This Ain’t Norman Rockwell’s America Anymore!

By Frosty Wooldridge

July 7, 2022

“Gun violence spiked over the Fourth of July weekend, with shootings reported in nearly every U.S. state that killed a total of at least 220 people and wounded 570 others,” according to CBS News, July 5, 2022.

Highland Park, Illinois: Robert Crimo, 22, mentally disturbed throughout his teens with suicide attempts, saying that he would kill people with 19 knives he had accumulated, bought a rife with help from his father—and shot up a 4^th of July parade with seven deaths and 30 plus wounded.

You can’t help but wonder—What happened to Norman Rockwell’s America? He painted covers on the Saturday Evening Post Magazine that depicted a kinder, gentler and more civil America. He painted kids going fishing with grandpa. He painted girls dancing with their fathers with their feet on dad’s shoe tops. He painted baseball games with something always uniquely American.

As a paperboy from age 12 to 18, I enjoyed his view of America. I also delivered the Jacksonville Daily News, North Carolina. Later, I also delivered the Atlanta-Constitution Journal seven days a week at 5 a.m. Rockwell drew one cover shot of a paperboy outracing a dog nipping at his pants. Well, I was that kid! Dogs chased me all the time.

But I can tell you this—I never read headlines that we’ve seen since April 20, 1999, Columbine High School, Denver, Colorado, when killers Klebold and Harris shot the hell out of students and teachers. Sandy Hook Elementary, December 14, 2012, some kid uses a rifle to blast two dozen little kids into oblivion. Uvalde’s Robb Elementary just weeks ago, suffered a horrific slaughter of kids.

October 1,2017: That one guy in Las Vegas mowed people down at a concert in the park. He just sprayed bullets to kill 58 and wounded 489 people listening to music and drinking beer. How did that happen? What nurtured a mental nightmare that dwelled inside his skull?

A year ago, at a King Soopers where I used to live in Boulder, Colorado, suffered a Muslim immigrant who walked into the store and gunned down 13 people. He did it for Allah. I could have been one of them.

Last week, two Mexican illegal aliens were stopped in Texas with 150,000 fentanyl pills in their car—to be sold all over the country. And, those pills could have killed upwards of millions of drug users. They were the ones that got caught. With over 107,000 opioid deaths last year, you might think Joe Biden would seal the borders. Nope! That’s not on his list of “things to do.”

Meanwhile, thousands of Americans are dying needlessly.

Dozens of such incidents occur every weekend in Chicago, St. Louis, LA, San Francisco, Detroit, Minneapolis, NYC and Miami. The bigger the city, the more insanity rears its ugly, deadly head.

Something is going wrong in America that is beyond comprehension!

Over this past 4^th weekend, how did 570 men shoot to kill 570 other people, and actually killed 220 of them? I can’t even get my emotional and mental arms around that kind of killing.

Biden and company think it can be solved by stopping gun sales. Psychologists and sociologists think up different societal glitches that need to be addressed.

How do you stop all the violent TV shows that engender guns as the final solution? How do you stop Criminal Minds from giving disturbed kids ideas on how to torture people to death? How do you top the FBI TV program where guns answer the call for every bad guy? How do you stop all the movies where violence dominates the entire movie? How do you stop the tens of thousands of video arcades that promote gun violence?

FBI Stats Show Knives Kill Far More People Than Rifles In America – It’s Not Even Close: “Knives or other “cutting tools” accounted for another 1,476 homicides — about three times the number killed by rifles.” (Source: Daily Caller, Virginia Kruta, March 24, 2021)

At some point, American leaders, teachers, principals, educators, and parenting associations need to come together to figure out HOW raise our children to be productive, contributing and mentally healthy human beings.

Personally, I think cell phones need to be banned out of high schools and colleges. Drop them in a slot when entering a classroom. In fact, I would not allow my kids to have a smart phone until they turned 18. And, make them pay for it by securing a part-time job. They need to learn how to communicate with their fellow human beings face to face.
Stop pumping our kids full of drugs, and very poor school lunches.
Two people about to marry need to pass a rigorous parenting class over a six- or 12-month period. They need to learn how to love, care-for, discipline and raise healthy kids who will lead positive lives. There’s one program called “Love and Logic” on how to bring up kids successfully.
We need to bring dollars, teachers, professionals, modern schools, after school classes, and more into the inner cities to bring order to minority kids and a shot at a normal, productive life.
While we spend trillions on wars such as Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years at $6 trillion wasted, we need to direct such money toward our own children.

In the meantime, my wife and I won’t be attending our Christmas Parade in Golden, Colorado this December, because we could be the victims of another Harris and Klebold who just decided to pick our town and that parade. We attend movies at the matinees, so we won’t get shot at an evening showing with a lot of movie-goers. We never walk the malls for fear of being shot. We don’t go to downtown Denver at the 16^th Street Mall because, quite frankly, it’s dangerous with 10,000 homeless living right there in the streets.

This country faces some really nasty events in the near future. We’ve got useless politicians who won’t prosecute criminals, an absolutely senile president who lacks any understanding of what he is doing, and his “handlers” are as incompetent as he is, and, to tell you the truth from my position…nothing is going to change for the better. Biden just allowed another 240,000 illegals to cross the border in June, and God only knows how many tons of fentanyl, cocaine, hash, heroin, meth and MJ. Those drugs make people crazy, and they make them crazy enough to kill other people.

Norman Rockwell must be turning over in his grave wondering what happened to his America? About the most I can do is repeat what Walter Cronkite said, “And that’s the way it is on July 7, 2022.”

E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com