"Here in Greece, we like Armenians. They are a very nice people, very good people. And they also were treated horribly by the Ottomans just as we were." Jimmy's wife who runs the art and ceramic shop adjacent to their restaurant in Hora told me. "The Turks were terrible to them – they even did you know the word (she said the Greek equivalent of Genocide, which I was able to decipher)… yes, that! It's a horrible unforgivable thing to do. They killed hundred of thousands of them…."
She had asked me what my family ethnicity was after being surprised that I wasn't Greek. This actually happens a fair amount. Different parts of my family came from different places, but for expediency and to help her put my looks to rest, I told her Romania. She misunderstood and thought I said Armenia. I realized at the mistake at this point and corrected her.
"Well, they went through lots of problems with the Ottomans too (which was true) and they are very nice people. Greeks always like Romanians! All the people who went through the Ottoman brutality." (which I assume to mean Christian countries that were occupied by the Ottoman Empire)
"What about Bulgarians? They were occupied by the Ottomans but then in World War 2, they were brutal to Greece."
"Well, that was war…. in war terrible things happen. You can't blame them in the same way as genocide. There is no excuse for genocide. To kill people just for who they are…"
"But the Bulgarians shot Greeks, starved them, pushed people off their land, rounded up Jews and Gypsies…."
"Look, one of the worst insults you can give in Greek is calling someone Bulgarian. It's a word…. you just don't say it."
The tour of this nice woman's somewhat fuzzy logic was interesting – but while I disagree that conduct in war is something that just happens, I think what she really meant is that there's a hierarchy of brutality and cruelty and to kill powerless people for no reason other than they exist is the worst offense.
Today I woke up to the news of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. I cried as I read it – something that despite all the hours in Ukraine, I have not done. Perhaps for the same reason Jimmy's wife was trying to convey. War is brutal and horrible – but there's sort of a framework we place around it. But to open fire on an elementary school with automatic weapons killing 19 children, 2 adults with a yet untallied number of injured being treated – it's an unforgivable, incomprehensible kind of evil.
Nothing makes me more frightened or angry than school shootings – especially elementary. First, the fact that I can write that sentence with the very idea that shootings at schools are a thing that happens is shocking and something gone horribly wrong in our society. Secondly, there's a feeling that as the kids get younger, the crime of it gets even more inhuman. Lastly, I have two kids in an elementary school and I'd be surprised if there's a parent out there who can't immediately imagine and relate to what what it would be like if…. If I had to come up with the worst thing that could possibly happen, that might be it.
In fact, it's hard to say who are the most impacted victims – the children who lost their lives or the survivors? How will the living children ever feel safe again? Parts of the parents of the lost children were also killed. The parents of injured children too are traumatized. Everyone at that school, linked to it, or in the community surrounding are traumatized. Not just for the loss and fear - which themselves are debilitating – but because attacking children is an attack on everyone – on something we all hold sacred. America feels very politically fractured right now, but I like to think there are things everyone agrees on – things ingrained in our basic humanity – and the sanctity of a school seems like one of those.
One of my favorite authors, Antoine de Sainte-Exupery who wrote The Little Prince which I so often quote when discussing relationships also wrote a beautiful memoir called Wind Sand and Stars. Sainte-Exupery was a pilot in the early days of flying – who created the charts that led to early navigation and air mail routes. A storm surprised he and his comrades as they attempted a flight from Argentina to Chile. Two of them were able to return safely, but their friend Guillaumet was not so lucky and crashed in the Andes. Chilean officials were ready to pronounce Guillaumet dead if he was not located early the next morning – which he was not. Two nights and three days later, Guillaumet walked into a small Argentinean town and was transported to Mendoza where his life was saved, although not all of his extremities given the amount of frost bite he sustained in his feet and hands.
Guillaumet had remained in motion, walking the entire time knowing that stopping for even a moment would lead to death in the sub-zero temperatures with no available shelter.
Guillaumet's primary motivation was to make sure his body was found so that his wife and children would get his life insurance. He considered for a time just trying to make it to the highest peak possible so when the winter snows melted, his body would be discovered, but somehow he made it through.
For the parents of 19 children at Robb Elementary School, their planes crashed in the Andes yesterday and their fates remain unknown. If they have other children, those will be the people they march on for like Guillaumet and if they make it through the the inhospitable, life-threatening conditions they find themselves in, they will have good reason to be so proud of their hearts. Also like Guillaumet, part of them will be too frozen or damaged to ever work the same way again. They will never traverse the world as they once did. They will limp or need crutches.
When something like this happens – and again, I use the present perfect which seems utterly absurd – in my mind, I immediately pack up my family and we move to Singapore – my emergency backup place for raising my family. There are no shootings in Singapore. There is good education, healthcare and a Jewish community. I would never have to worry about their safety in public. When there was a shooting at the high school next to our niece Bailey's junior high two and a half years ago, I flipped out for a few hours and talked to Emily seriously about moving to Singapore before enough other people do that visas might not be available. She calmed me down – but how could I live with myself if I sent my children to school to die?
