Just what the fuck does it take already?
That’s the boiling question people are asking a lot lately about many different recent events.
For openers, two particularly horrific mass shootings had happened not too long
ago.
The first shooting was in Buffalo, NY where a white supremacist massacred grocery store shoppers in an
African American neighborhood. His racist manifesto was
filled with stock conspiracy theories he had copy & pasted from 4chan and he
had targeted an area with a high concentration of blacks for his
attack.
The second was an elementary school shooting
in Uvalde, TX where the local cops did absolutely nothing to
stop the carnage going on inside the school for over an hour. Instead, they tased, pepper sprayed, and handcuffed desperate parents who begged the cops to
do their jobs.
And there were two mass shootings just this Fourth of July – one in Highland Park, IL and another in
Philadelphia, PA. But there have been very many other mass shootings in between Uvalde and these. Mass shootings are
like roaches in that regard: For every one that gets press, there are many more
that don’t.
Nearly everyone’s exasperation is palpable. And that’s fueled in
large part by the knowledge that nothing is going to change as a result of
these infuriatingly familiar tragedies. We’ve all been here too many times
before to entertain the cruel fantasy that this will actually change anything.
Our cynical politics regard concrete goals as “unicorns” and “ponies” so only
posturing is considered “realistic.” Political pantomime is “adult,” but
advocating actual action is “childish.” You can apply this to any number of issues – abortion rights comes to mind right now, but that topic's for my next post.
So let's discuss mass shootings a little longer before going into our country's incompetent Covid response.
