Seen and heard… circa 2033

The following stories were reported in various newspapers and media outlets during the year of 2033.

August 2033 – As reported in the sixth page of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH

“Solon, OH is a typical middle class city on the outskirts of the metropolis of Cleveland, OH.  The Solon High School, home of the Comets, has consistently been graded as “Excellent with Distinction” in State school rankings.  The school boasts a near perfect graduating record with more than 90% of its graduating seniors moving onto prestigious local and national Universities to pursue their college degrees.  

Even though the schools in neighboring cities like Warrensville Heights and Bedford Heights have had incidents of gun violence, Solon has enjoyed relative tranquility up until now.  This morning, at 7:45 AM, John Adams, a fifteen year old junior, got into a verbal argument with another junior Scott Walker about a shared interest in fellow junior Lisa Munroe.  The argument soon erupted into some pushing and shoving and the other students milling around the locker room area tried to intervene and separate them.  John Adams at this time lost his composure, reached into his locker to grab his semi-automatic Colt 45 and started shooting into the crowded hallway.  Many students ducked for cover and several others reached into their own lockers, grabbed their weapons and started shooting.  Within a few minutes, the school security arrived with fully automatic weapons and not being sure about the reason for the gun fire, ensured that all students with weapons were taken down.  When the bodies were counted, in all fifteen students were killed and thirty other students were transported to area hospitals with varying degrees of gunshot wounds.  At least three of the students are in critical condition and are not expected to survive.  Classes resumed within thirty minutes of the end of the gunfire.  The principal made an announcement over the PA system about the need to show restraint while getting into any arguments and encouraged the students to avoid reaching for their guns first.  Later that afternoon he called the parents of the slain students to inform them about the tragedy.  He also posted the list of the names of the slain students in the school Notice Board.

While there was no candle light vigil or any such remembrance for the slain students, a small group of mothers, may be not more than six, associated with an organization called “Mothers Against Arming Children (MAAC)” staged a thirty minute rally in front of school protesting the rights of students to bring firearms into school buildings.  They were roundly booed by a larger group of people, ostensibly supporters of the NRA.  The passing cars honked their horns in support of the NRA supporters.  Luckily, the protesting mothers and the NRA supporters dispersed in about 30 minutes without any untoward incidents.

It is apt to recall that, about twenty years back, in the neighboring city of Chardon, TJ Lane, a high school student, walked into his school cafeteria one early morning in February and started randomly shooting at his schoolmates.  The resulting carnage left three students dead.  The incident triggered a furious debate in the state with gun control advocates pushing for stronger controls on gun purchase.  The NRA and their supporters resorted to the familiar argument that it is not the guns that kill, but it is the people.  They argued that if the other students in Chardon had carried guns, TJ Lane could have been taken down by another student with a gun.  The NRA argument prevailed that day.  The NRA and gun rights advocates worked hard in the state legislatures to successfully remove the designation of schools as “gun free” zones.  The incident in Solon leaves one to wonder what would be today’s argument by the NRA.”

It is also worthwhile to observe that there was no national or local coverage for the incident in Solon other than the report in the Plain Dealer.

September 2033, as reported in the Oberlin-News Tribune

On September 21, 2013, the Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial started the following way “Oberlin, Ohio was the latest victim Monday night of firearms aficionados who seem intent on turning the entire state into a shooting range”.  The Plain Dealer editorial was lamenting the action the previous week by the Oberlin City Council to rescind a local ordinance that had prohibited weapons in Oberlin’s public parks.  

The words of the Plain Dealer editorial were prescient and it came to be yesterday evening, almost twenty years to the day.  Yesterday evening, the soccer field on the City Park turned into a shooting range that saw pitched gun battles between several parents that resulted in the death of eight adults and ten children.  It all started when Joey Forina, a ten year old fifth grader, fouled Marco Swanson, a much smaller nine year old fourth grader.  The parents of the two boys were watching from the sidelines.  Marco was visibly hurt from the kick to his shin and both his parents rushed to his side to check on him.  They also scolded Joey for his unsportsmanlike conduct in not helping Marco to his feet.  Joey’s parents, who were also watching the boys from the sidelines, did not take kindly to Marco’s parents exchanging any words with their son.  The two parents got into an argument that led to other parents getting involved in the argument and people taking sides.  Unfortunately the tensions boiled over.  It is not clear who reached for their guns first, but it is safe to say that many parents came to the soccer grounds packing their guns.  It appears that is the custom these days in all public parks.  The police arrived within a few minutes of the starting of the melee and was able to stop any further carnage.

Since 2013, when the ordinance to designate city parks as gun free zones was rescinded, the city has seen several gun related incidents that have resulted in occasional gun fights and unfortunate resulting casualties.  But the city has never seen anything of the scale as we witnessed today.  There is already debate starting in the city halls that the city should allow its citizens to carry automatic weapons and also be able to openly display that they are carrying arms.  The argument goes that if the parents who engaged in the gun fights knew that others were armed and were able to see the type of ammo they were packing, they would have been less reluctant to reach for their guns.  The NRA representative made this argument very strongly in front of a crowd of parents that had assembled in the soccer stadium.  From the body language of the assembled crowd, it appears that the NRA has a winning argument.  The NRA representative indicated that the City Council members supporting its position would soon introduce bills to allow the citizens to openly display any ammunition they pack, including the likes of AK-47 and AR-15 guns.

