“On Tuesday morning, at least 19 children’s parents woke them up and helped them brush their teeth, fed them breakfast, made sure they had their little backpacks packed. They held their children’s small hands as they walked or drove them to school. Those children were alive when their parents waved to them and handed them their lunches and kissed their cheeks. Their lives were precious, and they mattered.“
The above is the penultimate paragraph in a New York Times essay by Dr. Roxane Gay.
Of course it’s about the 19 elementary school children murdered by the NRA and its followers in Uvalde, Texas.
Unfair, you say?
Bullshit.
Believe me, I could have named the Republican Party as at least an accomplice and Ted Cruz as the getaway car driver.
There is no worse feeling in this world — none more impossible to recover from — for a parent than the loss of a child.
As terrible as it would be to have a child die from an illness or in an accident, think of how horrible it would be to know your child is murdered.
And then to have to listen to smarmy politicians say turning schools into armed fortresses is the only answer, it’s enough to make you realize there are two sides to so-called American exceptionalism.
This is a great country in which to be rich, white and male.
But the Horatio Alger stories were baloney even when they were published. Most people born poor or lower-middle class never become much better off financially. We rank fairly low among western nations for upward mobility and it’s actually getting worse.
If you’re a minority and you’re not named LeBron, Tiger, Venus or Serena, your best chance is to find a rich white guy who needs another towel boy.
Even the traditional way up — a good education — has become something of a poisoned well thanks to tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. My son graduated from college 15 years ago and he has friends from his class still paying on their loans.
So people become more and more desperate.
People become angrier and angrier.
And as role models become more and more toxic, the poison seeps through our system.
The number of children killed this week in Uvalde, Texas, is appalling enough. Their parents will live with broken hearts for the rest of their lives.
But that’s hardly the worst of it. The children who survived will be uneasy and feel insecure from this day forward, and their parents will be nervous sending them off to school — forever.
One Texas asshole, er, official said if parents wanted to be certain their children were safe, the solution was to homeschool them.
The NRA has the incredible gall to continue to hold its convention this weekend in Texas. In fact, these criminals have already been spreading lies about Uvalde, all of them politically motivated.
They call the shooting a False Flag operation, done by anti-gun people to make the NRA look bad.
They say the shooter was a transsexual, for obvious political reasons.
Worst of all, they say he was an illegal immigrant.
These people make Vladimir Putin look like Gandhi.
And they are running our country into the grave.