I remember it like it was yesterday. In my second year of teaching, the entire country was rocked by the events at Columbine. Obviously, it wasn’t the first school shooting we had ever seen, but it was likely the precursor for the kind of events we are now seeing on a daily basis. The shooting came on April 20th. We ended up having three different bomb threats between that shooting and the end of school. During one of them, one of the teachers heard that they were going to send us in to look for the bomb. “Cut the green wire, no cut the red one. Cut both? Oh damn…”

Of course, the next big event was 9/11. We had parents roaming the entire school grounds looking for their child to take them home. There were rumors that day that the terrorists would actually try to fly a plane into the neighboring refineries close to the school. If that had happened it would have been game over. Considering the crisis, the school capitulated and allowed students to carry cellphones from that moment on.

What do these events have in common? Well, they involved the same sentiment as the jackass in Tennessee that  decided that mass shootings weren’t going to be solved. We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas. Following Columbine we were constantly on the lookout for students that were disenfranchised or possibly unstable. I remember one of them being suspended for a book that he had in his locker. Somehow, we do everything but what actually makes sense.

In order to illustrate this, I’m going to walk us through the cellphone portion of the discussion. It started simply enough. Students could have cellphones in case of an emergency. They shouldn’t be out and before the invention of the iPhone, there really was no sense in having it out. Then, they became little mini-computers so we allowed them to be used on occasion for academic purposes. Naturally, as you might suspect, it became harder and harder to police that. So, schools began to use a system where we could confiscate phones if they were clearly becoming a distraction.

A few years ago, our district surrendered. They decided that we couldn’t confiscate phones because the parents would complain too much. Sure. Our district really doesn’t have a huge problem with helicopter parents. My daughter’s school is ten times worse in that regard, but they can still confiscate phones. They have a coherent policy on how to deal with them. Individual teachers still have some freedom within that framework, but it is understood that if you are misusing your phone it will be taken up. Peer in any room in our building and you will see the vast majority of students staring at their phone and not paying attention to what is going on. We lost the battle without firing a single shot.

What is truly galling is the apathy of it all. Each of us individually hate the distraction of cellphones but feel powerless to do anything because administration chose to give up. It’s almost like there is a parallel here to the problem of mass shootings. Some bloviate about doors. The latest shooting didn’t involve an open door. Some bloviate over transgender this that or the other. 99 percent of shootings aren’t done by transgender people. There is one thing each of these events have in common. If those in government choose to give up before even trying anything then we are truly lost and we have collectively failed our children. May they have mercy on us all.

Happy First Indictment Day to those who celebrate.

Well, there are 34 counts for falsification of  business records in the Trump indictment.  For those of you keeping score at home, that’s exactly 34 more than Hunter Biden has.

NBC News and the NYTimes are reporting that it has been confirmed that TFG was indicted today in NY related to the bribe paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence during the 2016 election.  The first of what will likely be multiple felony indictments in Georgia and DC, TFG’s life is now forever changed; he’s now facing years of trying to stay (or get) out of jail for multiple serious federal and state laws.  It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

This story is breaking.

Right wing propaganda is really something to behold. Few people are able to take a nothing burger and spin it into a national crisis. We have seen them do this with critical race theory and other  issues and we have seen the likes of Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert add their little interpretation and amplification of whatever they perceive the facts to be. Is it satire? We are almost in a satire-free age given how ridiculous reality seems to be. The latest one could go either way. You be the judge.

I would normally go with satire and maybe that’s the obvious answer, but I seem to remember the notorious MTG talking about the billions that were coming across the border and the billions that elementary schools were getting for critical race theory. These figures from Boebert demand a certain number of questions. First, how many boats are there in the United States? Would there be enough to call it millions? Are these estimates for the total number of accidents or the total number of people involved in those accidents? Back in the day, Saturday Night Live did a bit where literally one man was mugged in New York City every 30 seconds. Poor Jim Belushi was getting it over and over again.

So, maybe there is one jackass that can’t help but hold the gun in his hand while trying to steer. Maybe there aren’t millions of different boats getting into accidents but just one jackass that collides with something every time he goes out. Maybe that makes more sense. Of course, this also begs another question: how many people really feel the need to have that gun on their boat? Are we having James Bond style shootouts on the lake? Do we have a group of dimwitted Neanderthals that forgot their fishing poles and now want to use their gun for fishing? It’s just so bizarre.

While this is all just hugely ridiculous, the sad thing is that whether you think it’s satire or just Boebert showing off her GED education, idiots across the country will buy it hook, line, and sinker (pardon the pun). People will believe that schools out there are getting billions for CRT. People will believe that schools and public libraries everywhere are doing drag queen story hour. Now, people will believe that maybe some boaters on the lake will suddenly crash into the shore now that they can’t steer and hold their gun at the same time.

“Not my job.”
“Nothing we can do.”
“Not our role.”
“Shit happens.”

These four statements are the total and complete strategy of the New Trumplican Party regarding public policy that protects the citizens they represent.  Politicians in the Trumplican party seek office for one reason and one reason only, and that is to grab, and then keep power.  There is no thought given to public policy that helps anyone (except for themselves and their patrons).  The public policy initiatives they pursue are purely cynical, designed to keep their gerrymandered base wrapped around the axle and ready to explode at any minute.  Their ENTIRE strategy is to keep their alternate dimension dark, dangerous, unstable, unhappy, and increasingly fearful.  That’s it, period, the end.

