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To my grandchildren and everyone in future generations [1]

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Date: 2022-09-17

I apologize for not protecting your lives. During my lifetime, I have seen gun violence become an epidemic. There is currently a debate, but I have done nothing except vote against unbridled gun rights. I should have done more. My generation laid the seeds of chaos.

Culture comprises many beliefs, religions, political leanings, employment, and people wanting to follow or have followers. Can we respect others’ differences? Can we learn the impact our disrespect has on social disorders?

In your generation (which I cannot see but I can intellectually imagine what life in America will be like generations after I am gone), you are suffering from American terrorists out-gunning previous psychopaths as a daily ritual. You are living in an age of anarchy. I imagine not voting on Election Day is acceptable since most political positions are empty anyway, while hundreds of politicians have been threatened and killed.

My generation watched as truthfulness and morality disappeared while gunfire became part of the daily culture. In your generation, I imagine, militias and gangs have become more protective than the police, but only if you espouse their opinion. I foresee gun ownership becoming mandatory if your family wants a chance to survive.

Have so-called militias declared homelessness illegal? As our current government wishes. Did America become so envious of terrorist groups such as “The Taliban” that they went further, killing entire neighborhoods of people based on voting records?

My generation watched as our infrastructure collapsed, along with the rule of law, as greed for money and power became the “American Dream.”

The “Dream” began turning into a nightmare during the 1980s when greed became fashionable. Homeownership left the realm of comfortable necessity and became our retirement accounts. There was a time when middle-class homeownership was possible. Then, in 2007, corporations began buying housing, driving up housing costs to provide the corporations with increased profits. The corporations, with greed as their motivation, already controlled employment, then moved to control housing. Corporations, with their right to free speech, began controlling people’s private lives, surreptitiously teaching citizens, employees, and tenants the company motto. Abide, or they will terminate and evict.

Early in the 21st century, we blamed the homeless themselves. We weren’t smart enough to see how greed was crushing the American Dream. The few mentally unstable homeless turned into millions of unfortunate, hardworking citizens camping on freeway off-ramps as rental prices exploded throughout the nation.

At what point did it make sense to get a gun to protect yourself from your fellow citizens? We’ll never know, but the result is in your face. If my neighbors are lawless, why shouldn’t I be? If the other bidder on a home is a corporation, what chance do I have? Like the frog in the cooking pot, we didn’t notice the temperature getting hot until it was too late.

I ask my descendants; are you living in a time when lunatic groups opt for improvised explosives, surpassing the simple bullet, to drive fear into every family, church, and business?

My generation could have stopped it, but we listened to those arguing for the “right to arm ourselves.” Sure, we saw murder snowball throughout the 21st century and didn’t stop it, because those who stood for sanity were gunned down first.

Video gamers, movie producers, and the “AI” industry thought they were providing entertainment. They were speeding up the future just before our nation’s second civil war.

Not unlike the first, it was based on our interpretation of rights within the Constitution. Much has happened since the writing of it, and since the first attempt to break up the Union. Today, we have media conglomerates taking sides and promoting propaganda while distorting facts to sway viewers’ and listeners’ opinions.

Again, I’m sorry for not doing more to protect you.

We weren’t shooting people who voted. Well, maybe a couple. Certainly not the slaying of citizens that is happening in your time. During my lifetime, there were a few assassinations, not the daily killings happening during yours. During my lifetime, people claimed they had the right to own weapons of war. Some used these weapons; it made the news. Slowly, shootings became so frequent that the media only reported mass killings. America became inured to the newsworthiness of children being killed in school.

Only my imagination can conjure up what life is like, generations forward. Does every city feel like Chicago? Does daytime bring fear, as night once did? What are your desires in life when being shot at any event or within your home is a reality? Whom are they coming for next?

We couldn’t see the cultural destruction being promulgated from within the rule of law. Judges making rulings based on political leanings made all citizens distrust the system. When the system doesn’t work, why not get a gun to use when they come for me?

Again, I’m sorry for the mess I left.

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