UNAPOLOGETIC REFLECTIONS: Over being over it

(Unedited)

The President is on TV right now.

Both Barack Obama and Vice-president Joe Biden are sharing with the media their thoughts and emotions after visiting the families of those who are victims of Sunday’s attack in Orlando.

Forty-nine killed. Another 53 are injured; many still in critical and grave conditions.

I’m half paying attention. I know I should listen intently, but I’m tired of listening.

Tired of listening to details of the attack. Tired of hearing why Omar Mateen did - or why he didn’t - carry out this act. Tired of feeling helpless … tired of all the hate.

Part of me says it’s time to move on. Let’s send well wishes, pray for all involved, but it’s time to move on to our lives and the next big story.

Unfortunately, this has become our lives and it will continue to be the next big story.

Equality, gun control, fighting ISIS and more don’t matter as much as not fearing our lives and the next big story. We all fear something, but when that fear is not conquered, understood and/or not given ANY power, it is one step away from hate.

And hate is just another word for “evil.”

There will always be an “evil” (ISIL, KKK) that is able to gather others to carry out his or her hate and fears.

Take away guns and/or limiting them will only illicit anger and hate, prompting “evil” to use other methods of annihilation.

And on the day when race and ethnicity don’t matter anymore and people can live their lives without sexual-orientated or religious persecution, there will be someone who finds hate in another for anything that makes them different … for something that he or she fears.

My words may sound dark and all doom and gloom, and they definitely don’t flow with my journalistic thinking, but we must push below the surface to where love exists as hate.

"This was an act of terrorism, but it was also an act of hate,” Obama said during the presser. “It’s a time we reflect on how we respect each other … .” 

 We can’t keep “moving on.” Because if we do, we forget how powerful hate - and fear - really is.

We always do.