Collateral damage. Those words keep running through my mind, especially in light of some of the recent events in the USA. The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas is one of them. Our children are the collateral damage in the obsession to uphold the second amendment at any cost and to placate the NRA. Our children don’t matter to the politicians who insist that the second amendment be upheld. They simply don’t matter. The NRA matters most.
Our children suffer again when schools have to spend
thousands of dollars on defence against active shooters, money that could be
spent on increasing salaries for teachers so that our children would benefit intellectually.
But our children don’t matter to the politicians who insist that the best
solution is that teachers arm themselves and learn to shoot. Teachers don’t
matter either to our esteemed politicians.
Ordinary folks in society are collateral damage when liberals push to defund the police and conservatives push guns on us. Many ordinary citizens don’t
want to own a gun or learn how to shoot one. They also don’t want the police to
be defunded. What they do want is for the police to do their jobs and that they
are visible to society at large. The majority of ordinary citizens trust the
police. Yes, there are bad police, just as there are bad doctors, bad nurses,
and bad priests. But if the police disappear from a society, chaos will reign.
It won’t be a society any of us will want to live in.
The overturning of Roe versus Wade is another recent event that will have collateral damage. Poor women will not have access to abortion if they need one. You can argue the morality of abortion all you like; the reality is that abortion, like prostitution, will exist until the end of time. Banning abortion will not stop abortion; it will simply drive it underground, as was the case before Roe versus Wade. Backroom abortions that led to infection and death. Yes, poor women will be able to travel to those states that still permit abortion, but the travel costs will not be reimbursed by anyone nor will the actual procedure. That is not the case for middle and upper class women working for companies who will cover the costs. One can argue that unborn babies have been collateral damage as the result of access to unlimited abortion and that is true. But it is also true that none of the women I know who have had an abortion really wanted to have one; they were very young and they felt pressured to have an abortion by the men in their lives who did not want to be fathers or who did not want more children. Shall we then blame the men for their decisions? Perhaps we should. Men play a big role here.
In Europe, the liberal approach to crime has led to violent mentally-ill people being let back onto the streets of society after being assessed by teams of psychiatrists as 'safe'. There are people who have said to me that 'everyone is a potential murderer', which can explain the liberal approach to criminals; we should feel sorry for them. In Scandinavia murderers don't often get long prison sentences if they are convicted. According to Wikipedia, the longest prison sentence in Norway is 21 years, although the new Penal Code provides for a 30-year maximum sentence for crimes related to genocide, crimes against humanity or some other war crimes. Collateral damage? The poor victims of stabbings, shootings, and bow and arrow killings, along with their families and friends. Anyone who forgets the victims of such crimes should rot in hell. If that makes me a conservative on crime, then I am. I'm all for long prison sentences for murder, 40 years minimum in most cases. Because in most cases there is discussion ad nauseam about whether the criminal 'knew' what he was doing. If he or she was truly mentally ill, then they belong in a mental hospital; if not, then they belong in prison, not back on the streets to commit yet more atrocities. I'm all for rehabilitation of criminals, but there needs to be more compassion for the victims and their families, which there is not at present.
Again in Europe, we see the collateral damage and fallout from the pandemic. Airline companies let a lot of workers go during the pandemic and have not rehired enough people to tackle the upcoming summer vacation crowds. Now the airline mechanics are on strike, as are the pilots, at least here in Norway. They are striking for more money, of course. No one cares about the passengers who had been looking forward to well-earned vacations. The situation is chaotic at best. The airline companies should have prepared better, but they didn't because it costs money to prepare better. And the companies don't want to spend a penny more than they have to, except where leader salaries are concerned. Rest assured the leaders are still pulling in big bucks at the expense of ordinary people. They will bankrupt their companies and go on their merry ways, because the only thing they think about is themselves. It is of course more complicated than this, but greed is a huge part of it.
The world is not black and white, as much as some people
would like it to be. Black and white is easy, but ultimately destructive. It
leads to ‘Me against you’, ‘Us against them’. Unfortunately for the black and
white folks, there are multiple gray areas and nuances in life. Compassion and
empathy are also collateral damage resulting from policies and laws that do not
acknowledge the gray areas in life. Intelligence and reflection are also
collateral damage. We have reached the point in society where the death of
intelligence and compassion is merely glossed over. Our humanity is the
collateral damage.
