Arizona...I REALLY don't know how appropriate this is....

But learning of the events in Tuscon early Sunday morning after it happenend on Saturday left me at a loss for words. So I sort of took an inward pause, and really thought about it.

(No, this isn't going to be about pointing blame, or anything like it. It saddened me, and made me reflective.)

I watched the MSM going through their hoops, and doing what they do. 'Oh, WE aren't to blame.' 'Oh, THEY don't have clean hands', and everyone wringing their own. There were plausible explanations given in many cases, but nothing really satisfying to me at all. Till I took a nap this afternoon, as is my wont... and woke up remembering 'The Great Rock Fight', and then it made sense of a sudden.

Children. Nothing but reckless children, some of who never grow up or learn about consequences.

I grew up in the lower class, a disgustingly ugly place, although, if you had good parents, you didn't notice it all that much for quite a while, unlike the privileged who grew up in lovely houses with manicured lawns, and were pampered. It was a rough neighborhood. My part of it was north of a canal, and the mills, and was once known as the upper corporation. Then there were a mass of factories, ugly and worn, and to the left of it, the 'lower corportation', which was 'wilder' than my part.

In my part growing up, there were few children. Most people had been able to move away. It was all red brick, dirty, and here and there were little patches of 'hope' in that someone would put in a strip of grass which always looked sort of sickly, and try to grow something on the side of it against a building. My grandfather planted hollyhocks, I remember, and used to delight in them once they would finally bloom in late summer.

It wasn't a place of great hope, but rather feeling trapped. With high unemployment, decaying infrastructure, and the feeling of great hopelessness.

Down in the lower corportation, there were a mess of kids, and they were allowed to run wild all over the place and wreak havoc. The crop down there were really rough and older than me, so I tended to stay away, and wasn't supposed to be there in the first place, but I'd go there occasionally. School acquaintances. I was younger than most of them, so they didn't want a 'baby' hanging around. They played rough.

One of the 'games' was a sort of playing 'chicken'. They would go to the train depot nearby, and hop on a freight train. The cars had ladders on the outside, and whoever hopped onto one and rode one the furthest 'won'. By the time they got opposite my house, those trains were about up to 60 mph, and the kids would jump off usually about there. Until one day, one of the kids jumped badly, and had his legs cut off, I heard. I don't know if he lived or died, but I do know it happened. I just heard about it. That was the end of that game.

Then there were the little gangs who went hunting through the millyards, chasing sewer rats, big ugly things. And I heard they would beat them down and blow them up with firecrackers, shades of Dumbya... I guess that was fun for them for a while, till one guy's little brother tagged along, and was eager to get himself one, except no one told him never to corner a rat. Which he did. And the rat jumped the kid and nearly bit off the bottom part of the child's ear. Which led to rabies shots, and probably a life-long phobia on the child's part. The kid was my age at the time, and I never wanted to go along on those expeditions at all.

In the upper corporation we had our phase. I have NO idea how it started or why, and it probably lasted only a few days. There was a long strip of lilac bushes with a couple of lilac trees in it, it was summer, and somehow animosities among the few children arose, and some began throwing rocks. The ones on the defensive took shelter in the lilacs, and began hurling pebbles and gravel back. (That place was Gaza for having something to throw at hand...)

The first day it was 'fun'. But it escalated, until some twirp threw a brick, and blood flowed. And the 'fun' was over. And remorse set in. Tja, 'The Great Rock Fight'.....

But we learned that there were limits in every case, and that actions have sometimes very severe consequences. And took a lesson.

But all this came to mind over the past 72 hours, and I think I see parallels there.

What with all the 'You did this' and 'they did that'... and some not willing to give an inch on laying blame and playing the blame game.

What did these people with their flame-throwing rhetoric have for a childhood? Did they NOT learn that actions and words have consequences? Seemingly, everything is ok, as long as they get their way, even if they damage innocent people and bystanders for some sort of gain.

Certainly, they created an atmosphere in which some unstable individual goes off and pulls a trigger, and does irreparable harm. And there should be better programs to help people who have mental health problems, and ban extended magazines for guns, and yes, there should be double rainbows in the sky.

What worries me is the baseness, the immaturity, and inability of people to be accountable for their actions.

For Sarah Palin's group to come out and say, oh no, those weren't rifle cross-hairs, they were surveyor's symbols is so heinous, it defies description.

Lack of accountability.

You reap what you sow, as the saying goes.

And THAT is 'Murka, the ugly side. Children throwing rocks till someone throws a brick.

Everyone just LOVING getting the ugly out, and damn the consequences.

Innocent people died on Saturday. Thanks to a gross lack of maturity and willingness to engage in HONEST discourse.

As a child, I learned where the boundaries are. It is sickening to see so-called adults who never learned the lesson.