I read this piece in The Washington Post, ‘You’re going to get shot’: Video shows school police officer threatening student leaving campus with excused absence’, today about police threatening to shoot the very children they are supposed to protect at school and I got angry. I am angry at what we have become as a society.
We are now a nation of anxious fear-mongering cowards. We have become the opposite of the people who rallied around “Give me liberty or give me death.” No, we yearn for safety at all costs, including our liberty. We walk through metal detectors on public buildings and airports, and we turn our schools into prisons for our children. We allow companies and our government to spy on our every move and our thoughts and fantasies and fears through our “smart phones”, magical devices that enslave us to permanent labor, but spare us from loneliness and boredom while taking us away from actual human connection.
Our children commit suicide in massive numbers as we pressure and smother them with safety. Trauma destroys lives, and we fear those that cause it. But as we uncover the evildoers, we know there are endless numbers of scary monsters waiting around the corner. Our news, television shows and websites tell us so. More police, more cameras, more fear, more bad guys. No escape. No safety. Just more anxiety. More people losing it. More tragedy.
Our politics divides us as to whom we are afraid of more. The common theme is fear and anxiety. So people escape into idle entertainment until the next wave of fear.
It was not always so and it need not be. Get a grip, America.
Across the nation, armed police officers have become more common fixtures on school grounds. The presence of guns on campus has not been universally welcomed by students, parents or teachers.
Read in The Washington Post article, ‘You’re going to get shot’: Video shows school police officer threatening student leaving campus with excused absence‘.