BIG WINDS / REMEMBERING THE DEAD

December 2, 2016

I don't understand how Americans commemorate events.  Today marks one year gone by since a man and woman committed an act of Terror in San Bernardino, California, killing fourteen innocent people. The TV news has covered a memorial gathering at the facility where the murders took place, but not one image of one of the victims has been shown.  The TV news shows images of the terrorists and recounts their act and shows images of the subsequent killing of the couple, recounting their names,  but not one name nor one image of one of the victims. Fourteen cheap American flags have been stuck in the ground, but not one name.

A hero of mine, Mason Williams, once promoted an idea during the Vietnam War.  He suggested that TV news take time every single day to respectfully post images on a black background for one second each of the young men who had gone to war in Vietnam and died that day.  I can't remember if Mason advocated starting with the first soldier killed and each day starting again (like Ground Hog Day?) with the first and adding and adding and adding the faces and names of the dead.  We are divorced from foreign wars.  We are divorced from San Bernardino.  As time goes by, we may divorce from another death: the death of Reason and Civility in the United States.  

That will be a shame.

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I used to have a number posted in the back window of my car.  It would change daily. Dead American soldiers in the Iraq War.  That number reached to over 4,000 dead Americans.  One day I was stopped at a traffic light and a polce car pulled up beside me.  "What's that number?" the cop riding shotgun asked.  "Those are dead Americans in Iraq," I said.  He cocked his head and nodded.

Dead Americans by the hand of whom?  GWB? The soldiers themselves by going to war? Me? for paying the tax that financed the deaths? Tell me again what that conflict was/is? about?

Sixteen dead in San Bernardino from the attack by two foreign terrorists.  Fourteen Californians.  That the terrorists could not be taken alive to get more information is the way we do things.  

For the record, these are the names of the innocent lives lost one year ago today, December 2, 2015:

 

Robert Adams	40
Isaac Amanios	60
Bennetta Betbadal	46
Harry Bowman	46
Sierra Clayborn	27
Juan Espinoza	50
Aurora Godoy	26
Shannon Johnson	45
Larry Daniel Kaufman	42
Damian Meins	58
Tin Nguyen	31
Nicholas Thalasinos	52
Yvette Velasco	27
Michael Wetzel	37

For a personal memorial, please take one minute to simply read those names out loud. 
 
December 2, 2016
michaelsheehan

Chayote 12/2/16