Gaither Campaign for Rural America

The harsher reality from this tragic trauma is that it exposes what is broken in us and in our communities.

We are more inclined to hide our brokenness to the detriment of both self and others. We won’t stand for others pointing out our mistakenness, either. We refuse to hold ourselves or those closest to us accountable, which is why the rhetoric about some distant, physically removed ‘other’ becomes more poisonous, more targeted, and often more distant and disconnected from reality.

Not even with an increasing death toll; not even while DNA is being matched to now shredded bodies of dead elementary school kids. Especially not then.

We don’t want to blame those who are there to protect us. They already lied right to our faces. They told us all lies about what had happened. What else have they lied about that was as important to “get right” because of the gravity of the loss?

Yes. No one wants to admit they were mistaken. That they said something wrong. That they knowingly lied, or, that they believed the sack of lies that people they trusted with their lives had told them repeatedly, with full knowledge that they would then be lying to the entire world, the entire nation, but most importantly, the entire community that stood there for the entire hour and watched what actually did happen to their own children.

I now am watching Fox & Friends, which is struggling to figure out what to make of this disaster on top of a disaster. The Black reporter that is in Uvalde has been the apologist the local law enforcement were looking for but didn’t know it.

They can’t do to the police what they’ve been doing to President Biden when they’ve actually got the goods on these local police.

Let’s be clear, though. This was an untenable situation. All of these schools are in the worst of situations. Any local law enforcement, anyone at all responding to someone that is waving around these types of firearms would be facing an insane threat in order to save the lives of little children.

• The Republican Party is simply against investing in America equitably. Republicans want someone else to do it. When it doesn’t happen, they’ll just blame the Democratic Party for failing to do it. It’s the next campaign cycle slogan, after all. Again.

• The Democratic Party simply is absent in communities like Uvalde. In fact, there is only one elected in the entire county. Predictable.

When we expect, miraculously, the private sector to invest in wage growth, brick and mortar, equipment, and hiring, it never happens equitably, which is why there always is a race to the bottom for profits and a race to the top for the affluent. No one is capable of standing up to or in-between this race of income inequality.

For this reason, there is a significant and critical role for government. However, the current condition of our government is an indictment of American society. It should be a testament to the innovative system of government that allows us to quickly change course as a nation.

We simply are unaware of how to wield this system of government today. Those we elect are often talking point heads for no other reason than that’s the only path to gaining the right kinds of support that will be key to election victories and efforts to maintain the status quo no matter the cost.

Few consider the next 8 moves on the board. Leaders damn well should, otherwise, they shouldn’t be leading anything.

Today’s elected officials and candidates are more likely concerned with placating the loudest, most emotionally reactive voters that haven’t thought through even what they’ve demanded today let alone acknowledged any mistakes they made yesterday.

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That’s why Uvalde wants the media to leave. They don’t want to change. They just want this to go away. The horror won’t. The reality of what failed is staring directly at them, and they cannot fathom it. They do not want to accept it. It is too harsh.

It is painfully clear what is bringing us as a nation down, and it isn’t Biden, and it isn’t Trump. What brings us down is an inability to ever learn anything new, to ever challenge our first impressions, to ever consider that our feelings may not be the best judge of ourselves or others, and that admitting wrongdoing does not have to mean we’ve lost it all. We should, we need, we must break ourselves from this retched cycle that serves only the worst within us.

If no one has done anything wrong, then why is everything not working well or working at all?