they’ve never done, go places they’ve never been and his single desire is to play them truthfully!)  He feels a responsibility to be as close to accurate as possible because he understands kids sometimes watch it.

One funny quote:  “Politics is Hollywood for ugly people”

The quality he thinks is most important in work of almost any kind and I’m guessing life is perseverance.  He talked about when the phone is not ringing with opportunities you have to keep fighting for your dream.  I know it seems like a throwaway quote, but for some reason it felt real for him.  He seems like a really hard worker.

He talked about the abuses of power in the industry and not surprisingly strongly called it out as wrong.  He also asked the women in the audience to basically clap if they’ve been harassed or assaulted in the work place and it seemed like 80-90% of the women clapped.

Finally, three reflections on how he talked. 

First, I’ve seen other actors/actresses talk and they tend to talk about acting at a level that is just not relatable.  He takes on the same topics but does it understandably.  It made it totally engaging.

Second, dude swears like a sailor at times.  He dropped f-bombs like he was auditioning for a Scorsese mob flick.

Third, he’s funny, like really funny.  I don’t know why but I was surprised he was that funny.

Vietnam Documentary by Burns & Novick Cuts Deeply

I finished Ken Burns & Lynn Novick’s documentary on Vietnam and it was absolutely gripping.  I’m publishing a post that maybe 2 or 3 people will read and maybe none will read all the way through. 

When something hits me like this, I guess I want to put something out in public just to know I did.  If you have any desire to watch it, please do and consider not reading this because it gives a lot of it away.

I was stunned by how little I knew about the war that my Uncle served in.  I remember asking him 15 years ago why we went, he said “If we didn’t who would have?”.  I would have a different perspective today on his response and WAY more compassion. 

It’s ironic that in 2001 I visited Vietnam, where I clearly stood out.  And yet, every single person I met was kind, curious and generous.  It’s memorable in that the people are nicer than maybe any other foreign country I’ve ever visited personally (Australia is a close second). It's hard to understand hearts that big given what happened.

For me the most powerful and insightful interviews were with John Musgrave.  His riveting points which willingly let the viewer into completely what he felt about it all was beyond stunning (and he walked me through his own changing perception too). 

That being said, the interviews with Vincent Okamoto, Bao Ninh, Roger Harris and Nguyen Ngoc were incredible too.  There’s something uncommon about people who can hold both the clarity of duty and the bloody pool of pain of the war simultaneously in a discussion.

Understanding that even if Burns’ desire was to have a balanced view, it’s hard to believe that some endorsed narrative wasn’t unconsciously or consciously there, here are a few reflections:

• I have a completely new perspective of the men and women who served for the US in Vietnam. At one point we had a stunning 500,000+ troops there (about 20% were actively fighting according to the doc).  The Vietnamese more or less did not want them there.  The majority of the troops did not speak the language. 
  
  Enemies were woven into those who weren’t in the population.  How do you distinguish which is which?  Many of these kids (and they were kids) were 18-20 years old.  They were still developing their moral compasses. 
  
• I learned two unforgettable lessons that I never considered about fighting a war.
  
  First, that life or death fighting can be a high. According to him (I can’t remember which one said it), the situation more or less requires your absolute and total attention.  There’s nothing else on your mind.  Before and after you face the depression and agony of it, during it that’s gone.  It sounds exactly like a drug.
  
  Second, was from Mr. Okamoto who talked about when he was shot and he thought for sure he would die.  At that point, he said, nothing else really matters other than inflicting as much damage on the enemy trying to finish the job as possible.  He talked about the incredible freedom of that feeling.
  
• I cried hardest in the last episode where they documented the Vietnam war memorial and how it was created. There’s a moment where one veteran who initially hated it ultimately went to visit it because his roommate, who was killed, was being honored and he had to go.  His transformation about his perspective on it was deeply moving.
  
  Related to that Nancy Bieberman’s apology of how she protested the war in that same episode was heart wrenching.  It’s fascinating to see the perspective changes documented.
  
