I’m back. And for good reason, too. I guess one way to humanize and characterize the shootings, racial problems, terrorist activities and all the other shit going down in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East – seemingly everywhere on this earth – a description to bring some realization of the horror invoked by names like Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine, Cleveland, North Charleston, and now, Charleston, Ferguson, Ottawa, Edmonton – a woman in that church in Charleston, North Carolina, playing dead to avoid being the tenth victim of the shooter Dylann Roof, was lying in a pool of her own son’s blood. Her son was shot and murdered, according to an account indrectly provided by an eyewitness, after the son had tried to talk the shooter down after the latter had already fired off two rounds.
Before shooting this poor guy, Roof apparently had this to say: “No. You raped our women and you’re taking over the country. I have to do what I have to do. You’re going down”.
BANG!
Totally horrible.
Peace is required. Now. Especially down south, that is in the Excited States, where the type of mass shootings that have occurred fourteen times since Obama took office in 2008, do not occur, in the words of the President in other “advanced countries”. Why then in the USA, commonly considered to be the world’s wealthiest nation?
That’s an easy one. It’s not a question of the total amount of wealth possessed by the States or by any other nation, no sirree. It’s a question of how equitably that wealth is distributed. With the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, it’s obvious that many poorer people become desperate, feeling that there is no way out of the cycle of poverty. “Desperate is as desperate does” applies to both individuals in any given country as well as to the nations of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Worlds. Desperation breeds individual acts of evil like Wednesday’s shooting in the Charleston church where people who had come, among other things, to pray and seek solace from the hardships they face in everyday life, were shot down, murdered in cold blood – desperation created by an unequal access to the world’s resources – human, natural and capital – creates an environment which breeds terrorist acts like what occurred in the city of New York on September 11, 2001.
I plan to re-produce two of my JuicyLessons dealing with the unequal distribution of global wealth which has led to a situation where the 85 richest people in the world are worth (real wealth) more than poorest almost 4 billion, about
half the world’s population. In other words, the richest 85 are worth more than the poorer half of the global population. Wrap your mind around that particular statistic, extracted from a recent Oxfam report on the global distribution of wealth.
Or you can look them up yourselves. Simply search: Unequal Distribution of Wealth.
Peace Out.
2 responses to “Another JuicyLesson”
Correction, it’s Charleston, South Carolina not North Carolina, most of the rest is right on point, ie. wealthiest vs. poorest. Inequality of wealth etc. Add that CEOs are paid in the millions per year, while crying about a min. wage of 7.25/hr. So sad. Great piece though. Joan
Joan back. Remember these were people of faith, in a prayer and bible study situation. Why God allowed (allows) horrible things like this to happen to good people is a mystery, like the hymn goes, “we’ll understand it better by and by.” Also the nut case had it all, white privilege (being white) money supported by family, no job, but employable, friends etc. His heart was evil and the evil one “Satan,” used him and there goes the rest of the story. Filled with hate and lies he acted out.