Thank you for speaking truth to power, Mike. I hate that I have had this fear as a parent for 21 years now and it doesn’t go away because my oldest is in college. It just gets worse.
This is the moment! Democrats should make this their number ONE issue. As a teacher in a Texas classroom for more than 17 years, I conducted hundreds of shooting drills. Lining the locked classroom walls with totally silent (not willingly silent) children pretending to hide from an active shooter. When (being a retired Air Force vet) I knew a person with a gun would just shoot the damn door open and kill anyone they wanted. This is the moment.
YES - and to take back sanity & truth in Congress and get rid of Dictator Trump we have to talk with family, friends and neighbors, write letters to media, fight gerrymandering in every Blue state and VOTE the Big Fat Liars out!!!!
Many Democrats gave done so but as we see elsewhere ins this thread, we sabotage action but blaming our own side or even just saying "both sides." This isn't "both sides." Blocking gun safety measures is 99% a GOP thing. Put blame where it belongs and stop saying "Democrats do it too" when one or two errant Democrats are doing it.
As a gay man, I am sick to death of all the problems in the heterosexual world, all the problems in the Christian world, being blamed upon gay people, when we’re not responsible. In this particular case, the shooter was:
a white— look at him!
young—23.
Male— taking right wing rhetoric at it’s face value, transgender doesn’t exist. So mail it is.
The vast majority of shooters fit his profile to a T— the T doesn’t stand for transgender. Young, white, male, angry, stupid, and psychotic. With access to guns, and nothing to stop him from getting them.
Funny thing about all of those accusations about sexual abuse being directed at gay and transgender people. You can google “gay men sexual abuse“ or “transgender sexual abuse”, and you will get a few hits over a few years. The cases accusing transgender people are almost always a person with a penis harassing women in a woman’s changing room — what we would call in any other situation heterosexual men. Or, you can Google “protestant pastor sexual abuse or “catholic priest sexual abuse”, and you will get literally hundreds of thousands of hits every single year, with 300 to 400 arrests, convictions, or sentencings every single year. And those were just the ones that show up in my newsfeed.
And of course, if you know anything about the subject on the whole, you will know that the majority of sexual abuse occurs within the holy heterosexual family, with the father or stepfather being the perpetrator.
I am 75 years old now. Nothing has changed in the 54 years i’ve been out. The same people accusing innocent people for exactly the same ideological and religious reasons.Any attempt to do anything about our gun problem is ignored and squashed, the only argument being that we need more guns. Somehow, Cracker Barrel changing its logo excites a huge amount of MAGAt outrage, but dead kids do not, and all those guns they need to protect themselves against the tyrannical government somehow has gone missing in Washington DC, Los Angeles, and any place else where these diaper vipers have stationed troops.
But above all from my perspective, is the Christian obsession with what they think I do with my dick, and that invites them to commit any atrocity against us, any violation of their own so-called religious beliefs, and then Claim persecution when somebody objects.
You forgot to add "COVID" isolation caused this dude to shoot little kids 3 years after the fact. I am so sick of this country using "COVID' as an excuse for every behavior problem that is a result of a specific unaddressed issue.
Your comments are right on spot. Too many look for scapegoats and refuse to address the real problem. Unfortunately, the Republicans and some Democrats are afraid of facing the real issue head on. It's time to organize and elect men and women with courage to change the direction we're heading. Thanks for the thoughtful collum.
MOST Democrats aren't afraid of identifying guns as the issue, and anyone who tries to drag any blame over there is helping to block any real action. We have had it so beaten into our heads that we have to be "bipartisan," even though no one ever asks Republicans to be, that we turn into a circular firing squad.
Trans ally. I cringed when I read that this person identified as TGF. I knew exactly what would happen from those who seek to demonize the marginalized TG community. Attack the weak. It's like burning witches as the stake, except via social media.
I no longer trust any politician to do anything substantive on guns. If Sandy Hook did nothing of true consequence. If Uvalde most recently changed nothing. What do we expect this attack will do? Same effing thoughts and prayers. I don't trust the Dems or the Reps. They are all bought and paid for by lobbyists. Get money out of the politicians and then we can talk about fixing problems, imho.