• I don’t believe that war crimes were happening as often and uniformly widespread as I thought before I watched it. I do believe that a huge percentage of those that fought witnessed some version of war crime during that time.   
  
  I know now that there was a massacre at My Lai where between 350-500 people died including many women and children.  I learned that had Hugh Thompson, Jr and his crew hadn’t landed it would have gotten worse.  He got in between the soldiers and the civilians and warned the soldiers that if they kept shooting civilians he’d start shooting them.
  
• Almost every person interviewed (on both sides) had friends who were killed virtually right next to them. I don’t know how an 18-25 year old (barely a year and half older than my 16 year old daughter) can see this for one year or two and ever really leave it behind.
  
  The two things they said and in some ways repeated is you NEVER leave your wounded and you ALWAYS go back for the dead.  I will never see Vietnam Veterans in the same light.
  
• One chilling part was when Mr. Musgrave said that he killed “one human being” and suffered from the guilt and remorse of that. It was his first kill.  From that point forward he spoke about how he thought of killing as wasting the enemy by calling them the widely used slurs for Vietnamese people.  It felt like that was how he made sense of it.
  
  Honestly, I know people today who can’t tell the difference between a Korean, Japanese and Thai person (who each have features that are nearly unmistakably different).  So I wouldn’t be surprised if at some level many of the population looked the same to them.  I wonder if that changed their perspective about killing although I don’t recall that exactly being said in the documentary.
  
• The inclusion of many North Vietnamese in the documentary was brilliant. It humanized the enemy and on many occasions helped me understand why they fought as they fought.  One particular interview about how a soldier would fight, walk 100’s of kilometers home then not long after go back to fight.
  
  While our 18 year olds looked fresh faced, the pictures of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers were stunningly young.  Their relentlessness and outmaneuvering in the face of the bombing devastation was incredible.
  
  It was revealing when one of them talked about how the US going after their wounded was an opportunity for them to kill more soldiers.
  
  At one point a highly placed officer in the US army said that he wished he had 200 of them to fight for him.
  
• It was illuminating to learn that before Vietnam we widely believed that our government didn’t lie. Seeing how presidents Kennedy, Johnson & Nixon in their own ways misled us about the war was chilling. 
  
  The documentary does a terrific job of showing just how much the governments on all sides were lying.  They all had vested interests in making sure it looked like their cause was just and they were in fact winning.  
  
• Richard Nixon’s motivation was almost singularly to get elected and to control the narrative. While the other presidents tried to hide facts, based on the evidence presented (again which is incomplete but felt representative) Nixon was an outright liar.  His lying about the bombing in Cambodia and his role in the South Vietnamese backing out of peace talks right before the 1968 election were particularly egregious.
  
  His conversations with Kissinger where he all but admitted that he knew the war wasn’t winnable but he wanted to time the outcome to give him the best chance of being elected were a heartwrenching look into politics.  I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if many of our current politicians use some form of this as an approach.
  
• Nixon won in 1968 with 43% of the vote and George Wallace (a known segregation champion) won 13% of the vote….of the DEMOCRATS! Nixon then destroyed his competition in the ’72 election.  Like him or not, he was a brilliant, dirty politician.  His silent majority speech was frighteningly savvy.
  
• Over a MILLION Vietnamese died in that war (estimates vary, this is the low end). Our bombings absolutely decimated the country and took a LOT of innocent lives.
  
• I finally learned what the Tet Offensive was. I literally didn’t know what happened, now I do.
  
• There was a wide group of people who ultimately opposed the war. I have a feeling that most of them peacefully protested the war.  The documentary seems to show that they mostly weren’t so peaceful. 
  
  I was astonished at the HUGE numbers of people who protested.  It reminds me that when there is a clear, simple, common cause, people can get behind it.
  
• I learned there was a group called the Weathermen who more or less looked to create conflict. They were widely unwelcome to the movement because it gave the pro-war side something to point to as it being a problem and detracted from the effort.  Makes me see Antifa as something that while it’s understandable it may not ultimately be productive.
  
