I cannot bear to look at their faces. Looking at their pictures, smiling and innocent and full of the light of life is too much – I find myself almost collapsing to my knees with a combination of horror and grief and a primal wail rises from the depth of my chest and tires to crawl out my throat.
Maybe because it was so close to Christmas, maybe because it involved so many children, this one this one has hit home in ways the columbine, Virginia Tech, or what feels like the last 16 massacres did not. Even the usual NRA stalwarts are lying low for now (later when the grief eases and the news machine moves on they will emerge from their hidey holes) in the wake of the horror.
And I suspect it will get worse - the shooter’s mother was the first victim and the guns he used were all hers – the shooter is described as a troubled (well yes) person who had been home schooled and did not seem to be in school or working and that he was home schooled because of fights between the Mother and the school about things (not stated). There are other reports that are disturbing in their implications but are not confirmed so I will not go into them here.
The bad responses are the ones saying if the teachers were armed this wouldn’t have happened neatly ignoring that a house full of weapons failed to project the shooter’s mother. The most horrible one was from some minor noise in the GOP fundamentalist wing who said the children were killed because the teachers weren’t leading prayers and such had turned their back on God.
Which begging the question what kind of god demands the slaughter of innocents if prayers to his glory aren’t being said by teachers before the start of class? And even more horrible what kind of person worships that kind of god?
So to you Mike H – (as you try to walk back your horrible words) I say:
Fuck you and fuck your god.