Exactly which party is responsible for making sure money has been kept in our political system? GOBS of money? Oligarch money? Pretty sure there's a reason Republicans have corrupted our entire system--our government, our judicial system and the executive branch. Which party STACKED our Supreme Court with corrupt RW trash? Then that RW court voted to allow the use of more money to keep a specific party and politicians in power to then get even more corrupt power-crazed politicians in our government. It's no coincidence our government is stacked with Oligarchs and power insane politicians screwing the rest of us out of our rights and into poverty. We people pretty much created this mess. We did this to ourselves by being idiot voters. Republicans tell us who they are, what they're going to do to us and the majority of people still give them their votes. It sure would help if the American people weren't so proudly gullible and uneducated. You think people were being FORCED to vote for corrupt Republicans and had no other choices. Republicans and Democrats are NOT the same. WAKE UP America. It's time to REVOLT!! STOP voting for Republicans! LOOK where it's gotten us. How can a nation be so STUPID?
That last sentence speaks volumes: Elect a Democratic Party that will DO SOMETHING about the problem. The current Democratic Party just wants to defeat MAGA. They want us to believe that will do it - it won’t. The Dems have had the power to change things - they want us to believe they “couldn’t”. They lie! They REFUSED to
The Democratic Party has very seldom had the POWER to ACT and make real change! Truly unfortunate that some of you actually eat up RW bullshit about the Democrats. Last time they had a slight senate majority, they had at least 2 traitors in their ranks who stopped Democrats from passing much of anything that they had hoped. Sounds good tho to blame Democrats for our country's problems when it's really the republican fascists and all their compromised followers that have destroyed this country. So exactly when is it you think Democrats have had all this power to ACT? Or are you just another RW interloper spreading your usual maggot BS? That would be my guess. That and you have NO CLUE how our government functions and what it takes to actually create ACTION.
They did not. When Biden's bill came up, the senate was evenly split, and since the Senate can barely move without 60% and Joe Manchin was still there, they did not have the umbers to do anything. Again, we need to stop blaming Democrats for not doing the impossible — which is how WE help block any potential action from happening. Unhelpful.
Trump has expanded the traditional "thoughts and prayers" solution to mass murder of our children by adding flags at half staff. I call BS.
The bottom line among republicons who refuse to enact common sense gun safety laws is keeping votes. Kowtowing to their voters. Follow the brave example of former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who, in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a mosque outlawed automatic weapons.
This petrifies me because i have grandkids in school and i am a counselor who deals with trauma. The damage we are causing little children in this country by inaction may not be reversible. We will blame mental health but the truth is we are the cause of their mental health issues for putting them through trauma. We hold the power to solve this problem but instead we allow politicians to send thoughts and prayers. IT WAS A CATHOLIC SCHOOL!!! Prayers are said daily there.
One has to wonder if part of the disaffection and ennui of younger generations has to do with the fact that they have spent their lives in a constant fear of random violence by a stranger while being at their assumed safe place, school. Perhaps the use of social media is a soothing mechanism, you can at least protect your back while texting. Covid only increased the sense of alienation.
Yes, I have been feeling the same way about getting a gun and about the fake Christians in this country- there are more fake ones than real ones, that's for sure.
We need people in Congress- I don't care of which party- who have some balls to step up and put the hammer down on those 2nd Amendment fakers!!!
Prayers my ass! We need to kick ass and throw the cruel bastards out!
CRUELTY is in vogue now in our government, thanks to the bastard-in-chief.
Democrats, even in majority, are not going to act bravely. That is the situation with the party. They will start pleasing the GOP in the name of bipartisanship, and never get these hard issues a final resolution. I wish they start owning this country, and not act like a second fiddle to GOP and conservative manipulation of our population, institutions and economy. Owning the Truth alone is not enough for Democrats. Truth, to win, must have strategic thinking, planning and playing the game of chess to win for the Truth. Are Democrats there? Hope God helps us.
This is false, and once again, I will fight this with every ounce of my being. The more we train our metaphorical guns Democrats and blame them, the more we're letting Republicans off the hook. They LOVE to hear comments like yours because they know such thinking lets them keep their grasp on power.
American society is hijacked by zombies in the right-wing media and political group. They have successfully convinced the public that killing is okay, that citizens don't deserve equal treatment under the constitution, that attacking science is cool, that public education is a hotbed of woke ideas that parents should avoid, and the list goes on and on. We cannot debate with people who are devoid of souls. We cannot engage with people whose only purpose to is to peddle half truths and distract people away from the real issues. Debate only happens with people with equal seriousness to solve a problem with a pure heart. We shouldn't be debating with satan's when their whole purpose is to steer society towards lower and lower levels of existence. May God help us.
