“When you’re weary, feeling small,

When tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all.

I’m on your side, oh, when times get rough,

And friends just can’t be found,

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down.”

— Bridge Over Troubled Water by Paul Simon

by Lynn Mandaville

Weary.  Just plain weary.

It’s amazing that anyone can even get out of bed in the morning any more.

Washington is awash in self-centered, egotistical men and women who have completely forgotten for whom they work.

Morals and ethics are antiquated philosophies.

When this generation’s children talk to their grandchildren, they will no longer say, tongue in cheek, “when I was your age, I walked to school barefoot in three feet of snow, uphill both ways.”  They will say, in cynical seriousness, “when I was a kid, I hid in a bathroom with twenty other children and the teacher, seeing who could stay silent the longest, while we listened for gunfire and SWAT sirens outside.”

The NRA isn’t content that there are more small arms weapons in America than there are people (Small Arms Survey of 2017, including expert estimations of licit and illicit guns).

As of this week it is estimated that 228,000 school age children have been directly exposed to gun violence in school since the Columbine tragedy in 1999.  (Nearly a quarter of a million children in twenty years.)

And as of this week there are two more dead teenagers, killed by the hand of another teenager in school.

I could go on citing statistics.

But I’m weary.  Just plain weary.

Of elected officials who are now “politicians” rather than public servants.

Of men and women of the cloth (certainly not all, but enough) who are now grifters, influencers, bigots and zealots from whom their respective religions would distance themselves.

Of lawyers who are manipulators of truth, definition and the rule of law.

Of ordinary people who believe that they are experts in areas in which they have no experience or training.

Of the too many of us who have lost the ability to filter or restrain ourselves from our basic reactions to situations.  Who have lost our impulse control.

And of those who, having been confronted with these truths, do nothing to change.

I am particularly distressed this week, not as much that there has been yet another school shooting, as that instead of public outrage, the media is covering the young heroes who died stopping the shooter, while we, the public, are buying into this passive acceptance that the death of children to gun violence is inevitable, and  that we can rely on other children to deter the monsters (also children) who seek to kill them, rather than relying on adults who are actually in a position to do something about it.

School shootings may be statistically more frequent, but they are not normal.

Children offering up their own bodies to save their own classmates may be laudable, but they are not normal.

School shootings and the resultant deaths, heroic or not, are not, by any stretch of the imagination, normal.

They are abominations of what society has striven to achieve in modern times.

Lately, we have heard Democratic presidential hopefuls enumerate the many ills we experience daily in our country.  Often, while bemoaning these situations, we hear them claim, “This is not America!”

People becoming impoverished by catastrophic health care costs – this is not America.

School districts that cannot afford supplies and textbooks in substandard buildings – this is not America.

Unfair tax codes that favor the uber-wealthy – this is not America.

Elected officials who flaunt the Constitution – this is not America.

Mass shootings in American schools – this is not America.

But guess what??

This IS America!

And it is America because we have let it become what it is.

On one level I can understand why some citizens prefer to ignore what is going on around them.  It’s hard enough to get up each day, get the kids to school and get to the job that doesn’t pay you a living wage, provides no benefits, and maybe has a shitty boss.  It’s hard enough to come home to a house that needs cleaning, meals that need to be prepared, bills that need to be shuffled and prioritized before some of them actually get paid.  It’s hard to face a car that needs repair, a mortgage that is due, a family member who is ill.  Day-to-day life is tough enough without wondering which politician is taking campaign money to ignore what’s good for the people, or which nation is enriching uranium for a bomb with which to threaten their neighbors.

A lot of days, simply coping with the mundane is really tough.  I have experienced enough of that myself.

When I was a young parent, Pop had a poster in one of his spare bedrooms.  The caption to the sketch of a creepy little man cringing inside a box said, “People are no damn good.”

I hated that poster.  At that time I didn’t subscribe to that philosophy.  I honestly believed that human beings were innately good.

But time has corrupted my view.  I have seen what mankind is capable of.  To one degree or another, each of us is guilty of one or more of the seven deadly sins.  (Some might call this the condition of original sin.)  And even when faced with the truths of our transgressions we do little or nothing to correct our behavior.

Even when faced with those transgressions in our leaders, we don’t bat an eyelash.

Instead, we opt to lower our standards in deference to the ends produced by the corrupted means.

We have become mere shadows of what any Creator intended for us to be.

I can’t speak for you, but I can share what were formative influences for me.

At a very early age I was influenced by things I learned in My Weekly Reader, an elementary school publication intended to deliver age-appropriate news to children about scientific discoveries, world events, government, the arts and humanities.  This children’s newspaper didn’t propagandize or proselytize.  It informed.  And in doing so, it encouraged youngsters to think critically about values, motives, and the ends those things produced.

Through its use in a secular setting, the public school, we explored human similarities and differences.  We talked about ethics without religious overtones.  This was not dissimilar from what I learned in Brownies or Girl Scouts.

Emphasis was always on being the very best person you were capable of.  It was always on raising the bar, not lowering it.

In earlier years of Saturday Night Live there was a recurring segment called “Lowered Expectations.”  It satirized the idea that in anything, by lowering our standards, we would never be disappointed.

It seems that now, instead of laughing at that concept, we embrace it.

Instead of inspiring us to outrage, the media is steering us toward a new means of coping.  The outrage that was so loud and effective coming from the Parkland survivors – and was equally loudly expounded by the press – has now morphed into a weary acceptance of such repetitive events, in which we attempt to find inspiration through the self-sacrifice of teens who prove themselves to be better persons than what we spineless adults ought to be.

To expand on the analogy I choose in Paul Simon’s lyrics, we are the adults who should be providing that moral bridge over troubled water.  We have the benefit of experience, education, and intestinal fortitude to build the support structure that carries our youngsters over the tempest.

I guess the important question here is why are we depending on the children to provide the infrastructure?