• I learned that like today there were plenty of people who felt differently about the same issue. They supported war and importantly supported our troops there and home.  Trying to bridge the two groups is virtually impossible.
  
• There is a difference between watching a movie and watching a thorough documentary. Admittedly, much of my perspective on the war came from movies like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Deer Hunter and many more.  For me there is a distinct difference between hearing it from people who actually went through it rather than people playing characters that may have gone through it or some combination of those that did. 
  
  For example, as brutal as the movie was, the scenes from the POW’s in Deer Hunter didn’t match the actual stories from POW’s.  There’s almost a distance I can create between a movie and an experience.
  
  It also dawns on me that if hearing the experience from someone who went through affects me differently (and perhaps more disturbingly) than a movie then certainly actually going through it would be WAY more damaging.  I know that sounds basic, but it’s a realization that I had about the hell of war.
  
  And on a side note, Donald Trump’s comment about John McCain as  POW not being a winner was reprehensible.  I can’t honestly imagine how that must have felt for the hundreds of men who endured torture and unspeakable treatment as POW’s.
  
• The last episode which documents how we pulled out of Vietnam was beyond difficult to watch. The hopeless families desperate to get out as the North Vietnamese army invaded was terrible in the context of our broken promise to help them came to life, a promise that we probably should never even have made.
  
• I’ve come to a point that I think people who are making decisions on war should only be people who really understand war. And I think the only ones who REALLY understand war are those that have been in it.  It chills me to think that there are people making real decisions about war who don’t know the horror it involves.
  

More than anything else I felt tremendous compassion for the people fighting on both sides of the war, it was horrific. 

I bristle at times when people say learn your history or your doomed to repeat it.  I feel like it’s more of sentence to keep doing the same things.  Like there’s not enough room to clearly see the present moment.  This documentary certainly squarely challenged my position.

I’m irreversibly changed forever having watched it in ways that I’m not even aware of yet.

I'm officially sick of hearing about 9/11

Another 9/11 another weekend of tributes, rehashing, analysis and hyperbole and I'm officially sick of hearing about it.  What good does it do for us to rehash...again....this terrible tragedy?

Granted, my blog is a rehash of this event, but grant me that incongruence for a few moments.

What does rehashing it do?  Makes almost all of us sad.  Makes lots of us mad.  Makes some of us vengeful.  It brings very little understanding.

Does it bring comfort to the loved ones to see MSNBC replaying about 4 hours of that day's events like it's actually happening again, etc.?  Doubt it.  If it does on a large scale I would LOVE to hear from the families.

It seems to be a great way to continue to justify us to continue to spend billions on the war and millions on otherwise unemployable people who make my 8 year old daughter take her shoes off for our high risk SF to LA flight.

Can we possibly move on?

Federal Gov't's Changes in Focus are Debilitating

As I see some of the things that Barack Obama is doing they are a noticeable shift from the policies of the last 8 years.  I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with the shift, it's just confusing.

When we have an underlying direction for a country it is rather disconcerting to shift almost 180 degrees on it.  I am the first to say that I don't know a lot about government operations, but it seems simple to assume that shifting focus so quickly and radically would significantly impact any foundation that the country is building on.

What happens if after 4 years the country decides that it wants to go Republican again?  Would that in essence shift things around again for us?

I'm suggesting that I've never really heard of a well established, well run organization (say GE for example) shifting it's focus every 4 or sometimes 8 years so fundamentally.  I know they are a flexible organization but there while the business focus may change, the leadership approach and organizational foundation doesn't.

The US is successful for sure.  But I feel like we could be doing a lot more than we could ever dream if we weren't shifting every 4 to 8 years.

Why the human being is screwed long term unless.....

I was thinking long and hard about the survival of our humanity.  And it occurred to me that in order to survive, I argue that we should forget about trying to change to many adults.  Focus on building a new mindset in children and let that be the governance.

They do have their disputes (not all that often unless bro/sis).  Ask a group of kids to make up a game with a ball, any game, they'll be playing 2 hours before the adults have come up with the win win situation in Chapter IV of the bargaining.

