The Ghost of Old Tom Joad

Most days I peruse the news for something I can write about here. Sometimes I can't find anything to stoke my interest. At other times, there's just so much absurdity that I can't decide where to start. Today falls into the latter camp. What do I write about? The secret CIA prison in Romania? The on-going football coach sex scandal? The US telling Russia to allow protesters to protest while at the same time clearing protesters from the streets of American cities? Alec Baldwin getting thrown off a plane for playing a game on his cell-phone, then tweeting the whole world about how rudely he was treated? Lawmakers who insist that the way to save our economy is to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans while raising them on the middle class? And on and on it goes. But, after much thought, the story that struck me most today was the woman in Texas who shot her two children in the head, then killed herself, when she couldn't get state assistance. Rachelle Grimmer had moved to Texas eight months ago looking for work. Finally, unable to find a job and fed up with a system that wouldn't help her, she went to the health and human services office in downtown Laredo, where she took a counselor hostage. After some time she let the counselor go, but then she shot her daughter Ramie and her son Timothy in the head, then turned the gun on herself. (That is NOT the Grimmers in the photo, by the way) Rachelle was pronounced dead at the scene. Ramie and Timothy are in critical condition in a San Antonio hospital. Before she died, Ramie used her cell phone to post a statement on her Facebook page. It read simply, "may die 2day."

Cases of parents killing their families has risen to epidemic proportions in this country, especially since the advent of the Great Recession of 2008. I'm not talking about the people who feel bullied or rejected, so the go off and kill their classmates and coworkers. I'm talking about a mother or father, sensing that they have lost everything, and seeing no sense in going on, take not only their own lives but the lives of their spouses and children as well. These are in addition to all of the other spree killers that pop up on an almost weekly basis in the US, the people who trip over the edge and take two or three hand guns and a backpack full of loaded clips to work or to school and go on shooting rampages. Does it strike no one as odd that the US has by far the largest percentage of spree killers in the world? We sit back and watch the nightly news and are rightly appalled at the random acts of violence that take place in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and the Congo, but why are we not just as appalled and concerned about the increasingly large numbers of people who are wounded and killed every year right in this country? If we read about these levels of violence in another country, would we not demand some type of response? Why do we not then demand something be done here? Why don't we do a better job of getting to the root causes of this phenomenon and stopping it?

I don't have the answers to these questions. I only know that in most of the more recent cases, depression and despair have gripped the perpetrators so fiercely that they see no way out of their current situations, so they decide to end it for themselves and for their families. In the Bible, the Lord told his disciples that in the last days men's hearts would fail them. Most of the Christian world takes that to mean more people with die of heart failure. I read that in a broader way. People are losing heart, losing hope, collapsing in despair. In this way, their hearts are indeed failing them. And when they have lost heart and all hope, they take themselves and what is most dear to them out of this world for good. As I ponder this situation, the Occupy Wall Street protesters come to mind. They call themselves the 99%, referring to the statistic that 1% of the people in this country have as much wealth as the other 99% who are left. The parents who take their children's lives are also part of the 99%. They're the people who are left over when the jobs are exported to India and China. They are the people who are left over when the Welfare and Medicare and Foodstamps are cut back. And their hearts are failing them. The words of Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad" come to mind:

Men walkin' along the railroad tracks
Goin' someplace and there's no goin' back
Highway patrol choppers comin' up over the ridge
Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin' round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin' in their cars in the Southwest
No home, no job, no peace, no rest

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody 'bout where it's goin'
I'm sittin' out here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad.

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleepin' bag
Preacher lights up a but and he takes a drag
Waitin' for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box under the overpass
Got a one-way ticket for the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand
Sleepin' on a pillow of solid rock
Bathin' in the city aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight
But where it's headin' everyone knows
I'm sittin'n down here in the campfire light
Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad.

Now Tom said, "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me, Mom, I'll be there
Wherever somebody's fightin' for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever sombody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes, Mama, you'll see me."

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody 'bout where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad.

For those of you who don't know who Tom Joad is, I suggest you read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.