Chapter 7: Societal Trauma
Childhood Trauma: Witnessing Tragic Events on TV
I am going to head back to January 28, 1986, Tuesday morning, 8:39 a.m. PST. That morning I was seven years old. I was in class and on the TV was the Challenger shuttle launching. My teacher, I think it was Mrs. Gibbs, maybe Mrs. Wong. Either way, we had been talking about the shuttle for the last week prior to the launch. We started school at 8:00 a.m. so the last thirty minutes was all talk about the main event. This was a shuttle filled with students, their teacher, and astronauts, who were still big heroes in the 80s.
The wheeled cart TV was on and our teacher and the teacher next door were chatting back and forth for quiet parts of the video. We children were all enthralled and those of us who weren’t were using the loose time to chat quietly between them. When the launch began our teacher walked in to watch with us. Everyone was watching when the jets started. We could hear the announcer filling us in with the progress of lift off. The moment something went wrong everything in the world seemed to go quiet. Our teacher gasped and looked at all of us, I am sure we looked shocked, I know I was.
Our teacher darted out to the hall and the teacher next-door was panicking on what to do, you can’t really blame them. The TV kept running the broadcast and when our teacher had returned to the room, she did not turn it off because she wanted to know what happened. Here we were. We were Third graders all watching a shuttle explode into a ball of fire and the crew and passengers died live on TV.
April 29, 1992, Wednesday
A jury acquitted all four officers of assault and acquitted three of the four of using excessive force after they were recorded beating Rodney King. The city of LA erupted in outrage. The riots continued for nearly a week. I remember my step dad had pre-purchased tickets for Knott's Berry farm for my birthday. We drove by the riots rather than cancel the visit, I am not kidding.
April 19, 1995, Wednesday
I was in class with my teachers, Mrs. Nicholes and Mrs. Goodenough. We were watching something on TV, I have no idea what it was because I was drawing Mortal Kombat symbols on my folder. Suddenly a news alert popped up and we are watching a new alert about a bombing in Oklahoma. Timothy McVeigh had parked a rented Ryder truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, and then blew it up killing 168 and injuring another 680.
My classmates and I were stunned. It was insane that something like this was happening. All that we could talk about at lunch after was the explosion and all of the theories that were buzzing already. I believe we still had school for the rest of the day, but my friends and I cut those classes if there were. For the next week the news would trickle in and stances were taken on how one felt. I honestly have no idea what those stances were, because it just feels like there was no way to justify those actions.
April 20, 1999, Tuesday
I was living with a friend at the crash pad that I originally started renting a couch in. At this point there weren’t many people living there anymore and I was renting half a room. My friends and I had been wearing duster coats for a few years now. It was a goth thing. When I turned on the TV that day, everyone was talking about the Columbine High School massacre. Two students had killed twelve students and one teacher before killing themselves.
September 11, 2001, Tuesday, 6:03 a.m
I had just worked a late shift at Target the night before and I was still asleep, at that moment. It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes before my mom was pounding on my door and telling me that the world was coming to an end. At the time I was renting the back apartment of the house in order to add more money to the household and help with bills and such as necessary. I answered the door half-asleep.
Me: “What…?”
Mom: “The world is ending!”
Me: “What?”
Mom: “A plane has hit the World Trade Center!”
She darts back into the house to watch what was going on. I turned on the TV and saw a plane slam into one of the towers.
Me: “Fuck.”
When I went to work that day, the roads were almost empty. When I got into the store, it was basically a graveyard. The only thing I remember selling that day was an emergency radio and batteries to power it.
These were the big news events that really impacted my life, that weren’t The Cold War (1946-1991), Gulf War (1990–1991), Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991), First U.S. Intervention in the Somali Civil War (1992–1995),
The Iraq War (2003 to 2011), American intervention in Libya (2015–2019), The War in Afghanistan (October 7, 2001-August 30, 2021) Second U.S. Intervention in the Somali Civil War (2007–present), and The Russia and Chinese Cyberwar (2020-current), The Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–present)
There are also hundreds of mass shootings that are peppered liberally throughout the time after the Columbine High School massacre, hundreds of deaths of Black People all throughout the country without being held accountable. Minority attacks, threats of a civil war if the red-hats don’t constantly get their way, attacks on the rights of women and minorities, attacks on the reproductive rights of women, the class war that has been raging since the 70s, and I know I am missing more.
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I mention this because, the betrayal I feel about my country not helping me while I am disabled, pales in comparison to their betrayal of every one of us, when they refuse to make gun violence a priority because the NRA and gun manufacturers are filling the pockets of our politicians. You know, let’s not stop there, do you honestly think that we wouldn’t have been slaughtering our way across the globe if gun manufacturers weren’t making a shit-ton from us doing it?
Now, I did not grow up in the time of active shooter drills. In fact, I didn’t participate in an active shooter drill until there was an active shooter on my college campus. I was in class and I was probably around thirty-three. I was in one of my literature classes near the 4th Street parking structure. Suddenly, all of our cell phones started going off with an alert that there was a suspected shooter walking the campus.
I remember one of my first thoughts was, “I think I should text my family.” I messaged my sister and told her what was going on. She and I chatted back and forth for a little while, me telling her where all my important papers are, the passwords to my social media so she can tell my friends what happened if the shooter actually made it to our classroom.
She kept telling me it was going to be okay and kept me messaging back and forth until it was all clear.
When I left the classroom, I made my way across the street to La Victoria and I got a burrito before driving home. That burrito was the greatest burrito I have ever eaten. Each flavor was vibrant. The scent was lingering in my car as I ate it on my way home. When I got back to my aunt and uncle’s house, where I was staying while going to college, I let them in on everything that happened and my aunt asked me why I didn’t call them.
