To the Bush administration,
I feel like I am watching a
little girl play with a
loaded gun from behind a solid locked door with a window in it. "Stop!" I tell her, "it will hurt you or someone you love!" I don't know if she can hear me. This is very frustrating. This is how your plans have made me feel. How do I internalize this frustration so that it doesn't come out in my open hand against my own daughter's face, or my wife's? How do I stop from going crazy? Is it because I am behind the door? Because I know I am powerless in this so-called democracy, in this world where two gigantic wars have produced
something United, some set of leaders interested in avoiding gigantic problems? Is it because I know that all I can do is watch her play with that gun and hope that when she or someone she loves gets injured enough to make her stop, that the wound is on an arm or a leg, not in an eye or a belly or a throat? How can I watch?
It is because
I have seen a child die from a bullet wound and it is very sad, but there are other people left living and each one who suffers from the loss contributes to the effort to keeps guns away from children. And so I hope we learn our lesson from the tragedies you are creating. I expect it to hurt, but I expect us to learn from it. This is how I can hold back my hand from my children and my wife in the midst of my powerlessness. I am sending all my support to the
historians.