Sunday Read: I just can't keep up

The pace of slaughter is overwhelming our ability to accept it

Supposed to be the happy story day

Sunday is the day I sit down and write a story from my past that offers some insight on my experience and lessons I’ve gleaned from both the good, and bad, moments of my journey. I thought this week might be a good time perhaps for a story from my brief political career running for mayor of my small town in Georgia or a good post-May the Fourth story about that time I worked with Mark Hamill on an ad to count every vote in the 2020 election.

Then last night there was the third mass murder of the day and videos appeared online of children and their parents slaughtered. I saw a toddler’s brains spilled across the concrete.

In America at an outlet mall.

Then as I sat down to write this morning an SUV ran down a line of migrants waiting for a bus in Brownsville, Texas killing seven of them instantly. Video of the attack from security cameras at the homeless shelter show bodies flying as the car runs a stop light to get to them.

In America on a busy road.

A grim daily toll

I’ve lived in places of daily slaughter. I did four combat tours in Iraq across Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I spent one outside of Mosul as the insurgency was born and accelerated and then two more based at a headquarters at the edge of the Green Zone. I supported the command that trained and helped build the Iraqi Security Forces in 2005/2006 and again in 2008. Each morning we would start the day with a staff update including the latest intelligence and operations reports from across the country in turmoil. I would join U.S. units for patrols to witness the work myself and better tell the story of our mission to the international public.

Each day was a grim toll of dead bodies found floating in the Tigris river, shot in a drive by shooting, torn apart by a vehicle borne improvised explosive device, or simply dumped on the side of the road. Each day problems were solved by the barrel of a gun or an explosion.

On a patrol in Baghdad in 2005 with U.S. trainers and the Iraqi Army

I would think to myself so often, “thank God this doesn’t happen at home.” I counted my blessings that I lived in a country that had matured to not solve our problems with a gun. We had fought a Civil War and now found ourselves a mature democracy.

I can’t say that today.

It’s clear that many in our country have simply decided murder and slaughter is the solution to their anger, frustration, or problems. They have resolved that taking one of the easily accessible guns to shoot others or acting out one of the memes about running over protestors is the right choice for their future. It’s all just a regular conversation for so many. You can even get the ‘funny’ stickers for your car.

That’s what has become of our nation and it leaves me numb.

Sticker available online from a shitty company

Going to have to take a minute

I will have to take a minute. Find some peace. Hug my kids and grandkids…at least virtually. Smell some flowers.

Then tomorrow get back in the fight. This isn’t how we are supposed to live in the United States of America in the 21st Century.

Take your time too but it’s time we started taking back our country and demand our politicians stop pretending to be legislators and acting like pastors.

Here are some flowers to soothe your soul

Butterweed along my favorite local trail

Ruffled tulips