Thoughts and Prayers and Outrage:
Uvalde, Tops Supermarket, Roe v Wade & John Lewis Voting Rights Bill
On this day, I am struck by the horror of a small-town story. Uvalde, where 19 children and two teachers were gunned down by a disgruntled mentally ill 18-year-old boy, a crazy idiot who bought two AR15 style rifles and multiple rounds of ammunition on his 18th birthday using credit.
It cost him only three grand to acquire these weapons of war. He was telegraphing his murderous intentions weeks before, on an interactive social media platform. Some kids thought it was a joke. But others, girls specifically, knew this kid was dangerous. Violent. He threatened to rape some of these girls. They complained to the social media platform. That did little.
An eighteen-year-old boy. A boy filled with evil, able to buy guns of war but too young to buy a beer, or a pack of cigarettes, or rent a car. But he could buy weapons of combat and gun down 19 kids and 2 teachers.
And the NRA sends “thoughts and prayers”.
Where is the right of those families to their lives? To being free from domestic terror? Where is their right to life?
And a few weeks before. Another deranged 18-year-old filled with hate. A white supremacist who writes a 180-page racist manifesto, not an original manifesto with original thoughts, but one culled from white supremacy websites. And this abomination of humanity goes to an African American neighborhood in Buffalo. And guns down, elderly Black folks as they buy their groceries.
A carton of eggs. Blam, blam, blam. Blood and death everywhere.
This shooter specifically chose the Tops supermarket. His stated goal: to make African Americans feel there’s nowhere safe for them.
And the NRA sends thoughts and prayers.
This is such bullshit.
Governor Abbott of Texas claims it’s not about guns. It’s all about mental health. There’s no need for gun safety laws. No, we need better mental health programs.
Liar. Liar.
Just last month, Governor Abbot slashed $211 million dollars from the state’s mental health budget.
Thoughts and prayers.
And the NRA says we need more guns. We need “good guys with guns” to stop these mass shootings. But nineteen law enforcement officers waited for reinforcements for over a half an hour, because they knew they would be outgunned. Those “good guys with guns” were no match for an eighteen-year-old with an AR 15 style weapon, massive ammunition and wearing body armor. Some solution, NRA.
Thoughts and prayers.
And while the majority of Americans want some sort of reasonable, logical gun safety reform, the NRA, this flawed, felonous organization, maintains its stranglehold.
The majority of American citizens is ruled now by a crazed minority. A minority controlled by money and power. A misguided minority. A minority that’s warned if there’s any gun safety legislation, it’ll be only the beginning of those horrible liberals taking away all your guns.
Oh my God. What a joke. Or rather, not a joke.
And then there are the mindless, ignorant idiots in Congress, defending the NRA. Let’s start with Marjorie Taylor Greene. That ignorant numbskull warns us about the “Gazpacho Police” who want to confiscate (although she’d never use a word that big) our guns. By the way, she’s also concerned that the government is going to “zap” us with a shock if we eat real cheeseburgers, instead of the fake meat Bill Gates is growing in “peach tree dishes.” She actually said that. Bill Gates, peach tree dishes, and we laugh at her. We laugh at her stupidity and lack of education, but it is not funny. She’s raising millions of dollars with her conspiracy theories. She’s actually popular.
Or Lauren Boebert. That genius actually made an incredibly salient point for gun safety laws. She was trying to mount an argument against legislation, by saying, in her mentally simpleton way, that after 9/11 we didn’t ban planes, we secured the cockpit. (I guess her thinking, if you can call it that, was that we only needed to harden schools.) But the fact is we did a lot more than just secure the cockpit after 9/11. This country enacted many rules and regulations to limit access to planes, airports, etc. Exactly what reasonable set of gun safety laws, like universal background checks, would do.
Does it seem like our country is simply falling apart now?
With the GOP outrageously supporting Trump’s big election lie? The Republican Party. The Party of Lincoln. The once proud party of John McCain.
Now these, Trumplicans, and GOP folk subscribe to conspiracy theories like Q Anon or the lies of Tucker Carlson as he spews “replacement theory” nightly from his TV show.
Replacement theory is the idea that Democrats are deliberately replacing male white voters with non-whites who they, the Dems, will see as more pliable.
Hate, hate, evil. This stuff is truly the scary monster in the closet.
