Quit Pushing the Reset Button

(In Memory of those brave souls:  Dawn Hochsprung, Victoria Soto, and Mary Sherlach.)

I don't have the answers.  I know it's a complex issue.  But I recognize bullshit and rhetoric when I see them, and I recognize the sights and sounds of the reset button being pushed:  the montage of victims faces with piano music played over, the politicians promising change... no really, real change this time, honest, we swear... real change... right?

I can tell you that what needs to occur is a cultural change.  It may involve gun control legislation.  It may involve better investment in mental health.  Maybe it requires a more careful look at censorship and movie ratings.  Maybe it needs a greater investment in the schools.  Perhaps the media needs to take a closer look at their civic responsibilities and less a look at their ratings.  These are all things everyone regurgitates time after time as these events occur with ever-increasing frequency, and yet nothing happens.  The button goes down; the button comes back up.  Things go back to the way they were.

And there is no silver bullet.  There is no one simple, legal-policy solution to a large and complex social problem.  And what solutions may come will come slowly, because social change is always an evolution, not a revolution.

What I can say is that such a change, a real change, can only come from a real commitment.  It doesn't come from the New Years Resolution to diet, or the promise that you'll quit smoking right after this last pack, and those are the kind of assurances that the American people seem to repeatedly hear from the American government.  If you want to lose weight and keep it off you need to make a lifestyle change, and maintain it.  You need to make a real commitment to a change you can live with, and live with forever.  If you want your citizens to stop spree-killing one another, you need to make a cultural change, and maintain that new culture.

Obama had the flags lowered, in grief, after the event at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Here's my suggestion:  keep the flags down.

Keep them down.  Not in grief, but in shame.  Keep them down as a visual reminder that you're making a commitment to real change.  To me, when that flag goes back up, it's like the reset button coming back up.  Things return to the way they were.  Nothing is any different, and the future won't be either.  So keep them down.  Keep them down until you've actually taken the steps toward real change.  It's like saying "I don't get to buy my new big-screen TV until I've shaved off 10 pounds, and kept it off for three months!"  Put something on the line.  Put a comfortable walk into a government building on the line.  Put pride on the line.  Put the reputation of a nation on the line (hint: it already is).  Let the policy-makers walk past a half-mast flag every day until real changes have been put in place, as a stark visual reminder of the colossal failures of the past.

Of course, there's one really big problem with my suggestion:  it would require courage, humility, and a willingness to proritize results over reputation.  If the American culture had enough of all those, it wouldn't have a spree-killing problem in the first place.

I hope they find a way to make a real change.  I really do.  And I hope this not just because without it more people will die, but because this line - a school full of elementary children - is the farthest and darkest line I can think of.  So if the American culture crossing this line isn't enough to inspire real change, what is?