American politicians, local, state, federal, spent the last decades telling us regular Americans that mass shootings were necessary for freedom, and allowed them to be normalized to the point where they elevated a man who said the parents of dead children were actors who were faking their grief, and most mass shootings last a day or two at most in the news cycle.
So they created an environment where us regular people were expected to just live our lives with the constant threat of a possible public, workplace, or school shooting. An environment where school children are taught how to try to hide from *bullets.*
Now they want to create a media outrage machine over shootings that either affect them personally or which they think they can use for political gain, and they are visibly upset that Americans don't respond how they want.
Uh, you all did this. You told us that innocent school children were acceptable losses for freedom. You told us no one has the right to feel safe when in public. You did that. So why on earth would anyone in America consider another mass shooting as different? You told us dead children didn't matter. That was the line. That was the moment you should have done something, Ted Cruz and everyone else in power. And you didn't.
Much like certain politicians promoting conspiracy theories to get what they want, only to discover that they've opened a Pandora's Box of conspiracy weirdness and now even their own audience suspects them of constantly lying, they could have stopped this a long time ago, and they didn't. And now they are maybe realizing that living in fear of mass shootings is horrible. Maybe, maybe, they are even, some of them, realizing they helped create this hellscape.
And to be fair, many regular people in America also did nothing. But when the ones in power are now asking everyone to stop being violent because they think it's gone too far, it's a bit ridiculous. They could have spoken out against mass shootings, or acts of violence, or intense partisan language, or white supremacy, or ICE, at any time, and most of them did not. They could have said something when George Tiller was shot, whether or not they believe in abortion. Hell, they could have done something when the Capitol Police were assaulted (and killed) *on their behalf* because of intense partisan rhetoric. They didn't.
They told us all this was normal. Some of them even want to convince us that the military in our streets with the threat of violence is normal. So I am a little confused as how they are just now realizing that America has a violence problem. Considering Jan 6th didn't teach them that they, too, can be affected, it makes me wonder how genuine they are with this sudden outpouring of concern over public acts of violence. Makes me wonder if it's calculated, when we were not supposed to feel sorry for dead children. DEAD CHILDREN.
Just gonna keep repeating that. Dead children were not supposed to upset us too much. Our children are supposed to grow up in schools that have no money for books but have body armor and first aid classes for gunshot wounds and mass shooter drills. And we are supposed to be fine with this because of freedom/those politicians took money from the NRA.
Murder is bad. Unnatural deaths are bad. We know that. We've all known that for a while because we aren't ghouls. Grief is a monstrous thing. Lives being cut short is terrible and traumatic for anyone. But powerful people in America, mostly Republican, have been telling us for years that this is the acceptable cost of freedom. I'm glad they are changing their minds on that, but genuinely, that they have the gall to act surprised right now is beyond aggravating. Because DEAD CHILDREN meant nothing to them but now some of them want to capitalize on this violence? Either it's all bad, or it's all acceptable. We have to live in fear every day, or we do something about it. All of it.
But I doubt they will mention that part.