Another School Shooting --- Alex Jones, JD Vance and Mr. Rogers

Here we are again in the aftermath of yet another school shooting. This one is the forty-fifth in the year 2024. That puts us at 417 mass shootings since two student killed fifteen classmates at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999---the start of this unholy trend that has exposed over 370,000 student to firsthand experience with gun violence in America. In December of 2012 when 20 six and seven year old children at Sandy Hook Elementary in New Town, Connecticut, were gunned down I thought for sure lawmakers would finally do something to get assault weapons off the streets and enact some sensible gun laws. But then Alex Jones started in with his conspiracy campaign falsely claiming it was all staged by crisis actors paid for by people trying to get tougher gun laws through congress, giving Republican lawmakers additional cover for not voting for the tighter laws that were being introduced.

It took a long time for Alex Jones to face a jury regarding his conspiracy theory about the mass murders at Sandy Hook but this year a court ordered him to liquidate his personal assets and to pay a 1.5 billion dollar settlement to the families of those children who were killed. They may not ever see any of that money because Alex off-shored a lot of his assets but at least there were consequences for what he put those parents through with his lies. And his Infowars Channel was shut down due to him filing for bankruptcy. That's a giant win for America in itself.

So here we are fourteen years after Sandy Hook and the NRA still has the Republican party by the balls, still controlling people like JD Vance who at a rally this week urged everyone to pray for the families at Winder, Georgia, where a fourteen year old killed four and sent nine to the hospital using an AK-47 assault weapon. Vance also said, “I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets, and we have got to bolster security at our schools.” He went on to say, "Stricter gun laws are not the determining factor in preventing school shootings. The Kamala Harris answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them. " How can he or anyone say that with a straight face?

The exact words from Democratic Party Platform reads: "Democrats believe that we can reduce gun violence while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners. We believe we should expand and strengthen background checks for those who want to purchase a firearm – because it shouldn’t be easier to get a gun than a driver’s license. We believe we should ensure that guns don’t fall into the hands of terrorists (whether they be domestic or foreign), domestic abusers, other violent criminals, or those who have shown signs of danger toward themselves or others. And we believe we should treat gun violence as the deadly public health crisis it is." 

Joe Biden has long been calling for a ban on assault-style rifles---the guns of choice for so many mass murders---but it's not the official goal of the party. And even if it was, guns designed for warfare do not belong on our streets and they are useless for hunting. We don't allow private citizens to own tanks or fighter jets so how are guns designed strictly for killing people any different? There already is a constitutional line that allows us to separates weapons of war from weapons used for recreation and protection.

One day after the January 2024 shooting Trump said at a rally, “I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa, It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But [we] have to get over it, we have to move forward.” I'm sure that was very comforting to the families who lost a loved one less that 24 hours earlier and that was sarcasm in case you can't hear how hard I'm pounding on my keyboard as I type this paragraph.

A couple of weeks ago when I was binging on buying political pinbacks I bought one that reads, "Thoughts & prayers, Policy & Change," and I've been wearing the last few days almost hoping one of the MAGA Republican would try to defend the mindset that thoughts and prayers are all we can do, that protecting guns is more important than protecting children. But so far, none of them have.

Look, I know sensible gun control laws isn't the total answer to stopping the heartbreaking and escalating trend we are on but it's a good start. If I was King I'd also put a Mr. Rogers-like figure back on the air and play segments of the show in all the elementary schools to help kids learn how manage their "mad feelings" and other valuable lessons he taught about getting along with others, bullies and a wide array of topics many kids aren't learning at home. But even that would be controversial in today's MAGA world. When Tom Hawks played Mr. Rogers in the 2019 movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood the internet warriors in the MAGA world claimed Mr. Rogers was responsible for creating a whole generation of "soft pussies who don't know how to be real men." What they really meant is that women have forgotten our places and too many men have accepted their changing, more hands-on role in parenting, cooking, cleaning and being an equal partner in a marriage. I was totally shocked by the venom voiced against Mr. Rogers. None of which has little to do with my original topic of mass shootings but this is where my mind wandered today and I'm not editing it out. ©

Until next Wednesday.

