America, the place we pour our hearts into and wrap a smile around our face to proudly hold up our red, white, and blue. A place where we will fight to our deaths to prove who we are. A place that finds the need to become a burden in the lives of others to truly prove our strength; for God’s sake, it’s ‘Merica. But when we fail, we, our country, stoops to levels of evil; we fail dramatically. We fail to take on the burdens and fix them, we fail to take on blame and ridicule. Instead, we find any other way to prove that we were not the ones at fault. We find our next subject, our next scapegoat.
Tragedy takes a toll on us, we have no mechanisms for dealing with it. You could say we enforce new regulations to prevent it from happening again, yes. But we do not mourn in the proper way, we become disrespectful, arrogant Americans.
The Twin Towers crashed down before us. We blamed many. We blamed religions and race. We blamed a corrupt government. We blamed many for the lives that were taken. But not until we had proof of the leader did we blame him. We did not blame the man in charge until we tried to put the blame on another group. We taught our children to fear them, we taught ourselves to fear them, we recognized their skin tone and dress as a threat. We created a scapegoat for our fear. We created a new hatred.
A man came in and took 26 lives. A man came in and took down 20 innocent children. What did we do? We enforced gun regulations and added another scapegoat to our list. We began to blame video games, parents, and guns. We began to turn our eyes away from the assassin, and point fingers at the so-called “because” of this tragedy. We could not mourn until there was a cause, we could not accept the fact that there was a deranged man in our beloved America. We became frantic, the world stopped, articles spread, thoughts sporadically bumped off of one another. “It was the games he was playing, they were too violent!” “His mother is to blame, she wasn’t watching him closely.” “He was in contact with too many guns as a child.”
Forget it. We are creating nonsense. There are too many people to count who play endless amount of violent video games. There are too many people to count who did not have to correct supervision of their parents. There are too many people to count who were born and raised with the presence or use of guns. There are few people who have ever been as deranged as this man. He is the cause of the innocent deaths. His personality led to these deaths. His thoughts led to these deaths. The guns and violence did not kill 20 children and six other adults, his mind did.
The bombs. A bomb goes off, first thing first - ethnicity, dress, religion? We have already created this scapegoat years earlier. We have already brainwashed our people to instantly imagine the bomber as a man with a slightly different complexion than you or I. The Middle Eastern man is being targeted. We are focused on proving that there is some connection between the bombs and this type of man, this type of complexion and religion. We blamed him as the Twin Towers crumbled down. We blamed him as the finish line in Boston ended with more losses than wins. We blame him as the city of lights falls dim.
We fail to recognize the hatred we are causing, the lessons we are teaching our generations. The fear we are causing, making Americans less accepting. We are pushing people away, keeping them out of our country because we fear “him” more than true terrorism. It’s obvious to see that we have redefined what it is to be a terrorist; it is no longer the acts taken in fear and rage by human beings to pursue their deranged plan. Terrorists are not made up of one race, one religion, or one complexion. They are made up of human beings who act violently to end peace.
Let us focus on ending the scapegoat. Let us focus on ending stereotypes. Let us focus on ending the hate. Let us focus on creating peace through all. Let us focus on creating love.
End the scapegoat, begin the peace.
