This week’s horrific news reminded me why running for office again will not be in my future.
No, the news didn’t remind me I am 65 years old and hold the opinion that our nation sorely needs to refresh our geriatric politics by making way for a new generation of leaders to rise to prominence.
No, the news didn’t remind me of the sorry-ass condition of both major parties and how hard it is to carry either one’s banner in good conscience.
I have a son who will be 26 years of age in a matter of days and writes the news for one of the network television affiliates in the Twin Cities. This week, he wrote about the two young children killed and 17 others injured at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. He wrote about the police investigation, a traumatized community’s reaction, the response of elected officials to the tragedy.
I recall sending him off to elementary school—a public school, a challenged one at that—and then to a zoo of a middle school, also part of the public school system. Next to a public high school, where there were daily skirmishes and caring counselors and dedicated teachers and college-level classes and lousy cafeteria food.
I recall all the conversations I had with neighboring parents, too many to count, who chose to steer clear of the public schools. I recall the many looks I got when I told them my son was attending those schools. I recall the few times when those looks turned into questions whether my family’s choice was a responsible one, a safe one.
I recall that when a mass shooting happened last year in my community it was at a small, private Christian school. That shooter’s name was written on the gun used in this week’s Minneapolis slaughter.
I hear politicians say this is not who we are. They’re wrong, this is exactly who we are. America is armed to the teeth and wants to keep it that way. There’s more than a mass shooting a day in the U.S. and the majority of Americans are well aware but also willing to take a calculated risk that the next one won’t happen in their church or at their child’s school. They’re right, it doesn’t happen everywhere. But it can happen anywhere, at anyone’s church, at any child’s school.
When I ran for governor in 2018, I went on record supporting 16 steps to deal with gun violence, from a 48-hour waiting period on gun purchases and universal criminal background checks to raising the gun purchase age to 21 and banning the sale and ownership of military-style assault weapons. I also called for doing away with bump stocks that turn ordinary guns into fully automatic weapons, and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines as well as armor-piercing bullets.
Some gun rights advocates accused me of wanting to end deer hunting in Wisconsin. Oh, please. Sorry, if you need a machine gun that fires off 30 armor-piercing rounds in a matter of seconds to kill a deer, you’re a lousy shot and a piss-poor hunter.
The stance I took as a candidate earned me a seal of approval from gun safety and violence prevention groups like Moms Demand Action and the Everytown Survivor Network, but won me few votes. Elections are held for the purpose of voters choosing representation, and this week’s news reminded me that my convictions are hardly representative of the majority in my state and nation. America is armed to the teeth and wishes to remain so, regardless of the risk, regardless of the human cost.
As I wrote in this space more than three years ago, mentalities like these cannot be legislated away, prescriptions for the cure to what ails our society most will not be written on Capitol Hill. Politics won’t fix us, at least not today’s politics. It’s being used these days to break us. We’ll have to fix ourselves first and our relationship to our country next, and eventually the nation’s politics will mirror that somewhere down the road. Today’s social change leads to tomorrow’s political action, not the other way around.
The haunting questions that desperately need answering are matters of the heart and soul. For hate and violence to be answered decisively and countered effectively, a moral reckoning is required. David Brooks has it right. For all the talk of the need for a political revolution, a cultural revolution is more crucial.