There's one big hole in the theory.  Who teaches them?  Who is free of the racism the violence the crime? It would of course also be important that the economic system should sustain.

Fact is, I bet they could do it a whole lot quicker and we'd be happier.

Hey Gavin, SF needs your help

I've noticed over the last several weeks that Gavin Newsom is putting in quite a bit of time on the CA campaign trail in an effort to explore running for governor.  It was clear that being our mayor was a stepping stone to something else.

But, I wonder if he's aware at how little he's done as a mayor.  Oh yeah, he was a "renegade" for same sex marriage, what a risky ploy as mayor of SF.  The man who was such a "leader" with care not cash has lead to....nothing.  Our streets are covered more than ever with homeless people.

Oh and the 49ers are almost certain to leave.

He's spent quite a bit of time away from the controls of a ship that is at a minimum far from right.  It feels like we've got the liberal version of George W. Bush in control.  Things are going down the toilet? 

No prob, I'll take action traveling up and down CA trying to pimp myself to be guv.

Ironically, he's running against Jerry Brown, who I would have happily traded for Gavin Newsom as our mayor in the past.

In some ways I hope he does succeed in become Governor...of Hawaii.

Opposing gay marriage is wrong

I've thought for a while that I'm troubled to a certain extent by the ludicrous.  I loved it when MA voted to keep an initiative to ban gay marriage off the ballot.  I also realized that in some key ways gay marriages are just like straight ones.

But last week I went to a dear friend's marriage ceremony at City Hall in SF.  It was quite beautiful to see him marry his long time partner.  There were a group of about 25 of us tightly and lovingly gathered around the happy couple for their nuptials.

Bottom line:  When I see how happy it makes them and how natural that love feels, I'm never more certain about the fact that gay marriage should be legal.

Make no mistake about it (I sound like GW Bush) opposing gay marriage is flat out wrong (I sound nothing like GW Bush).

The state does and will continue to do things the church disagrees with (see capital punishment and war).  I'm certain that adding gay marriage to the list will do FAR more good than the destruction that either capital punishment or war have done to our society.

Fear...what a powerful and divisive force in our world.

I don't really know what (if any) the tipping point will be to allow gay marriages everywhere, but I'm really proud to live in a city that isn't waiting for it.

Mr. Wright, my fame-o-clock shows you at 14 min 59 sec

I read today that Barack Obama resigned his church membership from his longstanding church finally separating himself from Jeremiah Wright.  I've always been a bit confused why Mr. Wright feels so free to comment on matters of the state, given that he's church.

Anyway, I wonder what it feels like.  Mr. Wright has been talked about quite a bit and even gotten a book deal out of all of this.  But guess what?  I bet in about 6 months nobody will remember him. 

I'm fairly certain he knows this.  And yes, more or less nobody knew about him before this so he'll be back to where he was.  But once you get the taste, it's hard not to want it again.

Alas, the clock is soon to strike 15 minutes on Mr. Wright and we'll all move on, I wonder how he will.

President Bush pardoning some turkeys

I will carefully avoid the easiest of low brow joke temptations about that opening line.  That being said, this morning as I was merrily sweating my tail off walking up steps but somehow staying in the exact same place I was watching CNN and the President's big moment where he pardoned two Thanksgiving turkeys.

Now, I know (or at least I believe) that this type of thing is likely a long standing tradition of fun at the White House.  President Bush seemed to genuinely enjoy it (as did the group of small children who were in the first few rows looking on).

But seriously, if every second is an opportunity cost at some level isn't that a really expensive and sort of worthless use of our Commander In Chief's time?  Could he maybe have delegated that to someone?

I'm not sure if I would have wanted Dick Cheney to be out there doing it.  Who knows he may have run to his car, grabbed his shotgun and shot a lawyer or a member of the press corp to relive some fond memories.

I also think it's all just part of the grand conspiracy to keep our eyes off of the REAL problem that we just are not putting sufficient funds into research to enable turkeys to fly.