Facts don’t matter to this rabid minority in this gun crazed country. There was an assault ban from 1994 till it expired in 2000, and we didn’t have these mass shootings. Now they are common.
Since Uvalde, there have been 14 more mass shootings as of this writing.
A mass shooting is defined as a shooting in which four or more people are killed.
Fourteen more mass shootings. Do they even get a mention on the national news? No, because there are so common now, and the number dead isn’t staggering enough to make it news.
Thoughts and prayers cannot repair the damage from this carnage. The families who lost a loved one, the people who witnessed the assault, who saw the blood and felt the fear, the devastation.
Thought and prayers.
I’m done. I’m ashamed of this country.
How does the conservative nutjobs reconcile overturning Roe v Wade after 50 years? Let me say that again after 50 years. So much for the concept of Stare Decisis.
And these right-wing wingnuts claim it’s because they value life. But they let an 18-year-old gun down 19 children.
How do they demand a woman carry her rapist’s baby to term, but vote against help with baby formula?
This crazed, ignorant, illogical minority doesn’t care about the people of this country. The majority of this county. It doesn’t care about the will of the people. Those in government only care about money and power.
How is it that Mitch McConnell amassed great wealth on a senator’s salary?
How did we allow Donald Trump to escape justice?
How do we allow the lies? The answer? Because big business funds the right and big business doesn’t like democracy.
Get ready, folks, for the authoritarian government poised to take over.
On this day, I am pessimistic. And like many Americans, I don’t want to watch the news or read the papers and the magazine articles. I want to hide. Insulate myself. Spend my days averting my eyes. It’s all too much. The failure to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The NRA’s tacit approval of child massacres. The ridiculousness of censoring teachers’ reading materials, or, what teachers can say or do, but wanting them to come to the classroom packing. Yeah, baby, you teachers should be able to defend your classroom even though 19 police officers were too afraid.
Should “back-to-school” wear include bullet proof vests for students and teachers?
The rest of the world shakes its head at us. This is the exceptionalism of the United States now. The exceptionalism of violence, evil and cruelty.
Thoughts and prayers.
Oh yeah. We need those thoughts and prayers. If there’s an answer to these issues, I don’t see the road map. I only see defeat. What’s the old saying? A lie can travel around the world in the time it takes the truth to put its pants on.
I’m afraid for the next generation. My daughter and many of her friends have turned away from participating, participating in political issues. They say it’s hopeless, so why try? They focus on living their lives, which is stressful enough trying to make ends meet and homeownership way out of any realm of possibility.
But I’m hopeful they will get involved because they will be forced to get involved.
The COVID pandemic has hurt us all. Isolated us. Made us afraid. Now there seems like there’s always some new danger. COVID, and now monkeypox. Lately, I’m wondering if there isn’t some corporate motive behind these viruses.
Just as COVID is calming down, we have monkeypox and there just happens to be a vaccine for monkeypox? How interesting? Could Big Pharma be meddling with our health for monetary gain?
I mean, look at gas prices that rose because of shortages and then the government released billions of gallons to ease the pain at the pump. And yet prices didn’t come down. Why? Big oil companies flood unlimited money into the pockets of politicians. And thank you Supreme Court, for that Citizen United decision.
It’s all rather discouraging.
Thoughts and prayers.
And I shut off the TV. I put down the newspapers. I hide and ignore.
In 2020, I was involved. Donating money to candidates. Writing articles. Writing letters, Making phone calls. And Donald Trump was defeated and then he birthed “The Big Lie”. And that led to a violent insurrection on January 6th.
And with no consequences. None. Grift and lies and no consequences.
After two impeachment trials, no consequences.
Saudi Arabia murders a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, on American soil and no consequences. Saudi Arabia brags about getting classified information from the United States and then gives $1 billion to Steve Mnuchin, our former Treasury Secretary, and two billion to Jared Kushner, and no consequences.
Thoughts and prayers.
So, what’s the answer? Is there an answer as we are poised to lose our democracy?
Are we condemned to become a third world dictatorship?
Is there enough political will to stop the right-wing GOP from taking back power in the midterms?
Thoughts and prayers can’t help us now. Only action will. Strong action. Consistent action. Loud action. Resist. Protest. Take your country back. Don’t avert your eyes. Don’t turn off the news. Learn. And stand and fight for this country.