Apalachee High School. I was going to list several others, but what would be the point? Seriously, what would be the point? The list would go on and on, and every school name you would read would bring back a momentary thought of how tragic it was, and then you would go on to the next one.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Until what? Until you finally finish the list as the feelings of tragic consequences quickly fade, and you then either read on, or stop? Yes, that’s exactly what would happen, and if you decided to read on, you might finish reading my comments and say to yourself, “This guy is right, we cannot let this continue unabated like this.”
But we will. We will, because it is now, as the saying goes, “the new normal” in the United States. The issue is no longer that we cannot allow this to become normal for our society, because it is. It’s expected…weekly. The issue now is, how deeply will we allow this normalcy to embed itself into our society.
It is expected so much that the republican party now takes the stand that people just need to get over it. When your eight year-old daughter is almost cut in half by an assault rifle in her classroom, get over it. Why do I say this? because Donald Trump said, after the first school shooting in America this year, at Perry High School in Iowa on January 3rd, that people should “move on,” and that the parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, and friends who survived the horror “have to get over it.”
Seriously, he said that.
How may people reading this piece know what a round shot from an AR-15 does to a human body? A lot of you, I’m sure, think that it’s like some old western in which the person shot, grabs themselves where they think the bullet might have entered them, sort of winces in pain, perhaps they’ll move their hand just a bit to see a bit of a blood stain on their shirt, and then fall to the side. If they’re a hero, they survive. If they’re a villain, they don’t.
No, I’m sorry, but nothing could be further from the truth. An assault rifle is a weapon of 21st century warfare, and is designed to deliver a bullet that will tear a full grown, adult human apart. It is designed to create a wound that will not heal. It is a weapon designed to kill soldiers dressed in full 21st century battle gear. Imagine, then, if you will, what and AR-15 will do to an eight year-old girl, especially if she’s hit twice. Believe me, it will be ‘closed casket.’
We also have to remember, that you cannot separate what Donald Trump says from official republican party policy, because his every utterance becomes that party’s policy. That’s what ownership is all about. So, if you’re a member of the republican party, and the remains of your daughter have to be mopped up off of the floor of her classroom after she was gunned down right after proudly showing off her finger painting to her best friend and then her teacher, remember what your lord and savior says, and get over it. Move on and GET OVER IT!
The rest of us are not required to “get over it,” but you are. As republican, MAGA parents, just hook up again and make another one that looks just like her, that’s all you have to do; right after you get over it and move on.
And then we have republican solutions to all of this: arm the teachers, chain the doors, stop and frisk every student, put more cops everywhere, and get over it. Soon, our children will be completely prepared for life in the fascist police state the republican party envisions for us. Chain the doors, stop and frisk, cops everywhere. Eventually, if we allow them, they will make this normal, too.
If all of that weren’t enough, we have JD Vance, Mr. Personality himself, saying the following: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.” Which he prefaced with your basic republican lie, that Kamala Harris’ answer to this is to take away every law-abiding American citizen’s guns. I have almost no response to that. Almost. I’m not going to deal with the ‘take your guns’ lie, because that’s for Ms. Harris to address. What I will take issue with is the attempt, through JD Vance, to even further ingrain the normalcy of our children being murdered in their classrooms into American society.
Mr. Vance, I don’t think you actually care that death at school is now a fact of life. In the cult of selfishness and cruelty that has, under Trump’s dominion, become the character of the republican party of which you are a high priest, there is no room for caring about anyone outside of your personal circle. So, when you say that you “don’t like” our children being cut to pieces as they huddle behind furniture, crying and holding each other, as a single teacher does their best to shield twenty children from certain death, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you because you follow that half of your statement by immersing yourself in your dream of the inevitability of the scenario above: it’s a fact of life.
No, Mr. Vance, you sold your soul to Donald Trump, the NRA, and the Church of the Perpetual Lie, and now you have to bear the costs of that. You no longer have the right to try to tell people that you care. You no longer have the right to try to convince people that their suffering means anything to you, because we all know that it doesn’t. The ultimate cost, of course, for you, is that your massive mansion, on “Paved with Gold” Street in the Pearly Gates Country Club in the imaginary heaven you have created, and in which you only feign to believe, is forfeit.
Your heaven is sealed off to the MAGA movement. Nobody who tries to sell the idea that eight year-old girls in pretty dresses being ripped to shreds in their schools by assault rifles is a fact of life has any place there. Nobody who tries to tell the families of these girls and boys that they need to ‘move on,” and “get over it.” has any business even hoping for whatever salvation they imagine in this world.
Lastly, a brief word on Governor Kemp, who, in the face of more gun deaths in his state, (only twelve states have higher gun death rates per capita than Georgia) stated flatly on the afternoon of this tragedy, that people’s untethered right to bear any form of arms, and his sworn allegiance to the NRA, mean more to him than the lives of children and teachers. This should be obvious, though. Georgia, like all states run by republicans, ranks well into the bottom half of spending per child on education. Georgia is well into the bottom half of the states of this country in caring about the lives anyone, especially the born.
I saw a post on a social media platform on Thursday, the day after the shooting, by a woman who was completely distraught. She was walking home after escorting her seven year-old daughter to the school bus stop. She greeted the driver when the bus arrived then watched her daughter climb the tall stairs in a cloud of happiness and look for a seat among her friends.
As she walked home she was almost in tears. Because since she lives in the United States there is a chance (a small chance, I grant you, but still a much greater chance than in any other western democracy) that her daughter will be murdered at school that day and won’t come home. There’s that thought that lurks horribly in every parent’s mind that they will receive a call and then frantically rush to her little girl’s school, in tears and a panic, wondering if her little one survived.
The thought just occurred to me that maybe your refusal to not only ban assault weapons, but to then suggest arming teachers with guns, chaining all of the doors, and infesting our schools with limitless cops, like roaches in the cafeteria, is really just part of your greater plan to destroy public education in America.
Let me ask you, Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance, and Mr. Kemp, how can you sleep well at night, knowing that because of your efforts to flood our country with guns, and the influence you have over ignorant people who follow you and worship at the alter of the Second Amendment, that millions upon millions of parents in our country fear sending their children to school each day. Let me paraphrase that last part again. Because of you, millions upon millions of parents in this country are frightened to send their kids to school each day. Parents of elementary school children are scared enough, but that fear and panic is multiplied one hundredfold for parents of high school students.
Does that not sound somewhat ridiculous? It does to me, but it’s now normal life in America. Yes, finding yourself in tears because your happy and healthy eight year-old daughter, or sixteen year-old daughter might not come home from school because republican politicians refuse to take even the smallest steps to insure that their schools are safe places to be, without resembling concentration camps, is now normal.
Should I list statistics on support of gun safety measures in America? I don’t need to. If you’re reading this piece, then you already know the American population’s attitude on this issue; ban assault weapons, make background checks mandatory, enact effective red flag laws, and the list goes on, but none of this will happen any time soon. The murder of our children in their schools will continue to become an ever more accepted and normal occurrence as long as the republican party and the NRA hold sway in our government, allowing billions upon billions of private, dark money dollars to flow anonymously to elected and appointed officials.
As long as these people can persist in creating a more dangerous America for everyone but the ultra wealthy, then, well, just prepare yourselves for the new normal America. It is, after all, what you want, unless you, at the very least, use your right to vote to try to stop it. Unless you do this, then your silence gives consent.
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Citizen X