Deleterious effects of NSA snooping

The voluminous pages of classified information that were leaked by Edward Snowden, an erstwhile NSA contractor, revealed the elaborate, systematic and ongoing snooping by the NSA into every phone call, email  and internet action by ordinary citizens in the US and in other countries.  The volume of data and the type of data that is being collected by the NSA is staggering.  NSA can, through its archives, and if it so wants, piece together every action, thought or conversation that ordinary people have every day in the conduct of their personal lives, their professions or their hobbies.  It is indeed Orwell’s Big Brother fully deployed with the assistance of modern day technology.  And just as in Orwell’s novel, it is all being done in the name of national security and the desire to protect us from each other.

While there is discourse and debate among civil libertarians about what all this snooping means with regards to individual liberty that is at the essence of the US constitution, there seems to be an overall apathy to the Government intrusion amongst the public.  After a series of national traumas starting with 9/11, and then the prolonged wars , the many foiled terrorist activities in the homeland and the Boston Marathon bombings, the country is in a mood to give up certain liberties for buying some piece of mind with the knowledge that the Government is watching and ahead of the curve on what the bad guys amongst us are up to.  A case can be made that if the Government was able to get to the doings of the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, the Boston Marathon bombings could have been avoided.

But what would we be trading for giving up our privacy and through that our freedom to have uninhibited thoughts?  What corrosive long term consequences will that have on the nation’s standing as the bastion of individual liberty and the guarantor of freedom to pursue happiness of their definition by its citizens?  And consequently, what will that mean for our economic security in an evolving interconnected world?

The world we live in is changing at a rapid pace.  The pace and the dramatic nature of the changes are being ushered in because of the technology changes.  And the United States is at the heart of many of the evolving technologies – the discovery of the science needed to make the technologies, the innovative application of these discoveries to come up with new inventions, and the re-arranging of ways of living by incorporating these new technologies into our daily lives. 

The US is economically benefiting significantly because of this leadership position that it holds today.  But other countries are catching up and are trying to participate in the innovation game and being the first ones to come up with new ideas and products.  The world of tomorrow will be a hugely interconnected world of commerce and the countries are going to become like corporations – those that continually innovate are going to hold positions of power, influence and hegemony.   The US is a leader today because the best talent in the world wants to come to its shores to use their mind and brains to create the new discoveries and innovations of tomorrow.  A large part of that attraction is because of the openness of the society that we have created and the guaranty of freedom to pursue ideas that are outside the mainstream.  We may not be an attractive society if we start telegraphing to the world that there is interference to that freedom of thought.  And soon, we may not have the edge in the cycle of innovation.

We cannot live in a world anymore where we are cocooned off from the rest of the world.  Our security cannot be defined anymore just as the security of the geographic boundaries.  The shrinking of the world through internet and travel has inextricably interconnected the world and the economic security of our nation goes beyond the national borders.  Any policy that talks about security has to look at beyond the borders and the implications of our standing in the context of the whole world.

We may be able to block the terrorists entering the nation or perpetrating cowardly acts in our homeland by resorting to overwhelming snooping of all activities.  But during that process, we may also stop the inflow of superior brains from all over the world into our country and over a period of time give up our perch as the economic leader of the world.  

American Exceptionalism

Tuesday of this week, President Barack Obama made his case to the nation for his set of actions on the civil war raging in Syria. In the absence of a clear threat to the United States or a threat to its interests and also in the face of overwhelming national apathy to get involved in yet another conflict in the Middle East, Mr. Obama had a difficult task at hand.  He evoked the images of children dying due to the chemical attacks by the Assad regime as the principal reason for US involvement in the conflict.  He ended his address by stating that Americans cannot look the other way when children are being murdered and our concern makes us exceptional, unlike any other country.

The next day, Vladimir Putin, his political nemesis on the Syria matter, took to the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times with his take on why US should not use force.  He also used the piece to chide Mr. Obama to refer to Americans as exceptional and added “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation”.  Mr. Putin’s completely off-mark interpretation of the remarks by the President could be attributed to the Russians extreme sensitivity to any group asserting superiority over others.  After all that is how the Nazi era was born, with Hitler asserting the superiority of the Aryan race over everyone else, and Russia suffered heavily because of the actions of that group.  So it is important to re-assure Putin that he has nothing to fear and to ensure that he understands the correct interpretation of American exceptionalism.

America is exceptional because of its people.  There is no other country in the world except the United States where its people do not have a shared ancestry. And there is no other country other than the US where it has enshrined in its founding documents, the principle of equality of all its diverse people, and the freedom to pursue happiness the way they see fit.  This incredible commitment to diversity and liberty has created a melting pot of culture, fusion of ideas, and a crucible for innovation from which new strains of thoughts and ways of living are evolving every day.  America is exceptional not because of its military superiority.  America is exceptional because there is opportunity for every citizen to achieve exception in whatever they want to pursue without the fear of Government or other consequences.

There are exceptional men and women in many countries, highly likely in the same proportions as in the US, and these exceptional people belong to different hues, ethnicity and religions.  But the countries that these exceptional people belong to are not exceptional.  All Americans are not exceptional, but America is exceptional because of all its people.