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America Barely Noticed Navy Yard Shootings
What number of dead here would it have taken to give the nation pause? Twelve people were fatally shot at the Navy Yard on Monday, and America hardly noticed.

President Obama perfunctorily noted that "yet another mass shooting" had occurred. He required no moment to get control of his emotions, as he had at the lectern after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. Perhaps because he knew that the massacre of 20 children and six educators, and his subsequent attempts to jump-start the gun-control debate, changed nothing when it came to meaningful violence prevention.
Maybe Champ had a golf game lined up? Maybe it was mostly military folks. BTW, "meaningful violence prevention" means gun control, not help for sickos.
The President "perfunctorily noted" the shooting because there was nothing to be gained politically from it. A mentally ill African American shooting a bunch of mid to senior range civil service employees isn't as useful as dead school children and their 'educators'.
When 12 people are massacred in the District, it's not people dying in Real America. After Hurricane Katrina, everyone who'd ever sucked down a drink on Bourbon Street claimed the Big Easy as their home. When 12 people are shot dead in This Town, our nation shrugs collectively and offers justifications for its apathy. There were no children involved. It wasn't in a part of the city familiar to outsiders. It didn't affect thousands like a natural disaster.

Beyond the Beltway, Americans can be forgiven for not knowing the geography of the city. For not knowing that everything here happens within a few miles. That the site of the massacre is about a block from a park where kids splash in a fountain.
Just like inside the Beltway, few know what state Des Moines, Iowa resides in.
What cannot be forgiven is the dehumanization of a town and the uninterest when 12 people who work there do not make it home.
While I am sympathetic to your unhappiness, I fear you have done nothing to draw the attention of flyover country.
The "12 people who work there do not make it home" don't live in D.C. because the only ones who can live in D.C. are the very rich or the very poor. D.C. isn't a city. It's a bastard mix of administrative entity, political-factory town, historical refuge. I admit a certain affection for the place; there are some good people among its true residents. But, both intentionally and unintentionally, D.C. exists apart from the rest of the nation.

Posted by: Bobby 2013-09-22
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=376283