Dear America, Get Your Shit Together

I live in a veritable la la land. I'm able to amble through my days without even a second thought as to what's going on in the news, preferring instead to lose myself in various types of fantasy, science fiction, and even just plain science. It's a pretty awesome life, and I really enjoy it. It keeps a certain level of pleasantness about everything, since all the world news does is put me in a fowl-ass mood.

But occasionally I get knocked back to reality, like when my friend tells me that there was a shooting near her small town in Oregon. Occasionally I have to face the fact that there's a whole other world that exists outside of my happy little bubble, and I get angry.

I get angry especially when I find news headlines that read "Reynolds High School shooting in Oregon is the 74th Gun Incident on U.S. school campuses since Newtown."

Are you fucking kidding me?

It's been roughly 77 weeks since Sandy Hook Elementary School was shot up by a fucking sociopath, which means that we, America, are averaging close to one school shooting a week. And that's just gun related violence in a building which made national news. That number, I'm sure, is actually scarily higher if you include after school shootings, close-but-not-on campus shootings, or child on child shootings.

And I used to think that it really was a problem of gun control; that if we could just curtail the rate and ease of how people buy guns then somehow everything would magically be fixed. But after living in a god damn shitshow of a country, where I could buy a fully automatic weapon and no one would even bat an eye, I don't think that's it. I don't think gun control alone is going to solve this problem, because it's a psychological problem.

Calling it a psychological problem seems strange to me, since it reminds me of all those theories about video games ruining youth, violent movies corrupting children, and all the other bogus ideas that sprang up following the Columbine shooting. And let me be perfectly clear - coming from a girl who saw Predator at age three, and has grown up playing games where the whole basis is to shoot and kill other things - that is not what I'm saying is the cause of this.

Americans suffer from a bad case of Americanitis, a disease where someone feels entitled to be able to do whatever the hell they want to whomever the hell they want because they've got Freedom, and Freedom means no boundaries. Shootings on the street, in alley ways, at movie theaters, in parks - whatever. Those I expect from a place that thinks everyone should have a gun on them at all times to protect themselves from "the bad guys," and given our current gun laws I'm not surprised when I read about them.

But in schools? Really? I mean, it's got to be the definition of irony when suburban families feel terrified sending their kids to their local public school when they specifically moved out of a dodgey gang-ridden ghetto in order to avoid school related violence which is so common in those neighborhoods.

Yet it begs the question - where, then, is safe?

Our homes aren't. Nor are our entertainment centers, or shopping malls. In the woods you might be shot for trespassing accidentally, or being mistaken as a deer during hunting season. They're all public spaces, where it really is the proverbial mixing pot of people that America always touts it is. Elderly, middle age, mothers, fathers, kids, bachelors - everyone shares these public places with everyone else.

Schools were supposed to be safe. They're filled with children, and the few adults who work in them only want to help expand the kids minds and make them rethink a few things they once considered universal and true. Schools are where kids escape bad home lives, where they have a support group of friends, where they can immerse themselves in good and interesting books.

Now our schools seem to be on some perverse Russian Roulette wheel of where the next shooting will be. It's getting to the point where it's not a question of "if" or "when," but "where," and as someone who has a buttload of friends in various educational institutions across the country, as well as a father who is a professor at a university, that's a horrifying and chilling thought.

I know a lot of people expressed concerns for my safety when I told them I was coming to Georgia, and they're not necessarily unfounded; Russia is right there, and they're unpredictable and seemingly hellbent on bringing back the USSR 2.0; Chechnya is also unhappy and recently had violent skirmishes; Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria are a proverbial hop skip and a jump away. As a female, most of my basic rights are often times ignored or disregarded. As a foreigner, I'm automatically lumped in with the likes of Donald Trump and people try to squeeze me for every penny I have. I've almost gotten eaten by gigantic dogs, died in fiery car crashes where not even my teeth would remain for identification purposes, been in cars where the driver is so drunk he's having trouble standing yet he's somehow able to navigate down a hillside backroad.

I've almost died a lot of times here, but I've never felt unsafe in the sense that bodily harm would be caused to my person by another human being maliciously.

Part of that is that I actively avoid things I would find sketchy in America, like drunk men smoking in a dark alleyway. I don't mess with them. I go the long way around if I have to, but I don't put myself in any situation where something shitty could happen. And while I've always been of the preemptive mentality like that, I still felt like I could die from a lunatic with a gun at any given moment when I was living in Los Angeles and Austin. That feeling just isn't even present here. And quite frankly, I'm not sure why.

Yes, it could just be me being naive and thinking that Georgia is some magical wonderful place where nothing bad happens, but I know that's not fucking true. This is a country where kids in schools are regularly beating the shit out of each other, where kids rip small animals apart without a second thought or even a reason, where animal and domestic abuse just isn't talked about even though they're both wildly rampant, where bullying is a built in part of daily life.

And even with all of that. Even with the knowledge that I am, ostensibly, surrounded by sociopaths, I feel safer here than I do in America. Deep down, I think it's a cultural difference, where the same patriarchal shit that infuriates me constantly also provides a safety net for kids and women. Plenty of people here are shot - the park in my town had a shooting two months ago, and there are so many fights in it at night that the police refuse to answer calls to break them up because they've been attacked and beaten one too many times - but they're limited to men. Men attack other men. They leave kids out of it. They leave women out of it. Kids don't viciously attack each other, because they're kids, and you don't do that until you're grown. Call it weird, but it's a certain type of traditional honor code that America lacks.

Who knows. I'm probably way off base about all of this. My mind is ridiculously scattered, I'm so irritated from reading about this.

All I know is that America needs to shape the fuck up. This isn't a simple problem of gun control - it goes deeper. It's a class problem, and a race problem, and a bullying problem, and a victimization problem. It's people lashing out, being unhappy, being scared, being tired, feeling like there's no way out. It's thirty thousand problems all messily entwined with each other, and it is absolutely horrifying to think that I'm coming back to a place where violence on little kids by the public - not the military or government - is so common and has been so completely unaddressed for so long.

Way to be a "developed" country, America.

You're lucky you have Taco Bell, IPAs, and an adorable dog, otherwise I would not be on my way back.