Some thoughts I wrote down yesterday about that Hellscape.
I saw someone say the school shooting murders in Texas were “unimaginable”. I can’t think of a single fucking thing more imaginable in America than little children getting shot to death. I’m so fucking tired of seeing these things happen over and over and over and over and over and over and then it’s just “thoughts & prayers” from those in positions of power who then go on to do fuck-all to stop the next one. We were taught so many lies as children about America and I know it hurts to face that fact. It is not a great country when this happens so damn often. Life doesn’t have to be this way, I have seen that every day since I left in September. There isn’t a perfect place on this planet, but my God, there are so many places where children don’t get mowed down in a hail of gunfire. It is insane that so many of my fellow Americans have just accepted this. Don’t you know you shouldn’t have to send your child to school with the worry they’ll be shot to death? That is not an inevitability or the “cost of freedom”. I have come to understand how much abuse & mistreatment I and my fellow Americans have been taught to accept by institutions, political parties, and leaders so that they can live comfortably, safe, well fed, and constantly entertained. Something has to change and it it’s not going to happen through passivity. God gave us brains and hands and feet for a damn reason! And there are certainly more of us regular, working and struggling people than there are of those who sit in power. If we want a safer world we can demand it and we can take it. If we collectively do nothing then damn us to Hell for sitting by while our children’s blood flows in our schools and our streets.
I’m not even in the States anymore. But I am an elementary school teacher and I am feeling this loss so hard today. It hurts like I am there. I just think of all the experiences good and bad those kids won’t ever have. They will never be able to fall in and out of love. They won’t ever grow into who they want to be. I don’t give a fuck about your politics as sports man. This is fucking human beings, teachers and kids. I don’t understand a society that allows this to happen and then goes to work the next day like nothing of value was lost. Those people mattered goddammit. And the solution isn’t going to come from a dude in a suit in DC making a statement, or some blowhard pundit on cable news, or some reporter calmly reciting statistics, or a preacher at the pulpit finding the right verse. It’s us. We have to stop seeing people that are different in some way as a threat. Everyone is struggling to stay alive these days. That shooter was someone in pain and I can’t stop thinking about how different this morning would be if we lived in a world where he simply had someone to talk to or a world where he was taught how to feel and work through his pain. There would be some more kids smiling and playing and some teachers looking forward to their summer breaks. America is fucking broken and that’s okay, because WE are not whatever the fuck that system of institutions and business is. We’re humans and we lost some beautiful humans yesterday from something we could have prevented.
I used to think people who didn’t vote were shirking their duties. Who gives a shit anymore? I’m supposed to work myself into a fervor over which old man I think should be made Daddy America? Kids are having to be identified based on their clothing because the bullets didn’t leave much behind of their heads or bodies. You need to feel this, we all need to feel this. We have numbed ourselves for too damn long. We don’t grieve the way we’re meant to. People pushed back to labor after their allotted grievance period has expired. The monsters are not just the shooters, they are us for going about our lives.
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