Pop 89: Be better than this
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
This morning I walked past a couple who are clearly not from here. So, of course, I said hello. This place is so small that seeing unfamiliar people in town is almost as remarkable as having a stranger walk into your house. You say hello. You ask where they are from and if they are enjoying themselves. The strangers often seem perplexed. Guarded. A little concerned that maybe they should know you, but they can’t quite place you.
The hello, the wave, the friendly interrogation: these are village gestures. But they are also the protocol of certain urban communities where locals want you to feel safe as they approach you on the sidewalk. When I lived in Memphis, a predominantly black city, everyone said hello. The actual expression is: “How y’all doin’?” And because it’s the South, and folks take their time, you can easily drawl the words as you pass on the sidewalk.
But Memphis also had so many drive-by shootings that they didn’t always make the front page of the newspaper. To walk at night was to take your life in your hands, I was told. Once, leaving the art school after dark, my friend Joel and I heard gunshots. Being a Canadian and not used to that sound, I thought they were fireworks. We had just passed a couple of men who were in a heated discussion, and when Joel heard the shots, he grabbed my arm. Run, he shouted. And don’t look back. You didn’t see anything. You didn’t hear anything.
We stopped at Poplar Ave 7-11, and he went inside and bought us Slurpees while I slumped to the curb. How do you live like this? I asked, still shaking. He shrugged. He was used to it, and might even be getting a hit from it. Danger and risk are dramatic and exciting. They reliably provide an adrenaline rush.
The proliferation and normalization of violent imagery in movie posters, video games and porn sites has created a country that tolerates and even welcomes violence in language, inter-relating and entertainment. How many movie posters feature a macho dude pointing a gun? How many also feature a sexy young woman, or a comedian? What does that say to you? That America is a land of equal opportunity when it comes to firearms brandishing? Or that, not only is it manly to wave a gun around, but it’s feminist and humorous, too. Guns all round!
Killing sprees in America make it a fearful nation. I have Canadian friends who don’t go to the States. They don’t have any American friends. All they know about America is what they see on the news. And they see America at war with itself. They see an America that reveres its semi-automatic weapons designed to kill several people in mere seconds, and will sell them to anyone with the money to buy them.
Having lived in a couple of places south of the border, I have some very dear friends in the States. They don’t support gun culture, yet they seem to prefer to talk about what’s wrong with their country than to hear how other countries do things differently, as if the only dream is “the American dream.”
Why don’t they listen? Many see Canada as “just an extension” of them. Or, they assume, “being the greatest nation on earth,” that we all wish we could live there. America, “the land of the free and the exceptionally brave” (as the poet John O’Donahue sardonically refers to America ) is the place where “anyone can get rich,” so we are told, time and time again, by actors, politicians, CEOs and newscasters to whom it never occurs that not everyone in the world is obsessed with wealth. Peace, comfort and safety will do, thanks.
Over the course of the last two days, I’ve heard: “Why is this happening in the greatest nation on earth?” Maybe hubris has something to do with it? Anybody who’s recovered from addiction knows that you gotta get humbled before you get help. You have to accept that you’re just another slob on the bus, another country on the planet. You gotta get right-sized.
Americans still consider themselves #1. And they are, as itemized by Paul Hawkins in his book “Blessed Unrest” in a chapter called “We Interrupt This Empire.” Among developed countries, America is first in: “prison population, teen pregnancies, drug use, child hunger, poverty, illiteracy, obesity, diabetes, use of anti-depressants, income disparity, military spending, hazardous waste pollution, recorded rapes, and poor school quality.” And, yes, “violence and firearms deaths.”
Mental health is the problem, say the men at the Texas governor’s press conference. Yes, certainly America’s mental health is suffering. Substack columnist Bari Weiss believes there is a link between mental health and a “festering, unnoticed insanity” due to “the dissolution of our social ties—and with them the accountability and responsibility that an actual community demands.” And while lockdowns accelerated the isolation, “the purposelessness and the lack of meaning” was already “overcoming the country.”
I live in a community so small that to not behave accountably or responsibly is to garner instant criticism and demand accountability. But even here, there are loose cannons and hotheads I choose to avoid. Real change takes communal courage to respond to mental health problems before violent behaviour occurs.
An American child’s chance of dying by gunshot are higher than dying in a car accident or drowning in a swimming pool. “Threat assessment initiatives” like designing bulletproof packsacks are an insult to children and parents. We might ask what kind of country is it where parents are relieved their children are past school age in the same way they once were relieved when their sons were past draft age.
We are better than this, say Texan politicians. Are you? Prove it. Stand up to the NRA at their convention in Texas at the end of the week of slaughter. Stand up to the lobbyists and big money. Be humane. Not a dude on a movie poster. Not a shoot-first-ask-questions-later wild west stereotype. Not #1. Be better than that.