It started with the shooting at the Altria. A nineteen year old kid gunning down a father and son in cold blood, injuring five others. There isn’t a single person I know who was shocked or surprised by the killings. Why would we be? What exempts Richmond, Virginia from this plague? Nothing. In fact these two deaths weren’t even the only ones of the day involving teenagers and firearms in the city. It has become as commonplace as jaywalking. We are desensitized to the barbarism of it. Besides, it was a Richmond city school. What did we expect, right? I heard more than one person comment on the fact that the eighteen year old victim was only eighteen years older than his father—who wasn’t even his father, but a step-father—further proof of the mishmash that the black inner city family has become. I hear these things and part of me admits to the truth of the underlying assumptions. I am aware of the horrifying statistics. But, another part of me recoils from such an emotionless, utilitarian disregard for the value of a human life snuffed out thirty minutes after his high school graduation. It was Huguenot High School…what did you expect? Not this. That school is filled with a thousand human souls of great nobility and infinite worth, everyone of them created in the image of God. The day that we all blithely expect a shooting at a graduation ceremony is the day that hope dies. Then I hear Richmond’s hapless mayor repeat the question twice to a group of reporters, as if we all didn’t hear him the first time—-“is nothing sacred anymore?” Come now, Mayor Stoney. You know the answer to that question.
Then, the only man in America with the power to upstage literally anything, Donald Trump managed to wipe the Huguenot High School shooting off the front pages with the news that he has been indicted on over 30 counts of espionage and gross mismanagement of classified documents and lying about said handling. He will be arraigned next week. Now the country will have to endure the embarrassment and folly of the government of a sitting President trying to convict the top rival for his job with crimes that could lock up The Don for the rest of his life. Sigh…Do I think that Trump will serve one day in jail? No. Do I think he is guilty of gross misuse of the secrets of the United States of America? If his own recorded voice is in fact him, Yes! The couple snippets I heard sounded like a middle school boy trying to impress his friends—“I probably shouldn’t be showing you this, in fact you shouldn’t get too close to this map!!” To what end would any President, even this nihilistic one, carry off truck loads of sensitive and classified documents and then store them haphazardly in his home which doubles as a resort hotel teeming with Saudi’s? I can think of no rational reason for anyone to behave this way. But then again, I have never been able to understand 45 using rationality. Will this be the end of him? No. Somehow he will survive. He always does. Once he is dead and gone, I am sure that he will find a way to scandalize us from the grave.
But, as disconcerting as this week was it has gotten infinitely better since Pam got home. Lucy is finally calm and secure. When one of us is away, she never knows quite how to relax. She is a herder of her people. We must all be in our place before she can rest. I’m exactly the same way when Pam is away.
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