Uvalde DOJ report and Cascading failures

 

“Thou Shalt Not” might reach the head. But it takes “Once Upon a Time” to reach the heart.” Author Philip Pullman, Reform Journal.

Yesterday the Justice Department released its report regarding the Texas Uvalde shootings and the maligned police response to the May 24, 2022, shooting at its elementary school.  They gave a list of “cascading failures” leading to this tragedy. There was simply “no urgency”.

But this tragic event is consistent with a persistent government trend in response multiple urgent needs that our elected officials ignore regardless of any comprehensive evidence that thousands if not millions of people are going to die.

The Justice Department federal accounting cataloged a sweeping array of trainings, communications, leadership, and technology problems that federal officials say, contributed to the crisis lasting far longer than necessary.

But this same list of flawed elements can be applied the response to 9-11, the invasion of Iraq. The 20 year war in Afghanistan, the climate holocaust, Covid pandemic, the extinction of species, and now the evolution of war, weaponry and Cyber threats to our economy, democracy, and personal security.    

The Justice Department’s 600-page report faulted law enforcement at every level with failing “to prioritize, saving innocent lives over their own safety and how police made costly errors in assumptions that the shooter was barricaded - or otherwise contained, or dead, even as he continued to fire shots. WFT!!!

That mistaken “mindset permeated throughout much of the incident response” as police took nearly an hour to confront the gunman rather than rushing inside the classroom to end the carnage.  It was a costly “lack of urgency” to save innocent lives.

But what about the 12,000 to 15,000 children that die each day from easily preventable, malnutrition and infectious diseases, even when there is no war, pandemic, natural disasters, or extreme weather events?  How does the federal government explain what appears to be a simple lack of caring about those innocent lives?  Because they are not American?  White?  Or they pose no real threat to our nation -- unless child survivors of this hidden holocaust and their parents start crossing our borders as potential terrorists or drug mules?

I’ll put the blame on the inherently flawed American belief/concept that we are independent of those children’s death and family suffering.  Poverty and repression related deaths that have been credited as a US national security threat for decades.  If you doubt this read the summary of the 1980 bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger.  Or the intention of those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the reason nations endorsed it after World War II.  Or the CIA study conducted after “Black Hawk Down” and the slaughter of thousands in Somalia.

Yet there remains no urgency to address the 30 wars now raging.  More than any in the last 20 years due to a flawed global governance system based on the illusion of Independence just as our US Constitution is.  

Instead, our nation has two political parties swatting at bees while standing in a pit of vipers (growing Axis of China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran or the evolution of hypersonic missiles, AI, autonomous weapons, COVID19, or the next pandemic) and a Congress setting a historic record of passing the fewer bills than any previous Congress.  

At the root of this reactionary response to these global systemic threats is our mental resistance to the reality of our irreversible global interdependence.  

"Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think." - Thomas Edison

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.”  Friedrich Nietzsche.

Perhaps our resistance to deep thinking is in our evolutionary past. Our brain required hard to get energy, so we developed an energy conservation mode of reactionary thinking and resistance to changing our minds. Thus, we cannot overcome the flawed principles of different religions, economic systems, and politic priorities - instead of looking at reality and choosing what has been offered to us for millennia - the Golden Rule. 

Collective wisdom as offered again in the Declaration of Independence first paragraph “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”  This Blogger is getting sick and tired of saying the same damn obvious thing over and over again. What is so complicated about taking care of nature and taking care of each other?  Please! Someone answer this!  Enforcing the laws of nature and nature God is essentially enforcing the golden rule.  Do we love our freedom to do anything we like regardless of the global consequences?  Are we suicidal?

The Uvalde report mentioned there was no urgency in even establishing a command center at the scene. Thus, creating confusion among Police regarding who is in charge. This same flaw is found within any independent government agencies with an outbreak of war, infectious diseases, terrorism, or emergency response.   Confusion within each city, county, state and nation government independent agencies when any ‘national security’ threat arises.  

This confusion isn’t crippling autocracies.  Perhaps that’s why Trump and other autocrats are so popular in many failing democracies.  People are looking for solutions to their worries that existing democratic governments can’t quickly, efficiently, or effectively resolve.  Our elected officials swear to protect the constitution. And voters think it will keep us safe and free. WTF!?

When will we ever learn that the exponential growth in technologies is changing everything except our linear thinking capacity and flat lined government – which is now getting worse...

Those who continue suffering from the Uvalde shooting are divided on questions of accountability of the offices, their actions, or inaction.  And the same thing happens on the national level regarding responsibility for immigration, debt, crime, homelessness, drug related deaths, and mental illness.

Please read what Thomas Payne wrote in the first few pages of his “Common Sense” pamphlet.  No one can survive and thrive alone. In groups we can... but people are not angels and thus NEED government as evil as it might be.  And he insists that the only legitimate purpose of any government is to protect the freedom and security of people.

The Justice Department Uvalde report also detailed how early Police errors were compounded by Communication failures, connected to disturbing, inaccurate, and conflicting information thus sewing, rumors, and distortion between them.

Sound familiar?  The truth matters!  And the lack of truth destroys are trust.  Between people, and people’s trust in government and other institutions we must rely on to survive and thrive.  From education to health to environmental protection to law enforcement.

The original storyline of the officer’s actions was heroic. It was offered by spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public health.  What was their priority? Covering the governors butt?

The trillion-dollar question is will we learn anything from any of this? And apply it to everything?  Literally everything.  

Not just the inevitability of more mass shootings because we fail to address the root cause.  Which is not the guns. But our sick culture of disrespect for one another even within our own country, religion, political party, and sometimes family.  And rarely respect for those around the world who suffer needlessly because we believe we’re independent of their suffering and have other priorities.  

The late response to the active shooter was in direct violation of the standard established more than 20 years ago after the mass student columbine high school.  The cost in lives of waiting can almost always be document.

In Uvalde, some officers have lost their jobs including two department of public health officials and one on site commander.  But what about the hundreds of thousands of American lives lost from COVID19, the endless global war on terrorism, or increasingly extreme weather events?  At the heart of these cascades of failure is our persistence in resisting any real change in heart or mind – to transform our flawed governing systems.