Azzi: I, too, am tired of prayers and moments of silence

I remember two school shootings, both at The American University of Beirut (AUB), not far from my home in Lebanon's capital. The first, in 1976, when two Deans, Robert Najemy (from Worcester, MA) and Raymond Ghosn, were shot and killed by a former student who had been expelled for radical activity.

Then, in 1984, in another shooting I remember well - although I wasn't in Beirut at the time - Professor Malcolm Kerr, AUB's president, was assassinated by unknown assailants.

These days I'm reminded most often of Dr. Kerr not only because I had met him, not only by his books which have prominence on my shelves, but also because I'm a great fan of his son, Steve Kerr, head coach of the NBA's Golden State Warriors.

Indeed, the only time I don't root for the Warriors is when they're playing the Boston Celtics.

The Kerr family has deep Middle East roots. Before joining AUB Steve's grand-parents worked with Armenian survivors of the Turkish Genocide. Dr. Kerr was a scholar of great authority and courage who took AUB's helm at a time when Lebanon was struggling through a civil war, and Steve attended high school at local American Community School.

So on Tuesday night, before the tip of game 5 between the Warriors and Dallas Mavericks, it didn't surprise me to hear Steve Kerr angrily respond to reports of another massacre of school children in Uvalde, Texas, where at least 19 children, and two teachers, were murdered:

“When are we going to do something? I am tired. I am so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families out there. I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough. … So I ask you, Mitch McConnell and all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and the school shootings and the supermarket shootings – I ask you, are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our church-goers?  ... We can’t get numb to this. We can’t sit here and just read about it and say let’s have a moment of silence.”

“I’m fed up. I’ve had enough. We’re going to play the game tonight, but I want every person here, every person listening to this to think about your own child or grandchild or mother or father or sister or brother." 

I, too, am tired of prayers and moments of silence.

Violence in America is nothing new. Over the centuries, America's been very good at it but in the last decade or so it's risen to a level rarely witnessed since Jim Crow and the Klan.

Personally, I date the maelstrom currently sucking life out of democracy's vital organs as beginning in 2011 when Donald Trump began escalating charges of birtherism and racism. Switching from dog-whistles to megaphones, Trump unceasingly charged President Obama with being a secret Muslim, charged Mexicans with being rapists, disparaged immigrants and refugees as coming from "shithole countries;" and in 2017 even praised anti-Semites as "very fine people."

His words fell on some welcome ears; upon those Americans whose grievances and resentments rendered them susceptible to charlatans and demagogues. He blamed the Other as the source of their discontent and gave them permission to voice and act upon their prejudices.

Fell, too, upon those Americans hungry for power and profit.

Indeed, in 2018, his collaborator Steve Bannon, while sharing a stage in Lille, France with Marine Le Pen, and told a National Front audience "Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor."

Wear racism as a badge of honor.

Badge of honor in a nation where it's estimated that there are 120.5 firearms per 100 residents - the only country in the world with more civilian-owned firearms than people.

Milton (one of the dead white European authors often assigned to students) wrote in "Paradise Lost:"

"First Moloch, horrid king besmear'd with blood

Of human sacrifice, and parents teares,

Though, for the noise of drums & timbrells loud

Thir childrens cries unheard, that past through fire

To his grim Idol."

The violent horrors visited upon America - upon mothers and children, tears unseen, cries unheard -  cannot simply be blamed on isolated "unhinged" people: the "unhinged" may have perpetrated the crime but they have been groomed and armed and released into public spaces by an anti-democratic community willing not only to sacrifice children but democracy itself in pursuit of power and profit.

In spite of prayers and moments of silence they don't care about the victims of the 18-year-old white supremacist who hunted Black Americans and who killed 10 Americans in Buffalo, NY.

They only care that the body armor and modified Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle that he carried remains legal, unchecked, unregistered, and unrestrained.

In spite of prayers and moments of silence they don't care about the victims in Uvalde, Texas.

They only care that AR-15-style weapons can be bought for cash without background checks by teenagers with an urge to kill.

“We’ve had guns forever and we’re gonna continue to have guns,” Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville said, responding to the yet another school massacre.

Guns forever, in a nation where our soil is today saturated by the blood of innocents.

I, too, am tired of prayers and moments of silence.

“The truly civilized man is marked by empathy," Professor Malcolm Kerr wrote. "By his recognition that the thought and understanding of men of other cultures may differ sharply from his own, that what seems natural to him may appear grotesque to others.”

Today, America is confronted by non-empathetic forces that embrace not our Constitution but white supremacy and bigotry. Sustained through ignorance and irrational beliefs and failing to recognize that the thoughts and understanding of other peoples may differ sharply from their own, they are trapped in a white Christianist nationalism where fear and hate are weaponized in repudiation of any kind of Abrahamic teaching or humanitarian impulse.

In 1988, as the University of Arizona basketball team was warming up prior to a game at rival Arizona State, Kerr was taunted by fans with chants that included "Where’s your father?" Reportedly moved to tears, Kerr responded by scoring 20 points in the first half, including making all six of his three point attempts, and led his Wildcats to victory.

“The truly civilized man is marked by empathy” - and blessed with a great three-point shot!

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: I, too, am tired of prayers and moments of silence