ANOTHER SHOOTER: AND WE ARE SURPRISED?

You couldn't be more right. As an HR professional, every investigation, every inquiry is an exercise in risk management because people have seemingly lost the ability to agree to disagree. Constructive criticism is seen as "being disrespected" instead of an opportunity to recognize a need to improve. News isn't just reported, it's presented with a sensationalist fervor as shocking scenes of horror are played and replayed like a commercial. These days it's a vacation to be able to tune out and turn off the phone and media outlets and just listen to the sound of silence.

I agree with you, Dr. Murphy, that if we want a more civil and peaceful society we need to start at home, taking responsibility for our own efforts at peaceful resolution of conflict. As a conflict management professional, I agree with your prescription to teach tolerance, and resilience in the schools. Part of tolerance requires acceptance of religious, cultural, and ethnic differences. And part of teaching resilience, is encouraging individuals to follow their own faith tradition. However, like much of the leadership in our government today, you speak, Dr. Murphy, from a platform of personal security, wealth, status, power, and importance. Most people in the world are not as fortunate. I'm reminded of the song by Jackson Browne, "there are lives in the balance," and when people finally can't take anymore, "they pick up a rock or a brick or a stone." So we can sit in our comfortable places and pass judgement on those who feel stress because they cannot afford to hospitalize their mentally ill, homicidal/suicidal child. It's very easy to say, "be nice" when your needs are met. It's very easy to pass judgement on those who have nothing, because they feel anger, despair, fear, and that tends to make them impolite. They are easy to blame, and scapegoat, as our current national leadership gleefully does, with sadistic shadenfreude.? As your co-author, Loriann Oberlin stated above, anger, anxiety and dysfunction move from the leadership on down, whether it's a family system, a corporate system, or a government system. Our national leadership currently cultivates hostility toward scapegoats, because they gain power and profit from it. I'm not really interested in a lesson in politeness from a leadership that encourages chants of "lock her up" and "punch them in the face" and "grab them by the...". We need leaders, who care about "we the people", and who think of themselves as public servants, instead of omnipotent royalty. If we had a majority of true public servants in office, perhaps the main public conversation would address wage growth, protecting the social safety net, common sense gun reform, public health matters, infrastructure development, environmental and consumer protections and what we can do about the biggest threat impacting the planet, climate change. Instead, the national conversation goes to, "why can't Sarah Huckabee Sanders dine in peace?"

(Continuation) Last week, I saw the Mr Rogers documentary. Tim and I both admired him greatly. Fred taught us to look to the helpers. How is it that in today’s schools, especially in at-risk communities, a school counselor has a caseload of 600 to 650 students to ONE counselor who in any given day deals with: suicide threats from elementary students (yes, 5-10 year olds!), behavior issues against targeted students or personnel, bullying (Thursday incident involved online harassment- how and where do we think this starts folks?), learning challenges, calming angry parents, and then IEP meetings? And documenting because the next angry, litigious person/parent might challenge it all. I challenge everyone to speak up about specifics. How do we assist the helpers, get more of them, spot family/friends/coworkers whose thinking is so way off that cognitive behavioral strategies have failed to make a dent in their rage? Then what? Where are funds for psychiatry programs, loan forgiveness for therapists who work in at-risk areas? Do people know how difficult it is to find a competent, in-network doc, therapist? Many must drop out of insurance plans to pay the rent. How many employers skimp on MH benefits? Let’s get to real solutions.

Your co-author weighs in. As a Marylander, journalist, therapist and author, this latest massacre hits home. When I see these tragedies, I think systems theory, which we highlight in Overcoming Passive Aggression. Why do people act out? When you want to find out why one generation or one organizational level acts out, look higher because anxiety, dysfunction, anger flows top down, not the other way. That’s the way systems was taught to me. We cannot trash those reporters who dedicate their work lives to exploring issues, finding answers, and educating the public about them and then target those same people when one doesn’t want to face days, weeks, months, and years of reporting. Fellow Maryland writers did just that. Thursday’s shooter resented both the message and the messengers. Neither of us has specific knowledge of this case but we understand anger. We wrote the ten traits of angry people. We know that so many vengeful people turn bad feelings into mad, massacre-like thoughts and actions. Sadly, this keeps happening because it’s easy to offer condolences.. it’s way more difficult to step up to powerful groups that prevent real change because money and clout matter more than lives. (to be continued)