Overland Park Shooting--To Heal the Wounds of Hate

Another day, another day of senseless violence, not by a young teen, slashing fellow students at a Murrysville, or a vet on Fort Hood on a killing spree, but by a man of 73, a Vietnam vet but the holder of extreme anti-Black and Semitic views at a Jewish Community Center and nearby assisted living facility in Overland Park, Kansas. As the police investigate this horrific crime, one hopes the mental health profession is deeply involved--we have to do a better job of reaching out to and trying to defuse the problems facing those who may have mental health issues and are but acts or words away from snapping in rage and killing or wounding innocents.
To Heal the Wounds of Hate

Time may heal all wounds, but at Overland Park not the emotion of hate

For F. Glenn Miller it only festered, grew and would not abate

He has been charged in the senseless murders of three, including a 14 year old child

At 73 a Vietnam vet one cannot imagine what caused the dam to break and hate run wild

He has gained his Warhol moment of 15 minutes of absolute, reviled shame

Then with his hatred to rot away in prison, alone, without support his acts we all declaim

He at his trial will be accorded all the rights to others his actions mock

Right of counsel, a fair trial, an insanity defense that may his mental state unlock

His actions and views toward Jews and Blacks are not by the rest of us in any way shared

To save his skin, one hopes at trial he does not take the stand, no forum for those views to air

The deaths are a tragedy, a pox and a stain upon humanity, the news we have come to dread

The real tragedy will be if we do not learn how to reach Millers of the world before others in the future are shot dead.

Why did we miss the signs not well hidden of violence against Jews and Blacks waiting to erupt?

How can we in the future the march to hate to kill somehow interrupt?

While the answers we may never know, we all should take a united stand

Hate, bigotry against any race or creed cannot be in our house, it must not survive in this land.

© April 14, 2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet