"There’s a sameness to the reaction of politicians to mass shootings. Especially if you are a politician who has received donations from the National Rifle Association.” — Anderson Cooper
We've heard it before, whenever I dared write about the insanity of mass shootings, and of the politicians who enable it. "How dare you politicize tragedies like this! You can’t even wait until the bodies are cold!"
I heard it again today. Of course, I knew we would. Under normal circumstances, we would want to pause to reflect and remember the innocents just slaughtered. But we cannot wait. There simply isn’t time to “wait until the bodies are in the ground,” because by the time that happens there will be more shootings. This is how routine these shootings have become.
By the time we observe that NRA approved "appropriate interval to mourn" their political allies would have us emulate, there will be scores of new victims. Each week brings us more high school students, church members, moviegoers, music fans, or tourists to mourn. There will be more public places riddled with bullets, more phone videos taken by those suddenly trapped in war zones, more cable news coverage of an active shooter, more frantic texts that will never be answered.
By the time we’ve had a chance to observe the "appropriate interval" and send those empty thoughts and prayers we keep hearing about, there will be more mass shootings and more victims. And once again we'll be told this isn't the time.
Somebody reading this will plausibly accuse me of being insensitive and politicizing yet another disaster. But when we are confronted with an ongoing horror, it seems insensitive and politically driven to remain silent just to keep the peace with those who really do not care about the senseless loss of life.
Then Trump and McConnell and Pence will pretend they actually give a shit. There will be more empty speeches about the memories of the dead, and about feeling the pain of their survivors. The fact that teen-aged kids are once again huddled in cafeterias and gymnasiums and homerooms, drilling for an active shooter, will not faze them in the least. And once again we'll be told it’s too soon to talk about how wrong this all is.
As we are being scolded to be silent until that appropriate time for discussion that never ever comes, the dollars will continue to flow from the NRA to the very politicians who are failing to protect the next group of victims. As we wait until being given permission to speak, the disinformation machine will crank up. Though statistics say the next gunman will be a white male, our President will blame the crime on Muslims or illegal immigrants or Hillary's voters. The blame is always assigned somewhere else than where it really belongs.
While we are being forced to remain mute, the same lunatic newsreel repeats and repeats. People will be happily buying assault weapons and planning the next disaster while the people who love and sell and profit from this disaster try everything to wash the blood from their hands. And when all else fails, they will send Steve Scalise on Fox to say those "thoughts and prayers" really did help him recover from his own tragic experience.
In the time it takes to properly grieve and mourn the victims of the horror of Las Vegas, they are betting we will have forgotten about each and every one. They believe with reason, that we will have moved on, for it's the norm with a 24-hour news cycle. It will be yesterday's news.
Soon enough there will be a new tragedy, a new round of call for us to not politicize a tragedy, and more empty thoughts and prayers from politicians and their lackeys telling us it's not the time to discuss the carnage, and most assuredly doing absolutely nothing.
By the time we bury those sons and daughters and loved ones, there very well maybe another set of bodies waiting to be mourned. And once again "thoughts and prayers" will be offered, and we'll be told again, this isn’t the time.
But this is the time. for it is absolutely crazy for kids to die in school. This is the time because we have a gun problem and our Congress and President care more about the gun lobbyists than us. They actually would have us believe it is always all about politics, those empty souls uttering the same empty words. The NRA people writing checks to politicians sell the line that our horror is about sour grapes, like a loser's locker room after a loss at the buzzer.
If you read enough social media, the oft voiced threats of a "Second Amendment Solution", are what the gun fanatics think we deserve. They threaten us and could even kill us for asking why anybody who wants an assault weapon seems to get one. They say all we have to do is to enforce existing laws, even in the face of news the FBI failed to follow up on more than one tip about the executor of this latest horror.
It is not always about losing an election. This is about two very different ways of seeing the world. The world of the gunrunners meshes perfectly with the world Trump conjures up, a selective America that is white and straight and Christian. Donald Trump has never pretended otherwise. His campaign of fear and exclusion and isolation fits perfectly with the fears created to stop common-sense gun regulation in its tracks. Theirs is an America where some people simply do not belong, do not matter, and essentially do not deserve to live. And if the price for their power is carnage in a grade school every week, they really do not care.
The saddest aspect about the last few months of our national life is how quickly social conservatives and the televangelist types aligned with a self-professed p*ssy-grabber. For years, millions of Americans have given up their capacity for independent thought in favor of excessive consumption of talk radio and Fox News. We have reached the point where mass murder does not even register much of a reaction.
Those of us who were children when JFK was murdered have been seeing the aftermath of gun violence for 55 odd years. It's become quite the ritual. Compare what we have heard about these past few tragedies with what our parents' generation had to say in 1963 or 1968. There seems to have been a marked flattening of our ability to think or feel or emphasize.
A significant percentage of our populace has declared certain things acceptable, noble, and American. But asking for comprehensive background checks for gun purchasers is portrayed as somehow un-American. This disconnect is a defeat for common sense, creative intelligence, and any sense of humanity.
Our children are getting killed in class and it seems that the only time our leaders care about mass murderers is if they happen to have a foreign last name. Then it's a national tragedy committed by evil's epitome, and laws are passed. But if the killer is a troubled white male, they shrug their shoulders and tell us to think and pray.
Our children are getting killed in class and it seems that the only time our leaders care about mass murderers is if they happen to have a foreign last name. Then it's a national tragedy committed by evil's epitome, and laws are passed. But if the killer is a troubled white male, they shrug their shoulders and tell us to think and pray.
One guy trying to set off a shoe bomb caused us all to take off our footwear at an airport. Our leaders want to make it easier for people on the "do not fly list" to buy an Uzi. How incredibly awful it is to see our elected officials serving the NRA with more loyalty than they serve their constituents. "We the People" should never vote for a politician taking a cent from the gunrunners again.
Grief laments what might have been, the future these victims have been robbed of, the future that they won’t get to see, and that is what we walk through all the time now. The Scriptures say that weeping endures for a night but joy comes in the morning. We can’t see that morning coming for America anytime soon, no matter how many "thoughts and prayers" and crocodile tears the usual suspects offer.
MANY BLESSINGS- NOEL
PS- This commentary by Dale Hansen of WFAA is on the Parkland school shootings It's well worth the time.
