The unacceptable cult of death

Celebrating pre-teen death is abominable

I cannot abide it anymore, what were children doing in a church afternoon yesterday when they should have been in school going about building a life on sound education?

It is becoming the norm and I fervently pray it is not; we have begun to celebrate lives of children, children cut down on the crest of puberty by seemingly other children who have moved on from water pistols and video games to real guns.

It is both an anomaly and abomination that we have a society where the killing of children has not created the utmost outrage that every right thinking person should find it untenable that this unspeakable evil finds place amongst us.

I am most affected by this in that if I did follow the parallel universe of parenthood, many of these kids would have my kids as older siblings; you do not have to be a parent to empathise because the death of those younger than ourselves exposes a vulnerability that we all possess, the possibility of death by unintended means.

A developing cult of death

It is a further damnation of our society that such crimes take place and no one can come forward with information to rid our societies of the cancer that is becoming violently malignant.

Instead, we find succour in tributes paid to the dead, the celebration of lives cut short unnaturally, flowers laid at pathways, fields, doors and gateways, candles lit to burn up in hours and soppy lullabies that give us the pretence and ill-comfort that all would be well.

It is becoming an accepted rite of demise, the cult of death awash with emotions difficult to articulate, we now spontaneously clap for the dead as we desperately try to eke out minuscule joy from such palpable sadness.

Is there value in life?

I cannot find stronger words to castigate the societal comfort that allows parents to bury their children who have come upon death by what is essentially a social malaise that politicians are completely hapless in addressing, the police are lacking intuition in getting a resolution and the streets are paralysed with irrational fear when they should be performing their honourable and civic duties of reporting what they have witnessed.

How is it that the value of life is so deprecated to that of shoot-em-up games only that this time the person shot does not get up and walk away?

How is it that the murder of a fellow human-being does not excite the most self-hating revulsion and guilt in the perpetrators?

Speak up or be damned

In the end, I have a word for those who having witnessed these heinous allow the perpetrators to walk free to commit even more heinous crimes.

The likelihood is these perpetrators were bullies in school halls and playgrounds, but no one told on them because they did not want to “snitch” and become outcasts amongst their peers. There is no honour amongst thieves, there is no dignity in condoning injustices, there is no pride in the silence that allows impunity to thrive and there is no respect for life if unwarranted cruelty is unreported.

These selfsame perpetrators continually get away with bullying, first with their brutishness and as they mature they take on other tools to menace others, baseball bats, knives and contemporaneously guns, they have probably put others in hospital and boasted about their menace to other despicable low-lives.

Whilst the law may not be able to prove the culpability or the reluctant conspiracy of the witnesses who have willingly given their tongues to the gross evil of silence, there must be a conscience in all of us at work that should and must link us with further crimes committed by these evil people – children they might be – because when the seedlings of malevolence were budding as bullying and menace we did not do our parts by intimating the authorities then.

Speak NOW!

Even now, all is not lost in getting information out to a counsellor, the police, a community leader, your parents, trusted friends or even the police, no matter how long ago, it is our duty to speak up and rid our streets of villains that blacken our paths with the blood of the innocent, most especially, if you have been a victim of bodily harm from any of these rotten people.

I think we should have enough of flowers being placed at memorials when they should be presented as bouquets of affection to loved ones, I do not want to switch my television on to witness another group of pre-teens burying their friend who was gunned down on the street and yet, the killer is still at large. It beggars belief that what is becoming of our society.

Speaking as the Book

One final supplication would be that the killers of Rhys Jones would not find peace, succour or refuge, but like Cain, the first recorded murderer, they shall be fugitives in life and vagabonds all their days; their lives would be marked with sadness deeper than that which they have caused till the blood of the innocent child is fully avenged.

Believe it or not, the blood of the innocent still cries out from the ground against those who have unjustly shed blood and those who have allowed this to happen also have blood on their hands.