 What Do You Do? Written by Fred Rogers

What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong...
And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?

It's great to be able to stop
When you've planned a thing that's wrong,
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song:

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there's something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.

Six Degrees of Anguish

The people who live in my Independent Living building have a close connection with Michigan State University where the latest in a long line of mass murders occurred earlier this week. We even fly their flag on game days, we have viewing parties in our cafe and people walk around wearing their Spartan Green. But this week The Six Degrees of Separation Theory was on full display around here and both their flag and our American flag are flying at half mast. The joyful connections with the university have been replaced with prayer vigils and having clergy available to give grief support to those who need it. Many residents here have grandchildren who attend MSU and one of the five kids who was shot and is still in the hospital fighting for his life is the great-nephew of a couple living on the floor above me. My next door neighbor’s granddaughter was supposed to be in the class on the campus where the shootings took place but she had skipped school that night. Her parents didn’t know she was safe for quite awhile, though, so they are processing how close they came to her going through a horrendous experience at best or dying at worst. Her grandmother said, “We’ll deal with her skipping classes later.” They didn’t know she did that sort of thing.

The first time I wrote about a mass shooting was in December of 2012 when 28 people were killed including twenty kids between the ages of six and seven at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. And here I am over a decade later. The names and ages changed, the problem of gun violence in America just keeps getting more and more frequent while (mostly) Republican lawmakers sit on their tusks offering thoughts and prayers. Although they don’t do that so much anymore since the Democrats recently called them out about their useless prayers and thoughts when they are in a position to actually do something to keep guns of mass destruction out of the hands of those who should not have them. We’ve all become numb by mass shootings just like we’ve become numb to the gridlock in Washington.

As long as Kevin McCarty can still stand behind a pathological liar like Republican Representative George Santos and a self-described Christian Nationalist and Conspiracy nutcase like Majority Taylor Green this country can no longer claim to a be a moral country. Whether you believe we lead from the bottom up or from the top down, when our lawmakers don’t seem to care about Ethics and Truth we are going to keep getting ruled by the self-centered people with the deepest pockets and right now that’s still the NRA and the Ultra-Far Right.

I’m glad Nikki Haley threw her hat in the ring but her pitting herself against seniors over 75 isn’t going to endear her to the aging Republican Base and it made her a prime target for 76 year old Trump. Who knows, maybe that’s the secret master plan in the party, let her take the first volleys from the x-President then let someone else step into the race who can be an actual, serious candidate. Does anyone really believe a woman could become the President of the United States in this day and age? If half the country doesn’t trust a woman to make her own reproductive decisions why would they trust a woman to sit in the Oval Office?

Enough politics, let’s talk about the parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It was developed by three college students back in 1994 and it’s based on a discussion Kevin had on TV and the six degrees of separation theory that goes back to 1929. It speculates that any two people on earth are only ever six or less connections apart, only in the game you had to link anyone in Hollywood to the actor Kevin Bacon with lowest numbers in between. Since he was a prolific actor for decades when the game was developed it was fun for movie buffs to play and my husband, while not a movie buff, was obsessed with the theory. Here’s an example from Wikipedia: "Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit (1969) with Ed Asner Ed Asner was in JFK (1991) with Kevin Bacon. Therefore, Asner has a Bacon number of 1, and Presley (who never appeared in a film with Bacon) has a Bacon number of 2." As long as I’d known my husband he could meet a stranger and after talking awhile he could more often than not come up with a connection. It helped that my husband had a scary good memory and never forgot anything he’d ever heard, saw, read or experienced.

