One of two things is happening in this picture. Either the men with their hands over their heads are reacting in horror to what is happening at the Navy Ship Yard, or they have to show their hands as they are being evacuated because they are considered suspects until they can be evacuated. Either way it is a stunning and sad photo.
A trauma Dr. in Washington D.C. commented on the shooting at the Navy Yard by saying that there is “an evil in our society”. My first reaction was “no duh”, alert the media, have you heard about the Lindbergh baby? There are those of us who have tried to address the “evil” in society for years and no one listens. Life has been cheapened and faith denigrated. When open debate and honest disagreement is looked upon as treason we have a problem with evil. While the people were being evacuated from the shooting scene the President of the United States was making a political speech in which he attacked Republicans and made the startling statement that “some of them are decent”. I was wondering what would happen if a President of a different party had said of Democrats that “some of them are sane” during a national tragedy?
My own feeling is that part of the “evil” is that we have made political parties our religion in many ways and the results are a public that has lost it’s national and collective soul. If all good things come from government and the government does not deliver there are going to be problems and it is going to get worse.
The media are the acolytes of this religion and so information which used to be power is really the means of either assuaging anger when the almighty government doesn’t deliver, or focusing the wrath of an angry public on those that are believed to be the problem, even if some of them are “decent”.
The process of “politicization I believe is in itself “evil”. We will think about this more, but before we do there is this from Nairobi where we have sent some of our Mary Okeyo travelers and I am told many of them went shopping at a high end Mall that was attacked to day. Many thought that it was a robbery but here are two pieces of news from the BBC.
Scene outside the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi