Incidents raise questions to be discussed
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Editor,
Just a couple of very recent events that show both our politicians rather arrogant and insensitive rhetoric on one hand and what our attitudes and actions in America are teaching our young people on the other hand.
Friday, Nov. 1, 2013: The president of Iraq, Nouri Maliki, had talks with President Obama and met with other political leaders as well. Maliki is a Shia Muslim. The fighting between the two ethnic and political factions in Iraq, the Shias and the Sunnis, is killing about 1,000 Iraqis per month. Our political personnel grandly lectured Maliki on the need for him to reach out to the Sunnis and engage them in working with him for what is good for Iraq toward building political cohesion within his country. Wow. A pure example of “do what I say, not what I do.”
Friday, Nov. 1, 2013: Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, from Los Angeles, enters terminal number 3 at LAX, shoots and kills a Transporation Security Administration officer and disrupts the entire airport complex. Ciancia was upset with our government and with the nation’s airport security system. So, what do we show on our TV shows, in books, in movies as what very angry people do with their extreme anger? They lash out and kill people. Then our law enforcement takes over, investigations are launched, the story captures the headlines, the incident gets analyzed, ad infinitum, until another similar incident takes its place as news.
What does and will it take to change this trend? Is it growing? What is the real source of such anger? How can we be alert, as families and friends, to those whose minds seem to be focusing in dangerous directions? Is there, perhaps, a psychological connection between the two November events reported above? Something for communities to think and talk about, it seems to me.
Bob McClellan
Polson
