We know where the insanity is. So where’s the outrage?
Shoot first, then "stand your ground" and you too can get away with murder (photo: wikipedia.org).
When it comes to guns, why does insanity trump outrage?
It’s actually fairly simple. Insanity resides with the minority, outrage with the majority. And it’s much easier to organize and voice the views of a minority than it is to get a majority to do anything. Not because the majority of us don’t want to do something, we just can’t find the time outside our busy, busy BMW-driven, Levi-clad, wanna-talk-not-walk social claque. Besides, once we can yammer about our outrage at the golf club, bridge club, legion hall or church social, we feel better. And we just want to feel better, not actually do anything. It’s like giving a dollar to a homeless person, you feel better, it didn’t cost much and you didn’t have to do anything.
The Emperors have no clothes
Political emperors like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, President Barack Obama, Wannabe Mitt Romney and all the rest are so transparent in their ignoring of the outrage. Because they know it will go away. (photo: Maggie Sutherland sits in front of her painting of Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the Central Kingston public library (L.Hagberg/CP)
Most of us are outraged about gun violence. So what? Nobody is doing anything about it. Of course, the police are trying but what about the lawmakers – the political emperors – who have the power to do whatever is necessary and best? Therein lies the rub. Better laws are necessary for a safer society but not best for a political career. To be against guns has been twisted into being against individual freedoms and rights and in the US, certainly counterproductive for political fund raising from the National Rifle Association (NRA), the hunter’s union and the redneck belt that delivers a swath of votes from rural America. Politicians know that victory is measured by the number of votes you can get, which is measured by the amount of money you can raise, which has nothing to do with the number of guns you can get off the street. So they don’t do anything even though every politician with an IQ of a chimpanzee knows that it’s best to have tight, enforceable, sensible gun control laws on the books – today. Hell, yesterday – before a few hundred more people get shot today. The majority of the politicians are the same ones that voted against the Brady Bill and voted for the Florida “Stand-your-ground” law in 2005. The latter has aided and abetted over 90 murders since its inception.
Memorials like this one at the Toronto Eaton Centre express sympathy, and rightly so. But where's the expression of outrage?
A simple question remains unanswered: Isn’t one innocent person’s murder – or a mad shooting spree that kills shoppers in a mall – worth strengthening the laws? The obvious answer is “yes,” but in reality it’s a resounding “no.” Stephen Harper whistles about tough on crime while bullets whistle around the Toronto Eaton Centre and Florida’s stand-your-ground law remains an accessory to murder. The political emperors have no clothes to hide the stupidity of their inaction nor can they hide the elephant in the room, the NRA. But they don’t have to because there’s no public outrage. But there sure as hell would be an outrage from the minority if better gun laws were proposed. The NRA, like most lobbies, represents a minority not the majority, and funds the politicians so when a powerful
“People are the worst”
Coming 2026
My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."
"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama
This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.
It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.
My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.
It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.
As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.
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