Reaping what we sow

Well, it’s Friday in America, so we’ve got another school shooting. An 18-year-old man bought a couple of AR-15s and 375 rounds, shot his gran in the face, then went to an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where he fatally gunned down 19 fourth graders and their two teachers before being stopped by the police. Seventeen other children were wounded.

Although born in North Dakota, his name was Salvador Ramos and he apparently wasn’t white enough to be taken alive, like the 18-year-old who murdered 10 Black folks at a suburban Buffalo supermarket a week ago.

This is Texas—where decades of Republican rule have made it easier to buy assault weapons than it is to vote or to seek out reproductive healthcare if you’re a woman (men—just line up here for the meds to treat your ED problems; testicle tanning will be available next quarter; naturally, all insurances will cover)—but it could have been pretty much anywhere. Anywhere someone with an XY chromosome configuration feels aggrieved and wants to vent his anger. Because he’ll have no problem buying firearms.

Every fucking time we have a mass shooting, Republicans at every level of government circle the wagons and propose more ways to twist our society into pretzels to avoid putting even the tiniest controls on the sale of guns. They piously intone “thoughts and prayers” for the victims while pocketing their checks from the NRA (who in turn has inexplicably copious amounts of funding from Russia) and accusing anyone who suggests some gun control laws of “politicizing the tragedy”.

Texas’ governor, Greg Abbott, made an appearance at Uvalde on Wednesday, engaging in faux “leadership” before he buzzed off to a campaign fundraiser. Ted Cruz—the utter emperor of performative piety—was there, too, looking like the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening. Not the season for Cancún, I guess.

(Cruz and Abbott are both speaking at the NRA’s Annual Meeting today in Houston, where they will not mention the true cost of indiscriminate gun ownership.)

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke showed up to call them out (interrupting thoughts and prayers with “do your jobs”), which sent the entire stage full of clearly well-fed White mostly male scrotes into a frenzy of outrage. I bet all the sworn personnel were itching to draw their weapons and blow him away; only having cameras there from every news outlet on the planet stopped them. Is this photo from Reuters not outstanding?

I’m going to step away from the current carnage for a moment and bring you reminders of the aftermath of previous school shootings, in Newtown, Conn. and Littleton, Colo. These are tweets, so consider the source (although a reporter from Sandy Hook did reply to the firehouse one to confirm), but they resonate as true:

Why the almighty fuck are we putting more families through this again?

Also, Nicole Hockley, who buried her five-year-old son Dylan after the Sandy Hook slaughter, has described how Dylan’s eyelashes rested on his cheeks in his coffin; a cloth draped across his face below his nose covered the fact that he had no mouth because his jaw had been shot away. Uvalde parents are going to have to identify the mutilated bodies of their children the way she did.

As invariably happens when the mass shooter is white, Repugs are falling back on their sorrowfully intoned, “mental health issues” excuse. I listened to an NPR interview yesterday with a retired deputy sheriff from Uvalde who asserted, “It's about a hurting kid that didn't have the relationships and the connections that he needed. That's what I think the problem is, and that's a tough one to solve. It's easy to pass a law, but it's hard to change a heart.” Asked if he therefore thought that the focus on gun control legislation was misplaced, he pontificated, “I don't know if it's because that's maybe easier to respond to than the moral issues, those deep community fibers that have to be rebuilt somehow. That's hard work. And I think a community like this that's smaller and closer knit together has a chance at doing that work.”

Here's the kicker, for the benefit of Mr. Change a Heart: red states consistently vote against any social programs that could alleviate the causes of “hurting kids”—they won’t even fund physiological healthcare, much less mental health services. Too busy greasing the skids for corporate pollution and tax cuts for millionaires. The hearts that need to change first are yours.

Assuming you have them.

I'm going to point out one more thing: going by the Latino surnames of all the victims, there would be no particular reason for Republicans to rethink their positions. Like the Black victims in Buffalo, they are members of groups Rs are trying to disenfranchise at every opportunity. Replacement, don't you know.

Well, it’s Friday, and I’m supposed to have an earworm for you. Changing it up—I’m giving you a guy named Steve Kerr, who coaches the Golden State Warriors basketball team. Here’s what he told the world just before the Warriors played the Mavs in some tournament. I never heard of Kerr before Wednesday, but he said everything I wanted to, so here he is.

Turn up the volume loud enough so even a Repug can hear.