Another mass shooting rocked the States yesterday. At approximately 10am, someone opened fire during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, a neighborhood in the northern suburbs of Chicago. A suburb maybe 30 minutes from the house where my entire family was also celebrating the Fourth.

This one is the latest in a string of shootings that feel like they are getting closer and closer to home. Previously that was figuratively. Now it’s literally.

It feels desperate and dire today. My nation is sick. We have a runaway Supreme Court creating mandates a large majority of the country would question or have a major problem with. We have a President who makes ineffective moves and ineffective promises and ineffective speeches. And we have a highly polarized, highly armed and highly dangerous populace that is turning our once-respected nation into a crazed, radical, unstable breeding grounds for the sort of news-worthy chaos everyone else in the world is watching like a can’t-look-away, thankful-I’m-not-there spectacle.

I feel like I’m watching a great beeched whale. It’s gasping and struggling. I’m horrified; I’m deeply saddened; I’m embarrassed. Such a creature is so majestic and powerful in its element. And by the same measure, it’s tragic to watch when it’s clearly not where it needs to be.

-LS