Mass shootings: Moving from a politics of hate to a politics of love
Last weekend, in the space of less than 24 hours there were two mass shootings, one in El Paso, Texas where the current death toll is 23, and one in Dayton, Ohio, where the current death toll is nine. Only a week before, three people were massacred in a mass shooting at the garlic festival in Gilroy, California.
Until now, I have not known what to say. Pundits have filled the airwaves with all kinds of rationales and have cast blame in many different directions. I’m not here to rehash these arguments as important as they are to the political debate that we need to conduct as a nation to keep these massacres from reoccurring. We do need to examine the complex factors that contribute to these issues.
What I have been wrestling with is how do we shift the debate from a politics of hate and fear to a politics of love and hope? Love seems like a rather feeble, namby pamby, unrealistic and idealistic response in the face of such pain and suffering. What does tough, meaty, transformative love look like in such horrible circumstances?
So often the immediate comment by those in power is it’s too soon to comment and there are pleas not to politicize these deaths. These shootings are already political the moment they occur. They take place in the public space. What we do and say about them, how we seek to end them, is political.
Who has the guns, why they have access to guns, why they think it’s acceptable to act on their hatred and fear and shoot human beings is a political issue. They may might feel dis-empowered for what ever reason and by taking up an assault rifle they feel powerful, they feel like their lives have meaning because they can make a splash in the world, they become famous. For some, like the El Paso shooter, they’re part of the larger cause of white supremacy and white nationalism which may create a sense of belonging and meaning . They have the power of God, the power to take a life. Why do they take such power upon themselves?
Whatever the reason, there is NO justification for taking the lives of one’s fellow human beings. Any ideology or religion predicated in violence and hate, is destructive. Islamic fundamentalism that glorifies killing the infidels as well as white nationalism that glorifies whites and advocates the destruction, rhetorical or actual of people who are not white, are two sides of the same coin.
Does love overlook and excuse the injustice? No, it does not. We have such a misconception of love in our culture. Love without action, without critical reflection, without making moral judgments about who has power and who doesn’t, without stopping people from continuing to abuse power, love without recognizing that we are all human beings deserving of life, dignity, a future, a hope, and respect, is not love.
Loving others who are not like us and who aren’t part of our natural community is hard. It is costly. Hating is easy and the cheap way out. There is no excuse. Others have suffered the way these shooters have suffered and they have not taken up guns and killed others. These shooters must be judged, punished and stopped. End of story.
Love means living in community with people who are not like us, who do not look like us, who are different. This is actually a very hard thing to do. Love means working for the flourishing of all, not just the few. Love may mean giving up your position of power and privilege and sense of entitlement so that others can also thrive and flourish.
A politics of love means loving one’s neighbor, a politics of love means becoming involved, a politics of love means not being silent, a politics of love means thinking critically about greed, hate, the abuse of power and privilege. It is part of what it means to be human.
Spiritual piety, thoughts and prayers, without actions and deeds to address the social injustice of these mass killings, whether one is a secular humanist or a devout christian, is not love. Faith without works, as the good book says, is dead. Any kind of spirituality that focuses only on the individual and individual piety at the expense of our social responsibility to our communities, our nation, and to the world in which we live, is dead.
We kid ourselves if we think we can survive in this world outside of our relationships with family, community, friends, nation and the world. We are born, dependent, into webs of relationships. We are social beings. We cannot survive on our own. We need each other. We have a responsibility to one another as well as to the well-being of the planet in which we live.
This kind of false piety is individualistic and narcissistic. It is the lifeboat mentality that as long as me and mine are okay then that’s good enough. Part of what it means to thrive and flourish is to love others as we love ourselves. If one person suffers, we all suffer. We should all be suffering with the communities and families that have lost loved ones in these shootings. We should be suffering with all of those who have lost people in mass shootings before that. Put yourself in the shoes of a family who has lost mother, father, grandparents, child? What would you do if you lost one of your dearest?
As human beings we are interconnected. We are born into communities. We have a social responsibility to one another. When asked are we are brother’s and sister’s keepers, the answer is yes. What does it mean to love our neighbor really? And who is our neighbor? In the parable of the Good Samaritan in the bible, the Samaritan, the despised, marginalized, the ‘black/brown’ person of the day, showed compassion for the suffering of the person beat up on the road. The supposedly holy ones just walked on by.
Are we going to walk on by and say nothing to see here in the face of the largest mass shooting of Latinix? Are we going to be silent or just merely offer them our thoughts and prayers? If one person suffers, we all suffer. We all need to examine our hearts and think about what action each one of us is going to take to stop this? And to ask, what is my own role in all of this? Am I contributing to the problem or to the solution? Note that to be silent is to be complicit. As the saying goes, evil flourishes when good people do nothing.
One thing each one of us can do is recognize, mourn and celebrate each individual who’s life was taken. Let’s focus on their stories, their contributions, the love they shared with family, friends and their communities. Let’s take time to see them, to acknowledge them and their lives.
Every human being that has lived and ever will live is unique and has their own story to tell, a story that fills the story book of humankind (Hannah Arendt). Each beautiful photograph and obituary of the ones who perished in these tragedies is a life to be mourned and to be celebrated. Hate would seek to dehumanize them, to wipe out their existence, to say they were unworthy of existence. Hate seeks to make them invisible so let’s make them visible. Let us make monuments of art, literature and song in their memories. Let’s celebrate their achievements, their families.
Here are some links to the stories of the El Paso victims to start https://www.npr.org/2019/08/06/748527564/stories-of-el-paso-shooting-victims-show-acts-of-self-sacrifice-amid-massacre?t=1565261219262
https://www.insider.com/el-paso-shooting-victims-walmart-2019-8
Here is a link to the stories and photos of the Dayton victims:
Here is a link to the stories and photos of the Gilroy victims