I’ve been thinking about ice cream a lot lately. You know how when you’ve had a really difficult day an ice cream cone can seem to make things so much better? Or when you’ve had a really good day, nothing seems to finish the day off on a high as much as a double dip?
Now, before you start to go off on me, saying something like,?“Didn’t he talk about ice cream before?” “Enough already with the joys of ice cream!”, this piece isn’t about ice cream at all. In fact, it’s not about anything edible.
Just as enjoying a cone makes so many things better, giving us the relief from the mundane that we need, I think that the onslaughts of daily life, especially in the past few years, give us a need to read about something good, pleasing, perhaps even lighter in tone once in a while. Sadly, this piece today isn’t going to give you that.
Each time that I turn on the TV, open up the news on the computer, or even talk to a friend, it seems that all that I hear and see is a recitation of one horror after another. The year certainly got off to a truly inauspicious start: the storming of the Capitol by mobs egged on by the President, urging them to commit an insurrection, to overthrow the government, to reject the results of a legitimate election, and to keep that same man in office, despite the legitimate vote of the people. What was worse, we heard this same man supporting the crowd’s cries to hang the Vice-President, just because he was doing his Constitutional duty to certify the election results.
Since then, this year seems to have gone from one catastrophic event to another. The entire world is in turmoil. The number of deaths from mass shootings in the U.S. is both mind-numbing and too horrible to even truly absorb. We have already “attained” a statistic in the U.S. that places us ahead of every other nation in the world this year in the number of these horrific attacks on innocent people.
Despite the headlines and photographs that talk about these incidents, and that show the grief-stricken families, friends, coworkers and playmates of the dead and injured, we have continued to be unimaginably unable to have legislation passed that would establish reasonable limitations on gun ownership.
At the same time that Americans argue for the rights of gun owners, the right for anyone to buy as many weapons of mass destruction as they wish, a significant number of these same Americans advocate for another cause: the elimination of the rights of women to have control over their own reproductive rights.
Yet again, we appear to be going backwards in social progress, not just as reflects our own history, but as reflected against worldwide trends which recognize the need for more, rather than less, freedom in reproductive rights.
I am, quite honestly, unable to reconcile the logic of individuals who argue for the rights of gun owners, and who at the same time argue against that the right to an abortion should not exist for women. Perhaps I am na?ve, but I see a significant conflict here. Why is it that the Sixth Commandment, which states, “Thou shalt not kill another” is used by some to argue that abortion is a crime, as well as a sin, is not likewise used to support legitimate gun control legislation, legislation that is designed to prevent individuals from being able to easily murder any number of innocents in minutes?
Hatred, intolerance, racism, bigotry and violence are the tools of the destruction of a civilized society. We see and hear these destructive weapons being used every day. There seems to be no way to look at a newspaper, read a blog, listen to or watch the news without learning of yet another example of man’s increasing inhumanity to one’s fellow mankind. My mind reels with the onslaught of hatred that is seemingly everywhere.
As a result, it has become almost impossible to find a way to escape from being a witness to such poison. I tried, this week, to find a little bit of “ice cream” to write about; something that would cool our feverish brains, something to give us that very brief break that we all need. Sadly, I failed to be able to do so.
I hope that next week I’ll be able to give all of us a little treat; just a little ice cream to make the world seem a bit more palatable.
?
Mike Snyder
Partner at Matkoff,Shengold
2 年Very well said, Michael. It is incomprehensible that we are not leaving our children and grandchildren a better world. Keep trying. Dan