You don’t need a good memory to see the Six Degrees of Anguish I've seen in recent days regarding this latest school shooting. My neighbor used to be a child psychiatrist and I have no doubt she knows the full range of trauma her granddaughter is going to be dealing with in the weeks to come, just knowing she should have been in that room where her classmates died. My neighbor is the sweetest, most grounded person living here and I hate this for her and for all the other relatives who are only one degree away from those who died and those who survived. © 

Fun Parties, Ugly Parties and Taking Personal Responsibility

This weekend I went to a surprise retirement party for my niece-in-law’s husband. It was hard to count how many people were in attendance because his family had rented a small town bowling alley with a sports bar and people seemed to be in constant motion either filling bags with candy or popcorn at the ‘50s theme candy bar or filling plates with hot dogs, salads and cake or getting drinks and bowling for free, of course. I’m guessing there were a hundred guests and all sixteen lanes were filled with bowlers for the entire four hours I was there. I met my husband at a bowling alley. He had set pins at that very place back in high school when humans actually set pins instead of the automated machines we know today. And while my heart wanted to try bowling at the party my head told me I could undo the shoulder surgery that I had a few years ago. My great-niece who had the same labrum tear surgery I had, on the same day as mine, is scheduled back in the surgical room soon.

The retiree’s daughters had asked people to come dressed in ‘50s theme clothing and a prize was given to a girl wearing a poodle skirt, a pink silk jacket, a small neck scarf and a hat made out of an old vinyl record---the skirt was not as nicely made as the skirt I had back in the day but it was fun to see it. (What does that say about my age when the fashions we wore in my youth are now available for Halloween costumes?) On the tables, they had vinyl records, boxes of Cracker Jack, fake sodas, candy cigarettes and, since he retired from the post office, reproduction postal stamps from the ‘50s were everywhere plus ‘50s music was playing nonstop. The lights were kept low and one of those projectors that makes it look like colored bubbles are crawling all over the place was keeping time with the music. What a noisy and busy place! But it was fun and I’ve never seen the guest of honor as happy as he was at the party. That was Sunday afternoon and if not for the party one of my niece-in-laws would have still been in Los Vegas and at the concert where the carnage happened. The posts on her Facebook page the next day were full of glad-you’re-safe kinds of posts.

Monday morning I had a date to go to an art show and lunch with the Gathering Girls. Actually, an art exhibit, a chrysanthemum show and lunch all under the same roof. The sculpture garden was hosting a Rodin show mixed in with Rodin inspired figurative entries into a yearly competition we have in the area that draws artists from all over the world. The garden was just one of 175 venues exhibiting both juried and unjuried art. Five hundred thousand dollars in cash prizes will be awarded this year and the public gets to vote on who gets half of that cash, art experts get to decide who gets the other half. By the end of the three weeks show, 400,000 votes will be cast. Registration to vote must take place in person at one of the venues.

At lunch the seven of us laughed a lot as we always do, but we also talked about the massacre in Los Vegas. I was grateful for the opportunity to express disbelief with others in person but at the same time it felt hollow to be talking about yet another mass shooting after the way our country’s leaders in Washington have sold their balls off to RNA. For example, the only reason the House didn’t vote on the NRA’s wish-list bill regarding striking down an 80 old law that limits the sale of gun silencers is because it was quickly taken off the schedule because of the Los Vegas massacre. It will get rescheduled when things settle down and the Republicans will pass it because Citizens United allows the gun lobby to pour millions into their coffers. (Citizens United was the single worst, country-changing decision ever made by the Supreme Court.) Can you imagine how many more people would have died in Los Vegas if the shooter had had silencers, how much harder it would have been for the police to find the guy and for people to run when he stopped shooting to reload or one of his weapons jammed?

When one of these mass shootings happens we wring our hands, offer prayers and look for someone or something to blame. We might turn off the media and criticize them, too, for “sensationalizing the story.” But where was the outrage when one of Trump’s first acts in office was to undo an Obama era law that made it harder for people with severe mental illness to buy guns legally? Where is the outrage at ourselves for not being outraged enough to get involved in a concrete way? It might be a myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand but it’s not a myth that we Americans do it when we don’t want to face our own culpability. At the very least, we all should be signed up for MegaVote to get a weekly report on what our own house and senate representatives will be voting on and did vote on. We can’t hold our lawmakers accountable if we don’t know their voting records. And before someone says, “But you don’t understand…blah, blah, blah." I acknowledge that passing sensible gun control laws is just one element in the box of solutions we need to work on if we’re going to turn this ugly trend around. Pick an element---any one of them---and make a pledge to take personal responsibility to help bring about the needed changes!  ©