Who are we?
What have we become?
How do we think about ourselves as a society?
Eight of our fellow citizens—members of tribe—were murdered yesterday at a “crowded Texas mall.” Eight people enjoying themselves on a Saturday are no longer living because a rando with a weapon chose to exercise his Second Amendment rights and mow them down for no good reason other than he could.
This is a shocking tragedy. It’s part of an appalling, terrifying and ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE epidemic of everyday mass murder. It’s a national crisis.
And here’s the worst part: it’s becoming part of the background noise in our culture.
Proof: The New York Times ran this story on page A27. When you hear some ingenuous right-winger say he doesn’t want to “politicize” this “unimaginable tragedy,” know the truth: this truth is not only imaginable, it’s commonplace.
Stories the New York Times deemed more important than the gratuitous mass slaughter of eight citizens:
- The coronation of Charles III
- “Sherpas Abandon Job That Made Them Famous”
- “Double Parking While Wealthy May Mean Higher New York City Fines”
I would urge everyone in the Daily Kos community to read the eloquent, heart-felt post, “”Do Not Watch the Video From Texas.”
And this video is incredibly traumatizing. I say this as someone who has witnessed the most horrific child and elder abuse you can imagine. As someone who’s had to do c-sections at the bedside in the ER on crashing moms. As someone who was on duty treating victims of the Unite the Right attack here in Charlottesville. Who has seen a two-year old with full body burns, victims of human trafficking, and so much more- this video is so hard to watch.
Yes. Almost impossibly hard to watch. That said, I would like to (with the utmost respect to the writer) disagree. Instead, I’d point you to a Tweet by the great, righteous David Simon:
Thought about this for a long time though it's certainly relevant today: Photojournalists should endeavor to publish every obtainable photograph of America's gun carnage from this moment on. We need to see it. We need the visceral affront. Keeping it offstage aids the barbarism.
Remember, the police were ready to bury the George Floyd case until that horrifying (hard to watch) footage appeared. It’s sickening, in the same way that watching the footage from Nazi Concentration Camps is horrifying and sickening. And the same way that seeing Emmit Till’s body was horrifying and sickening when his mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so people could see what the murderers had done to her boy. Yes, we humans are capable of that. The only way to stop it is to feel a bitter, galvanizing shock of horror, bear witness, and commit ourselves body, spirit and soul to stopping it.
Maybe if someone made the editors of the New York Times watch that footage, the editors might put that story above the fold on Page 1, and make a cause of repealing the Second Amendment. Texas and other red states have made it EASIER, not harder, to purchase weapons of mass death and carry them without a permit. They even repealed Obama-era laws banning mentally ill people from buying weapons.
As she was dying, the sainted Molly Ivins wrote this about the Iraq War:
We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. ... We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'
When we know we’ve had enough? When we will put the lives of our children above the profits for gun manufacturers? When will we wake up to this terrible darkness inside of us that condones the slaughter of innocents, and relegates it to page A27?