I was in my thirties. I was a grown man who has been through a lot in his life and that day was scary, without an actual shooter killing people.
Now.
Imagine how a little kid is going to feel in the same situation.
I grew up with earthquake and fire drills in Southern California. I didn’t once have to consider someone coming into my school and shooting as many people as they could.
That was jarring for me, an adult, who grew up around the glorification of the gun. My step dad was in possession of eighty-three guns the day that the SWAT raided his home in 2016. I still currently own three guns. I have a Glock .45, a 16 gauge shotgun, and my grandfather’s .22 rifle. I have a friend who collects guns, and believes that a race war is coming. I have no idea how many guns he has, but it’s definitely in the double digits. One of my friend’s parents had a hidden room with guns, my step dad’s brother is a gunsmith, everyone in my family has a gun, if they are an adult.
The gun fetish is big within my family. Once, I told my step dad that buying a replica that "looks like the real thing" after the cops had taken all of his guns was not smart. I said, "Did you see the cops murder Daniel Leetin Shaver of Granbury in the hallway of a La Quinta Inn in Mesa, Arizona? I don't think it's a good idea to have guns that aren't guns in your house while the police are watching you and know you really like guns."
I have a friend who follows Alex Jones and who told me that the Umpqua Community College shooting on October 1, 2015 was a "false flag shooting." I tried to be calm and patient with them and said, "I have a friend in that college, and she is in the hospital because one of their friends was shot. I believe my friend is real, I believe their friend is real. I have a good relationship with this person; they were one of my classmates for years. What you are saying is inaccurate and cruel."
My other friends attacked me on social media, and my Infowars friend ended up telling me that I was wrong, regardless of whether or not my friends believed it.
Can you imagine going through a horrific event like a school shooting and then trying everything you can to prevent it from happening to other kids, only to have someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene following you around and taunting you with idiotic Infowars propaganda? Do you honestly think these children are not traumatized?
As I write this, David Miles Hogg is about to turn twenty-three, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is forty-eight. How does she sleep at night?
What I am going through at this moment will happen to a good chunk of the kids who survive a shooter on their campus. Because of disgusting people like Alex Jones and those who follow his idiotic bullshit, the mental health of these survivors will be dismissed. When they break down like I have, the government will fight them each step of the way, just as they do with veterans, victims of violence, those who survive sexual abuse, child abuse, and those who have had a family member killed by police violence.
This is not something we can ignore. Yes, I am advocating for myself, but honestly, I would not have been aware of this problem unless I had experienced it firsthand. I was very dismissive of my mother's disability decades ago. Part of me thinks that my mother is treating me poorly because of some kind of subconscious or even conscious revenge for my words and dismissal. I suppose that is understandable to a degree.
Betrayed by Country and Gun Violence
I am appalled at my country for claiming to be the greatest in the world when we are so very distant from that. We aren’t exactly leaders, we are bullies. We aren’t exactly free, we have more people in prison than every other nation in the world, other than China, and we only have 25,000 less than them. Does that sound like freedom to you?
I like to periodically remind people of the scope of what a billion dollars actually is. Most people think, “Oh a billionaire is just a more successful millionaire.” Dude. No. Not even close.
For scope, 1 million seconds is 1 week and five days; 1 billion seconds is 31 years and 9 months.
So, how long is 213 billion seconds? That is 6754 years. That was Jeff Bezos' worth on 11/28/21.
“But Jesse, what does that have to do with trauma?”
I am so glad you asked.
Each time these ultra wealthy give money to our politicians, our politicians return the favor by making those ultra wealthy people the priority of policy. This year the Republicans were exposed with trying to steal our entitlements, like Social Security. They see no reason to tax the wealthy in order to make the general populace's lives easier. Both parties like to cut away from anything that helps people, both parties. However, in comparison. The republicans want to put your children to work, because there really shouldn’t be a problem with making children work instead of going to school in their eyes. They want to pull your elderly family off their Social Security and MediCal. They see nothing at all wrong with giving Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family a pass on creating the opioid epidemic.
I have student loan debt, this affects my representation in my case. I am not kidding. My representation Pena & Bromberg dropped my case, literally on the day that my appeal was due, because I have student loan debt, which is federal debt and that they would take away about twenty-five percent $18,000 from their fee, because the fee comes off the top. Meaning, they wouldn’t take my case, because they would lose around $4,000 from their fees. I then had to beg the Social Security board to grant me an extension so that I could get my case together as best that I could to attempt to prove my case, myself.
Why is it that after I spend around twenty years working in this system, all the while working as hard as possible to ascend the class hierarchy as far as possible, paying into my Social Security that is supposed to protect me when I am in a state as I am? You would think that it would be clear after my obvious ambition, that it wasn’t a choice of mine to break down. To add to my case, I spent my own savings in the Bay Area of California to survive for two years before admitting that I needed help because things were not getting better should have helped prove my case that this was not something I would do without cause. Right?
No. No, they don’t want me, or you, or your family to get your money. Why? Because they keep looking at it like a piggy bank they want to rob and hand to their friends so they can get a piece.
The need for political accountability and prioritization of the general populace
Democrats? They fight for us from time to time, especially on something that is popular. Let’s take for instance, the defense of the LGBTQ+, they do fight for equality in those areas. Female reproductive rights? Yeah, democrats are on your side there too, for the most part, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema should be ashamed of themselves for their self-serving actions against the general populace. Can they do more about a lot of things? Yes. Vastly more. Overall, they are mostly just complacent in fucking us over, not actively doing it themselves.
When the priority of our politicians is not us, they should be removed, because they are just going to incrementally throw us under the bus for as much profit as possible.