In the aftermath of Orlando, and now Dallas, and the ongoing gunplay in Chicago, it should give us pause about the increasing violence that plagues America. While there can be no doubt that there is, and was, a history of mental illness on the part of the former, Omar Mateen, the latter had a profile that demanded an intervention.
Angry, violent and demanding attention from already overburdened teachers, Mateen would not cooperate with them, until he got their undivided focus. Without he would attack his classmates and threaten them - and this was in grammar school.
Whether this rage stemmed from repressed homosexuality, or an urge to always, and under any circumstances to have his way. Reading these facts one wonders where were the school social workers, the psychologist,and the parental concern, as this walking time bomb erupted, later as an adult at the Pulse nightclub.
For many, it seems, mental health is the stuff of movies and late night television, and not the stuff that reality is made of. In other words, crazy people scripted for the camera, and not real life; as easy to dismiss as leaving the darkened movie theater. But, mental illness is as real, and as palpable, as the days are long, yet many Americans have failed to grasp the enormity of unaddressed problems, and how they must be addressed.
After the memorials are gone, and the headlines changed, we move on as a society, yet the failure to address in a multi-pronged manner those that suffer can result in carnage, whether it is Mateen, or Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh. The problem before us demands attention, yet, when discussing the motives, often the response is “Who cares”? We must, in order to address public safety.
We need a multi pronged approach that encompasses teachers, school social workers, local agencies and government agencies, on all levels, including a revision of FBI protocols and best practices, that won’t allow someone like Mateen to slip through the cracks. The goal is good mental hygiene, as much a concern as good medical care.
The Leviathan seems to be the National Rifle Association, and its powerful lobbyists are ruling the day, but are losing the care that we must embrace as a nation. Many wondered at the deaths of grammar school children at Sandy Hook Elementary, if there would be a change, yet their hearts remained hardened.
Both Orlando and Sandy Hook show that the targets, in many cases, are the most vulnerable of our population: children, and sexual minorities - targets for gun violence. For Chicago, where racial segregation has been historic, can there be a beginning to what has been a tortuous and long-losing struggle to quell economic justice? Can there be an end to where those who fought the enemy, and came home to a dream of freedom, and bought their homes in the first flush of a post war era, find themselves nearly held siege, and where black on black crime spares no one, not even children, or babies.
For Micah Johnson, the Dallas cop killer, a tour of duty in Afghanistan -- possible PTSD? -- seems to be the trigger for his violent departure from a tradition bound middle-class life, to one where he stockpiled weapons, with a history of egregious sexual aggression. With such a sudden departure from his general temperament, and personality, could no one, no family member seen the dramatic change, and become suspicious?
Each day, it seems, we are confronted with the drumbeat of violence, unceasingly, and maybe, for those that are desensitized, inexorable? The sites of the carnage have almost replaced Lexington and Concord, once seared into our historical consciousness, as American battlegrounds.
If the road ahead, is the one less travelled, then new solutions, and new ideas must be brought to stem the tide, and brought to bear on the challenge that faces America..
