The root of all evil
The irony isn’t funny. The Covenant School, the private parochial school in the Green Hills neighbourhood of Nashville where the latest slaughter of children took place, recently banned some 300 books from its library. The reason? To “keep kids safe,” of course.
Oh, and Ted Cruz will love this one: the murdering little turd (a sterling representative of a well-regulated militia) who slaughtered those kids and staff members, gained access to the school by using one of her guns to shoot a locked door open. So much for doors saving the lives of the kids. I guess we’re just going to have to make those doors bullet proof, right Ted?
Meanwhile, apart from the usual (and useless) thoughts and prayers, some Republicans (such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Don Jr) are positively crowing because the school shooter is trans. Finally, responsibility for a mass shooting isn’t just white, MAGA and male. Now Republicans can stop hollering about video games and mental health and start blaming a group they hate!
Of course it was bound to happen. When you have 38 mass shootIngs in the first 28 days of March, just about anything can happen. If you count as a mass shooting an incident where four or more people are killed or injured by gunfire, today (as I write this) is the 88th day of 2023 and already there have been 131 mass shootings. Nowhere in the world is any nation subject to such violence. America stands alone.
In fact, with an average of about 666 (yes, I picked that number intentionally out of a selection of close choices) mass shootings a year in the United States, all groups are going to get in on the action sooner or later. Murdering children in schools with assault weapons is, and has been for some time now, an American fad. Fads gather fans and fans make fads get bigger and bigger.
Those of you who read my articles and pay attention to such things as individual preferences of different Palmer Report writers probably know that I don’t like to make predictions. For example, I have refused to predict what day (or even if) Donald Trump will be indicted. So far that reluctance has served me rather well, I think. But I’m about to make a prediction all the same and, however sadly, I stand by it.
My prediction is this. Some day this year another school shooting will take place. Many small children will be senselessly murdered. A lot of people in and out of government will be outraged. They will talk about it and editorialise about it. In the end, nothing remotely useful will be done about it. Then another murder of small children will happen. And then another. I’m talking about 2023. Again, not a damned thing will be done.
Never have I wished more that I was wrong. Never have I been more sure it will happen. It will even happen to some people who think more guns is the answer. That opinion will change for most of them after the shooting that affects them personally happens. But by then it will be too late.
I have said it before and I will say it again. As long as it remains legal to use money to bribe American politicians, mass shootings of innocent children and innocent adults will continue in America at an alarming and lethal pace. It will never, ever end. It won’t end because there is nothing Republicans love more than money.
It’s a problem for Democrats too, because they also have their sponsors. Those sponsors just happen not to be the NRA and other gun nuts, for the most part. But when Democrats rail against the NRA they forget to rail against the system that makes the NRA possible. They don’t want to change the system either.
Money is what keeps our politicians dishonest. That’s why so many politicians on both sides of the aisle enter Congress as relative paupers and leave as millionaires. That’s why human scum like George Santos will do almost anything for a seat in Congress. Money in politics is a deadly poison. Money in politics must go. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.