Orlando

I am human

This is so hard to write about.

I spent too much of yesterday in front of the TV watching images of a broad street in a Florida city, I've been to only once.

A street sometimes shown in pre-dawn darkness fractured by flashing emergency vehicle lights. People helping each other away. Away from the night club. The chaos. The terror.

Sometimes in daylight. It could have been anywhere, USA. There were no identifiable buildings. There was no ocean in view. No mountains. No expanse of prairie. Just crime scene tape and police cars. And network news crews giving us bits of news, bits of speculation. Telling us over and over "the investigation is ongoing." There will be a news conference when the officials have new information.

Law enforcement, news people, us -- we're all looking for information about the shooter. Who he was. The news people seem to be just one step behind the FBI. And we watch online, on TV. At the scene in Orlando. At the apartment complex where he lived and his parents' home, 130 miles away. In the White House, 850 miles away. In the home of his ex-wife in Colorado, almost 2,000 miles away.

Was this a terrorist act? The constant refrain of "was it ISIS directed or ISIS inspired?" They took credit, or maybe ISIS didn't exactly say they ordered this particular individual to kill these people.

Or a hate crime against the LGBT community? Someone said the shooter was furious about seeing two men kissing in public. Someone else said he beat his first wife. Someone said he hated blacks and women. Someone said ....

Did he act alone? Are there others here who will be directed or inspired by who knows whom or who knows what to do something as bad or worse?

What can we do? Make a law? We've got laws and murder is against the law -- no matter the motive or method. Gun control? What about airliners? New York City, 9/11/2001, nearly 3000 killed. What about fertilizer? Oklahoma City bombing, 1995, 168 dead. Gasoline? Happy Land social club, 1990, 87 dead.

Do we -- you and I -- think bad things about people we don't know? "They're lazy and dirty. They don't pay taxes." Believe bad things about people we don't know? "They're not like us. They don't value life. They are ruining my way of life." Say bad things about people we don't know. "They are anathema to my God. They don't deserve to live."

Do other people listen to us? Our children. Our relatives. Our neighbors. Their children. They know us. Which one of them might do something about "it."

We've got to change our culture, our society. Murder must not be the go-to solution for anything. ANYTHING!

Impossible? And what could I do anyway? I'm nobody important. Nobody listens to me.

Bull shit.

Like someone said, "Let it begin with me."

I am Pulse. I am Orlando. I am America.