The world has gone mad…

I’ve been loosely following the events in Egypt this week. It’s very sad. You know, it would be easy to say that those folks are all violent and terrible people. I’ve heard people say it already. But….

Yes, but….

The whole world is violent and terrible! Who are we to talk about how violent and terrible they are when we have some of the most heinous things going on right here in our own back yard?

We have a woman in Florida who shot and killed her two teenage children. We have Curtis Vance who raped and murdered a news anchor. We’ve had disgruntled employees and students open fire in public places and killing innocent people. People come to blows over the last item on a shelf – at Christmas no less.

We push, we shove and we verbally abuse. We have road rage. We teach our children to hit the kid who makes fun of him/her and say way to go when they do. We kick the car that parked too close. We kill our spouses for life insurance or infidelities. We beat our women, our elderly, our disabled and our children and make them lie about it. We ignore abuse and crime when we witness it; after all, it’s not happening to me so why should I get involved?

We deny responsibility for our actions. We rescue our children from consequences for their negative actions. We tell the world it owes us. We whine because it’s not fair.

And then…then we look across the world and watch as the terror unfolds and we say, “They’ve got serious problems.” Then we come up with a million opinions on how they should fix it.

To make ourselves feel better about how terrible we are we run across the world to assist other countries in need. That’s all good and noble, and we should do that, except…

Meanwhile, just across town, there’s a child getting ready for school, putting on his dirty clothes and anxious to go to school because there’s no food at home. There’s a mother shielding another child from the blows of a drunken father. There’s a baby being shaken for crying too much. There’s a teacher being inappropriate with a student. There’s a man with a gun at a bank or convenience store because he doesn’t know how else to get the bills paid and feed his kids.

I don’t know what else to say except they’re not alone in being messed up. We’re all messed up and, at the end of the day, we aren’t really any better than they are. At what point do we stop and take a collective look at our own faults and work together to clean up the mess?