I can’t get this image out of my head. A young survivor of the latest mass shooting in the US, clinging to a parent, with a Valentine’s Day balloon clutched in the hand. And yet another image. Of screaming children raising their hands in the air as a SWAT team breaks into an auditorium. And one pair of hands shaking like a leaf in abject terror. And then young survivors walking past dead bodies of friends they had come to school with just that morning. That mother who kept burying her face in the shoulder of her son as he talked to a reporter. She kept gasping, “Oh, thank God. Thank God!” And that mother who faced the camera and screamed her pain, her rage, the name of her 14-year-old daughter who did not make it. “I would have taken the bullets for you. I am sorry, I wasn’t there, ” she cried. And that footage of young students being led out of school by cops through corridors one of which bore a forlorn Gandhi quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” The Geography teacher who died after pulling a few pupils out of the line of fire. The burly football coach who died shielding three young girls from the shooter. The desperate texts of children to their parents, “I love you mom..I am so scared.”
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But by the reaction of those in power, all of this is still not about guns. Guns that outnumber people in America. It is still a “mental health” issue. Maybe the definition of mental health needs to be expanded to include the leaders who allow gun lobbies like the NRA (National Rifle Association) to fund election campaigns and obstruct any law against the easy acquisition of deadly weapons over the counter.
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Author and activist Mary Morgan, also the wife of the late Dr Benjamin Spock, sent me this letter by her co-author Dr Robert Needleman, which must be shared today.
“In a sane country, the murder of children would provoke outrage and decisive action. Instead, I heard Florida officials promising to pay for funerals, and to bolster mental health. What I felt was not outrage, but the strong desire to look away, fuelled by the heart-freezing conviction that the parade of dead young people would continue, as it has now for years. As a doctor who treats children with behavioral problems, I know the importance of mental health care. I also know that the first step toward mental health is often a change in physical surroundings. For those addicted to nicotine, it means getting rid of the packs of cigarettes lying around the house; for victims of domestic violence, it means moving to safety. For our national disease of gun violence, the first step toward health is restricting access to the weapons which make it easy for sick people to kill in mass. So, even though I am personally feeling despair, I’m going to find an elected official with a high NRA rating, and send money to the campaign of his or her strongest challenger. The antidote to despair is action. I intend to take it.”
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And this issue of precious lives lost over opportunistic, profit-based politics is not contained within America. Because what America exports to the rest of the world are premeditated wars, both big and small. And the cinematic glorification of the archetypal gun toting lone American wolf as a hero. For decades, in film after film after film, we have seen the American prototype of heroism. White skin. Unresolved anger issues. A misplaced sense of self mixed with toxic, masculine posturing. And it has even elected a personification of all of this in power. It now routinely beams to us the unintelligent machismo of a President who refers to nuclear weapons like a spoilt kid with a big stash of toys. A President who has normalised hate so much that it can now be heard and seen in subways, cafes and super markets and in the form of hate crimes in white supremacist rallies. Not to forget the cops who are routinely let off after shooting unarmed black citizens to death.
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Also the nexus between the marketeers of weapons of war and governments is a global malaise because violence be it in real life or in cinema, makes money. It wins elections. It is profitable for those who sell and those who buy. Please check just how many scams in India alone have unspooled over arms deals (Bofors), fighter aircrafts ( Rafale and counting), even coffins ( After the Kargil war in 1999 , there were allegations of corruption in the purchase of coffins by the then government).
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To learn what any government’s true agenda is, watch those it protects. And those it is willing to sacrifice. And why some lives matter more than the others. Some privileges more than the others. And why those in power and those who line their pockets are able to live in a bubble unthreatened by ground realities. In the US, it is the gun and corporate lobbyists who thrive under the protection of the Republicans. In India too, we will not, in the foreseeable future, see a leader who goes out on a limb to protect, not the already rich and the powerful but the ordinary and the unprotected. We are unlikely to see any time soon, a leader who is sensitive to the land rights of tribals, to environmental protections. Or is committed not to just winning elections at any cost but to a more peaceful, integrated nation where everyone feels safe, has access to education and medical aid and the opportunities to prosper. A country where legislative policy is more important than rhetoric. Where farmers and small time struggling “defaulters” don’t commit suicide while scammers with billions in their backpacks escape to other countries.
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Most importantly, we need to understand just what happens when a society institutionalises violence and celebrates it or makes excuses for it. We need to acknowledge just how marketed violence seduces some and sacrifices others as fodder during hate crimes, mass shootings, wars or riots. The foster child in Florida who fell through the cracks to become a cold, gaunt killer is symptomatic too of a broken society while those he riddled with bullets are just so much collateral damage to keep campaign coffers flush with donations.
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The rot is deep all around the world and politicians more often than not, sell violence , be it economic, social, psychological, emotional or physical for their own ends. They do it in the name of nationalism. They do it to uphold majoritarianism. They do it to demonise minorities. To please weapon lobbies and crony industrialists.
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As hate becomes the new normal and almost an enjoyable commodity , we need to look deep into what we are consuming in the name of entertainment, political propaganda, online content that triggers and numbs us and sells us perceptions and ideas and agendas.
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The 17 people who died at the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida will just join a forgotten heap of cold statistics if there is no fundamental change in the way America looks at itself, at the leaders it chooses to represent itself. Will it, at least now, evaluate not just domestic affairs like its gun laws but also its place in the world politics? That is a question all of us need to ask ourselves, regardless of where we are. What do we stand for? What do the leaders we choose, stand for? Do they stand for us or agendas that have nothing to do with us? Do they unite us or divide us? Do they speak of peace or hate?
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The young survivors of this shooting had eloquent messages for the lawmakers in the US. In India too, young students across universities are resisting the divisive intrusion of hate-centric politics in education. The young always know better. Let us please look at them to show us the way out of rigid debates the world does not seem to tire of. If we can’t learn from children, living or dead, we as a race are unteachable. And beyond redemption.
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Reema is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US . She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.