The key feature of this strategy, which I call The Dodge, is to do nothing to prevent massive tragedies, then heap blame on strawmen to deflect responsibility for their own negligence.  The most advantageous feature of this strategy is that nothing bad ever sticks to them.  From statewide power outages to mass shootings in schools, The Dodge allows those in charge of governing to brush those off to “free market” principles or “god given constitutional rights.”  “There’s nothing we can do because constitutional freedoms won’t let us,” is the rote answer to all gun violence.  The “free market” is also a common excuse; here’s one –  “healthcare must be free market.”  This Dodge allows insurance companies to overprice and deny health coverage to millions of Americans.  Another good one is, “We won’t talk about immigration reform until the border is 100% sealed and there are zero border crossings.”  Since “sealing the border” is impossible, they have the excuse to never have to do anything.

Abbott is masterful at The Dodge.  He paid no political price for his incompetence and corruption with both ERCOT and the PUC that caused the massive power outages that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to the economy and cost as many as 700 Texans’ lives.  “Free market” was his excuse as well as bald faced lying by blaming wind turbines for the outage.  He also did it during the pandemic, providing zero support for closed businesses to protect people from the spread, and then using economic deprivation as an excuse to open the economy far too early, even overruling local government officials actually trying to protect people.  After causing thousands of unnecessary deaths, Abbott then blamed the CDC, the WHO, China, Anthony Fauci, Peter Hotez, Lina Hidalgo, and other “liberals” to cynically gain political advantage using illness and deaths that he caused as a weapon.

We’re not surprised when shitbags like Abbott, Patrick, Cruz, Cornyn, McCarthy, and many others use The Dodge to avoid accountability for their own corruption.  However, the most shocking and disgusting abusers of The Dodge are the six SCOTUS judges that now say that the Court has no role to play in reining in massive extreme gerrymandering, protecting voting rights, stopping unlimited buying of elections by billionaires, preventing massive pollution enabled by their rollback of EPA regulations, stopping the rewriting of the Second Amendment to create a right for idiots to carry and use assault weapons in public, and protecting women’s right to equal protection under Roe v. Wade.

These politicians (I’m including SCOTUS justices in that description) use The Dodge to deflect all responsibility for their own incompetence and profound corruption.  And it works.  By continually piling on boogeyman after boogeyman they can blame everyone and everything for problems they create or fail to solve.  Such boogeymen include(d) gays, ACORN, those who “hate the troops”, immigrants, China, gays, “gun grabbers”, “welfare queens”, gangs, gays, drug cartels, old people, “radical Democrats”, gays, “voter fraud”, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, transgender kids, drag performers, gays, and, last but not least, wokeness.  Oh, and gays.

By creating these boogeymen, these politicians accomplish their key goal which is gaining and staying in power by avoiding accountability.  They couldn’t care less if you live or die.  The textbook examples of this callousness is their disregard of human lives taken my massive gun violence and their willingness to sacrifice the old and sick for the economy during the pandemic.  If you doubt any of this conclusion, I invite you to listen to Rep. Burchett (T) Tennessee:

’nuff said.

If you are reading this, I am sure you are aware of the latest school shooting in Tennessee. Of course, this time was the dream scenario for social conservatives and their excessive need to keep fighting culture wars. The shooter identified as transgender. Of course, we should immediately ignore the overwhelming statistics that indicate that school shooters and/or mass murders are usually cisgender white males.

Six people perished in this shooting (not counting the shooter). Three of them were school children and three were adults working in the school. One of those adults was a substitute teacher. While conservatives will love the transgender part of the story, there are other parts of the story they are likely to gloss over. For one, it happened at a private Presbyterian school with maybe 200 students. For another, the shooter didn’t go through an unlocked side door.

Of course, we are just talking narratives at this point. The numbers on mass shootings are overwhelming. Every individual situation is different. In this case, you had a former student at the school that obviously had some sort of psychological trauma that motivated them to do this. No sane person does this. Naturally, this talking point will be exhausted. Just once it would be nice to hear people actually make suggestions of what to do about it rather than just land on easy platitudes.

I wish I could be angry about this. I wish I could be moved to tears by yet another seemingly tragic and preventable event. I wish I could have some hope that maybe another one of these in the news would spur on enough people to mobilize and do something about it. It won’t and they won’t. We’ll talk about door control. We’ll talk about arming teachers. We’ll talk about stationing at least one police officer on every campus in America.

On the one hand, you have the evil and horrible scourge that is transgender and LGTBQ+ rights and demands. The common conservative plank establishes the idea that anyone that is transgender is really just mentally ill. While that notion is disgusting and hateful, it also murders their own point. If someone that is transgender is truly mentally ill then why are they allowed to have a gun much less multiple guns?

We know what causes this. We have known since the very first prominent mass shooting event at a school before the turn of the 21st century. We knew at Columbine. We knew way back when the shooter at the UT bell tower terrorized the Austin community. We knew at Sandy Hook. We knew at Santa Fe and Uvalde. We knew at Newtown. We are the only country in the world that has these events on a regular basis. It’s a simple enough thinking exercise. How is our country different from the rest of the world?

At this point, no serious politician is talking about confiscating any guns. No serious politician is talking about repealing the second amendment. Those thoughts had occurred to me once or twice though. No one believes you could do that safely or that it would completely eliminate these events. We know better. We know that common sense gun control measures would reduce these events drastically without infringing on most individuals’ rights to own a firearm. Of course, we know that none of these things will happen. When you can’t laugh and can’t cry you are left numb. It certainly isn’t a comfortable feeling.