WASHINGTON: October 9th is John Lennon’s 80th birthday. Lennon was gunned down outside his home at The Dakota, in New York City on December 8, 1980. He was killed by a delusional man with a plan to make himself famous. He got a book and a gun, killing a husband, father and beloved member of The Beatles. Destroying a voice that was a clear advocate for peace.
It was one of those moments of violence and great sorrow when the world seems suddenly to stop in disbelief. The shooting of President John F. Kennedy, the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr., the assassination of Senator Bobby Kennedy, and the murder of Mohandas Gandhi were other such moments.
On Lennon’s 75th Birthday, his widow Yoko Ono tweeted out the image of the pair of blood splattered glasses, with the iconic New York skyline behind them, worn by Lennon at the time of his murder. The image is quietly arresting, weirdly peaceful.
It is also a prayer and a demand, demanding that we pause and remember, pleading with us to act, to stop the insanity of violence.
With ANTIFA and BLM riots taking over our cities, extreme violence is committed every day, everywhere.
Yet it is always a short-lived pause and since Lennon’s murder, not much has changed. People are still being killed. Gun violence by criminals and thugs continues. Only now, police are being hamstrung, unable to combat the violence, arrest the shooters, and when they do, the door revolves and they are back on the street.
The death tolls are rising. The killing of children, collateral damage to some is heartbreaking. (Chicago Sees Deadliest September Since Early 1990s With 81 Homicides)
Lori Lightfoot: Democrat mayor lording over Chicago’s dying Black youth
But unlike the killing of a beloved Beatle, no one seems to care about young lives being destroyed every day due to inner-city violence fomented by political ideology. Yet, people with compassion know that each of these young lives, destroyed by senseless political violence, was as important as that of John Lennon’s.
Secoriea Turner 8, Royta De’Marco Giles, 8, Davon McNeal, 11, Natalia Wallace, 7,
But little is being done to stop the carnage. At the end of July, 24 people were killed in Portland, Oregon as a result, mostly, of the ANTIFA riots and violence. Yet, the leading candidate for mayor of Portland proudly announces “she is ANTIFA. (Portland mayoral candidate who said ‘I am Antifa’ up 11 points over incumbent Ted Wheeler). They create protected zones, open the jails, defund the police and fund the violence – directly and indirectly. (Biden staff donate to group that pays bail in riot-torn Minneapolis – Reuters)
Whether guns should or shouldn’t be controlled, our obsession with guns misses something.
Since 1949 there have been 26 mass shootings involving ten or more people killed. Which is way too many. However, the millions of people killed by guns since John Lennon died weren’t killed in mass shootings. They were killed in a million little acts of violence, either self-inflicted or inflicted at the hands of hundreds of thousands of little killers. It was those who cared little about life or personal possession burning down Portland and Chicago. Harassing people due to their political ideology.
It is not the guns but the killers who need to be controlled. They won’t be, because killers will always kill and it’s easier to talk about guns.
It is not the guns, but the people that need to be re-considered.
Time to blame are the politicians and ideologues that support violence in our streets by simply allowing violence in our streets.
The people who put liberal political ideology above and beyond their families and children, friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters, and a media that fails to tell the true story.
In a polarized government filled with people more interested in sound bites than in finding serious solutions, “reasonable” is a fantasy that will never happen.
“Carrying The Beatles’ or the Sixties’ dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That’s not to say you can’t enjoy Glenn Miller or The Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It’s not living now. It’s an illusion.” — Playboy, 1981″
Senator Diane Feinstein cares about grandstanding, not about children
Senator Feinstein is just another talking suit that talks. She used to talk about guns. But if she was serious she would pursue legislation that, if it had been in place for the last generation, might have saved more than the handful of lives lost. Legislation that would not remove any Second Amendment rights but that might have ensured the right to life to millions.
Legislation that might have saved Secoriea Turner 8, Royta De’Marco Giles, 8, Davon McNeal, 11, Natalia Wallace, 7 because Police would have had the tools to track guns down, arrest those illegally owning them, and put those would-be killers into cages where they belong. Because Royta De’Marco Giles deserved to grow up and play baseball, or football. Or be President.
Since then, Feinstein has done nothing to address violence. Her colleagues have encouraged it. (VP Candidate Kamala Harris chilling interview about BLM riots: “They’re not gonna stop. And they should not.”) Not one, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris denouncing the socialist anarchist violence in our streets, while repeatedly demanding that President Trump denounce some loose concept of White Supremacy.
Feinstein never meant to stop the killing of children. It is only her hubris that makes her stand up, again and again, an ancient pile of self-important meat that flaps its meaty lips to make meat sounds that mean nothing. She, like Pelosi and the Squad, are radicals that want to change America into a socialist country where democrat politicians rule the elitist class… and you.
True change, though, means that we must change as people.
We must stop clouding our judgment with fear and stop lashing out at each other in anger. Our leaders need to lead and focus on the things that blight our children’s lives and sow the seeds of violence. They should allow jobs to be created so that children have a future to live for.
This spectacularly wealthy country is pocked with blighted communities, violent places where the way to get ahead is to prey on the weak and to band together with the violent. The people of those communities need ways to support themselves and their families that don’t involve the disregard for life. Democrats need to step out of the way of President Trump’s urban revitalization programs. (President Trump releases the Platinum Plan for Black Americans: Opportunity, Security, Prosperity and Fairness.)
We can agree that police reform is necessary, but that does not mean killing the police. (Man is arrested and charged with attempted murder in the ambush shooting of two Compton police officers). We also know we will not stop every killer. Assassins will still seek infamy by killing the famous or the helpless, as Lennon’s killer did. Or as at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and Oklahoma City’s Murrah Building, or the Parkland School where beautiful teens, like Meadow Pollack, were gunned down protecting others.
Haters will find ways to make society grieve.
We can’t end it, but maybe we can stop some of the random violence that is killing our children. We must be a country that revers an equal application of Law and Order.
We can imagine a better life for future generations and make it real with better schools, better jobs, a life without gang wars, and politically enflamed anarchy. Without the war against drugs bleeding the life out of urban communities.
Can we imagine all the people living all their days? Because whether it is John Lennon, the children of Chicago or any of the children at Sandy Hook, or Columbine, or Aurora, or Virginia Tech., or Parkland, we lost the gifts they each had to give to the world.
It is insanity at a grand level that we live with. And we are poorer because of it.