I'm most bothered by the fact that we responded quickly and with no expense spared for a pandemic caused by a germ agent, but for our epidemic of violence that strikes children in their classrooms and people praying in their places of worship, we seem hamstrung. Science rapidly identified SARS-COV-2 and in record time we developed vaccines, medicines, treatment protocols, public safety measures and have more or less navigated our way through a crisis. The best we can offer my children are lockdown drills in school – which implicitly state the the world has crazy people who might come to shoot them for no reason. Because it does. I can understand why a virus invades human cells to propagate. Why does anyone want to gun down kindergarteners?
Democratic presidents seem to immediately point to gun control as a solution. Republican presidents don't seem to have anything to offer. Neither of these responses satisfies me. The problem of mass shootings – whether in supermarkets, malls, places of worship, schools, hospitals (?!) – is a societal disease and we need to be researching and treating it just like COVID or cancer. Moreover, COVID and cancer don't create the same kind of trauma as mass shootings. Few people fear for their lives going to supermarkets, church, synagogue or school because of cancer. Few people have PTSD because of that day they watched 50 people drop dead in front of them from cancer. Communities are not in upheaval over cancer.
Personally, I don't think gun control itself will solve this problem. We have a public and mental health problem that is a key ingredient to mass shootings. I often think of the day I reported on a student who hung himself in his fraternity house. To round out the story, I contacted the Director of the University of Washington Counseling Center. She naturally told me that the Counseling Center was there to support anyone who needed with their trauma and grief. However, she said one more thing that gave me pause in the moment and stuck with me ever since: suicides tend to come in strings – usually of three – especially if they are publicized. Once the taboo of suicide is broken, others who may have been on the verge go ahead – frequently copying the method of the first one. In the kind of learning moment that a student paper is meant to create, we had a serious discussion in the newsroom about the ethics and implications of running the story. The verdict was that it was serious campus news, the victim's friends and family would be expecting it no less – and we couldn't censor ourselves as a public health measure. Nonetheless, there were two more hangings within two weeks – one of which was in another fraternity.
Wherever it began – perhaps Columbine – someone or a series of people broke the taboo of mass shootings. Something once unthinkable became an item on the menu for insane, angry men (usually, but not exclusively caucasian). The problem that really has to be solved is how do we take it off the menu? Or change the menu? Or get the kids out of the restaurant? I'm not sure which. No matter what, I feel confident that crazy, hateful people who want guns will find them – whatever we do. So our plan has to include more than gun control. Just as we did in previous threats to America's well-being, such as The Great Depression, the assassination of President Kennedy and 9-11, we need some kind of a council or brain trust on how to eliminate mass shootings. We need to dedicate resources to research and programs. When I was a child, there was a problem with hypodermic needles washing up on the shore. We don't have that problem today due to several initiatives – most significant of which has been harm reduction through needle exchanges. Solutions aren't always what you hope they might be – but something is better than nothing. Especially when children's lives are on the line.
On the other hand, the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms – but does not make that right unlimited. Just as we recognize that yelling "fire" in a crowded theater for no reason reaches beyond the protection of the First Amendment, we also don't allow civilians to carry grenade launchers and shoulder fired missiles. The Framers of the Constitution lived in a time of pistols and muskets that required pouring gunpowder to reload – an act which could take up to a minute per round. I doubt any of them imagined an AR-15 and I feel confident none of them conceived of weapons being used against children. We already limit the kinds of arms we allow civilians to carry. I can understand wanting a handgun or rifle for self-protection. Do we need semi-automatic weapons in our homes? That same shooter with a handgun could have done horrible things still – but not to as many people and not so quickly.
In my years of travel, I've been asked many times if America is safe. To people watching from abroad who see incidents like Robb Elementary and the Tops Supermarket shooting, it's easy to understand why. Shootings in schools are unfathomable to Greeks just as they were once to us. People protested and marched for George Floyd. The students at Robb Elementary were primarily Latino. The people who died at Tops Supermarket were primarily Black. The people who died at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church were Christian and Taiwanese. The people who died at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh were Jewish. The people who died at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs were primarily caucasian Christians. Everyone has skin in the game. Victims of mass shootings look like you, live like you, and are everywhere.
When terrorists took down the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, America rose up and changed things. Then we went to their countries and beat the shit out of them. Sure, it was easier because there was a clear enemy with a face and motivation we could comprehend. Now, more Americans die in mass shootings each year than on 9-11. Children die in mass shootings every year now. The enemy doesn't have a singular face or motivation we fully understand so we are strangely complacent. Unfortunately, that is exactly the wrong reaction. We need to get working. We need to rise to the occasion again because I don't want it to be my kids or yours – or anyone else's ever again.
