The examples are seemingly endless. First is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.): “If anybody is directly responsible for Orlando, it’s the Republican Party for stymieing all manner of gun control.”
Next is Sen. John McCain: “Barack Obama is directly responsible for it because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, Al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures, utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq.”
And let’s not omit ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, suggesting Christians are to blame: “You know what is gross — your [Christian] thoughts and prayers and Islamophobia after you created this anti-queer climate.”
I get it. We’re mad. We’re mad that someone could annihilate the innocent. It makes no sense. To all of us.
While conversations regarding gun control, Obama’s military strategy, and the truths in Christianity can and should be respectfully had, each of the above arguments directs the anger more at something other than the source. As stated in a recent post, we don’t know all the details yet in regard to what happened at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. What we do know is that a Muslim man who claimed loyalty to ISIS, an Islamic terrorist organization that routinely executes homosexuals, took it upon himself to brutally murder 49 more.
My sense is our most intense anger should be directed at him.
It concerns me, nonetheless, when we redirect our anger. It’s as if when someone does not match the intensity of our passion, we assume they should be looped into the opposition. It’s as if we’ve changed the idea of “if you’re not for us, you’re against us” to “if you’re not as loud and angry as we are, you are just as bad as them.”
We seem to keep feeding the growing divide… the divide that too many of the politically expedient immediately succumb to. I was saddened, I will say, that in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity in Orlando, some of the most prominent politicians attacked their partisan opposition more than focusing on the victims. When we pounce on politics first, we have fed the division more than wrestled with the truth.
What happened in Orlando was awful. As said here previously, I believe it was the clear manifestation of evil. So regardless of whether you’re a Republican or Democrat (or like the many more seemingly gathering somewhere in the middle), whether you’re a card-carrying member of the NRA or desire to abolish the 2nd Amendment, or even if you’re a supporter or not of gay marriage as the law of this land, it doesn’t change the fact that what happened in Orlando was horrendous. And we can each see that regardless of partisan stance.
Now is not the time to chastise those who don’t share our intensity. Now is not the time to demand that everyone “agree with me” because only “I” know what is right. Now is also, no less, not the time to feed any division.
What if we could pause long enough to see what we have in common?
Republicans and Democrats…
Gay and straight…
NRA members and non-members…
Trans-bathroom supporters and non-supporters…
What if we realized that regardless of where each of the above stand on the issues with which they most identify, their hearts still hurt for what happened to those 49 innocent men and women in Orlando?
What would happen if we took the time to take a deep breath and realize that?
Maybe, just maybe, we then could wrestle with the truth. Maybe, too, we could heal.
Respectfully…
AR
Very well said Ann, and I couldn’t have said it nearly as well as you did. Now if more people would read your post and change how they think and act…