Have Yourself A Merry Little...ah, @#$! it. [View all]

[Plaid Adder]

This has been one humdinger of a Christmas season.

I don't know about you all, but I have not felt this far away from "peace on Earth, goodwill toward men" since the beginning of the Iraq war. I still think about Sandy Hook every day; the deaths of those children haunt me every time I look at my own. And now there is this horrible thing in upstate New York.

Here is the only thing that will make Christmas work for me this year: believing that on the other side of it is the beginning of change. That we will in fact come together around gun violence and that maybe this time next year there will be no shootings at malls, no shootings at elementary schools, no snipings at volunteer firefighters. Maybe this time next year it will be harder for people who want to kill other people to get their hands on guns. Maybe that will be this Christmas's gift to next Christmas.

I've been thinking about what I want to have happen in the coming months. What I want, first of all, is to see the power of the gun lobby broken. I would like for accepting campaign money from the gun industry or its advocates to become as politically toxic as accepting campaign money from the KKK. I want all the lobbyists who work for the gun industry to become well-known to the public and I want any politician who is seen having lunch with one or attending one of their cocktail parties to be publicly shamed and electorally punished. I want it to be impossible for the NRA to hold a rally without attracting a massive protest. I want the people who have bought and shaped and rammed through Congress and the individual state legislatures the ruinous policies that have led to an epidemic of gun violence which has been a problem for a long damn time before this Christmas season to be treated the same way we treat other predators who hurt children.

Because I think that is what it will take before we see real reform coming from the politicians. Change doesn't come from them. We make change, and we make the change visible, and we make the change unavoidable, and then they finally follow us.

I believe it can be done. Maybe even by next Christmas. As long as we don't forget what this one was like.

Celebrate what you can, mourn what you have lost, and I'll see you on the other side of Christmas. I will be looking for ways to make this happen. I hope that together we will find them.

Peace,

The Plaid Adder