USA

Why are there so many problems in this country that aren’t addressed? Why, when we keep agreeing there are problems, can we not agree on any of the solutions?

It doesn’t matter what subject it is, the problem is always the same.

Already this year, there have been hundreds of mass shootings in America. This week, we saw the shootings at a hospital in Oklahoma. The week before, it was Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Each time one of these atrocities occurs, people agree that something must be done. But “something” never happens.

Ten days ago, I climbed the long stairs towards Lincoln’s imposing statue, the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Once I had made it to the top, I was immediately struck by the silence, the calm that reigned around the monument, even though there were, as usual, many visitors. No one talked on the phone, no one yelled at a child, no one made remarks out loud. You could sense the respect that the tourists, mostly Americans, felt towards the great man. Indeed, as inscribed over the head of the marble statue, “in the hearts of the people (…) the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

Uncle Sam sent me to South Korea in 1953 during its war of survival against communist North Korea.

Rumbles of yet another war while I was there – that would in time explode into war in Vietnam – made some of my comrades believe that at rotation time, they would be headed to that next fight against communism instead of returning to the states. One of my schoolteachers wrote in 1953: “What do you do there besides freezing in the winter…I hope they send you home before things get started in Indo-China. It looks very much as if that is the next step. I pray that it is not…” Many who dodged the bullet in Korea did in fact end up fighting in that next confrontation with communism.