The postman always rings twice
I awoke this morning thinking of Tsutomu Yamaguchi.
Mass murder is as American as pumpkin pie. You can dodge a bullet quite literally and think, I'll be safe for the rest of my life. But we know that people who survived the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas (October 1, 2017) subsequently had to survive the Borderline Bar and Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks, California (November 7, 2018) or the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting last week. I don't know if Gilroy featured country music, but it's pointless to try to identify common threads -- you can be shot for being present in a yoga studio, an elementary school, a church or a restaurant. You can be shot for being Jewish, black, female, gay, or alive in the wrong place at the wrong time. The common thread is the gun.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi lived a long life and died in 2010, age 93. But when he was a young man he survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Injured, he went home to Nagasaki in time to experience the atomic bombing of that city three days later. The Japanese government recognized him as the sole survivor of both attacks, though there may have been others. He was either the unluckiest person who ever lived, or the toughest.
We Americans might as well embrace our heritage of mindless gun violence. I propose the Yamaguchi Medal for survivors of two or more massacres. Because this will happen again. It happened last night in Dayton, Ohio. It's coming to your town, park, mosque, campus, medical office, airport, birthday party, army base, television studio, hair salon, diner, track meet, wedding, jazz festival, parade, funeral.
Mass murder is as American as pumpkin pie. You can dodge a bullet quite literally and think, I'll be safe for the rest of my life. But we know that people who survived the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas (October 1, 2017) subsequently had to survive the Borderline Bar and Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks, California (November 7, 2018) or the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting last week. I don't know if Gilroy featured country music, but it's pointless to try to identify common threads -- you can be shot for being present in a yoga studio, an elementary school, a church or a restaurant. You can be shot for being Jewish, black, female, gay, or alive in the wrong place at the wrong time. The common thread is the gun.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi lived a long life and died in 2010, age 93. But when he was a young man he survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Injured, he went home to Nagasaki in time to experience the atomic bombing of that city three days later. The Japanese government recognized him as the sole survivor of both attacks, though there may have been others. He was either the unluckiest person who ever lived, or the toughest.
We Americans might as well embrace our heritage of mindless gun violence. I propose the Yamaguchi Medal for survivors of two or more massacres. Because this will happen again. It happened last night in Dayton, Ohio. It's coming to your town, park, mosque, campus, medical office, airport, birthday party, army base, television studio, hair salon, diner, track meet, wedding, jazz festival, parade, funeral.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 11:36 AM
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