Well written by and large, though it would appear that the influence was from the far-left, the "rainbow effect" in full display! Sadly we now live in a world where competing for supreme victimhood, claiming moral superiority and thus asserting justification for violence as resistance has become commonplace.
What is this rainbow effect that you were speaking about?
Gay people and trans people actually are victims of hate, fear, stupidity, religious bigotry, bad parenting, closet based self hatred, culture war despite, and politically motivated fear mongering
It doesn’t mean we live our lives as victims— I certainly never have, because I refuse to be victimized— but we are certainly aware that there are people who have nothing better to do than wish we could be their victims.
A transgender friend, heterosexually married and the father of two in her previous life, wrote the following some years ago:
“Just a few days ago, I was noting that despite the years I've been out now, I still marvel at the pure, simple joy you feel when you're able to live your every day as yourself. For me, no day is dull and drab and commonplace, because every day I live is one more day I get to experience something I was for so many years denied--the simple and marvelous fact of being me. This is the sort of thing that people like you know nothing about, and have no desire to learn about. People like you have no interest in finding out who and what we are and what our lives are like. You simply want to control or ruin our lives. That's all. You want to plunge us into deep unhappiness and keep us there. If there were some good reason for doing so, if it really proved to be beneficial to humanity and human society to sacrifice our lives to some greater good, then perhaps that would be a praiseworthy endeavor. But people like you can never come up with a good reason.”
The "rainbow effect" speaks to how the extreme radical "far-right" and "far-left" have become indistinguishable in their rhetoric.
In no way am I commenting, nor did I wish to refer to anyone's personal lived experience of suffering and triumph in the face of the suffering, which should at all times and in every circumstance be rejoiced!
Thank you for clarifying. I’ve never heard it referred to that way, which is why I took a bit of Umbrage.
And usually, when someOne starts talking about rainbows in somewhat disparaging way, they are usually referring to gay and trans people. So that’s where I was coming from.
My apologies.
The generally accepted term for this, though I’m sure it’s not universal, is the horseshoe effect. The two ends of the horseshoe are closest to each other. Believe it or not, 60 years ago I wrote a paper for my junior high school civics class on the subject. it was 40 pages long, and I even got a note from my principal complementing me on that.
You are correct. We've been talking about this effect for years and I've never heard the term "rainbow" either. That would be coopting the commonly shared term for the LGBTQ+ community. It is indeed the horseshoe effect.
Don't worry about it. I've been in that pasture,The grass is always greener on the other side.
On a related note, the horseshoe effect is to my mind really more a product of the Overton window. The extremes keep moving further and further out. After all, we've gone this far--Death, destruction, stupidity on a grand scale--So what's a little bit further?
The horseshoe Simply sits on the Jackboot of the authoritarian horse. That's why there's really not much of a difference between the far left and the far right. Both want power over others, both have dispensed with any sense of empathy or morality. Sometimes they Justify it as the word of God, but a lot of them don't even bother with that anymore.
That's not called the "rainbow" effect, not commonly anyway. The term we all use for that is "horseshoe." People like Cenk Uygur, Tulsi Gabbard, Nina Turner, and RFK Jr, as well as the dead-end Bernie Bros who wouldn't stop even when Bernie told them to stop being jerks are typical horseshoes.
Thank you for speaking truth to power, Mike. I hate that I have had this fear as a parent for 21 years now and it doesn’t go away because my oldest is in college. It just gets worse.
Graduate school
😢
This is the moment! Democrats should make this their number ONE issue. As a teacher in a Texas classroom for more than 17 years, I conducted hundreds of shooting drills. Lining the locked classroom walls with totally silent (not willingly silent) children pretending to hide from an active shooter. When (being a retired Air Force vet) I knew a person with a gun would just shoot the damn door open and kill anyone they wanted. This is the moment.
YES - and to take back sanity & truth in Congress and get rid of Dictator Trump we have to talk with family, friends and neighbors, write letters to media, fight gerrymandering in every Blue state and VOTE the Big Fat Liars out!!!!
Many Democrats gave done so but as we see elsewhere ins this thread, we sabotage action but blaming our own side or even just saying "both sides." This isn't "both sides." Blocking gun safety measures is 99% a GOP thing. Put blame where it belongs and stop saying "Democrats do it too" when one or two errant Democrats are doing it.
You are 100% right about this, Mike..
As a gay man, I am sick to death of all the problems in the heterosexual world, all the problems in the Christian world, being blamed upon gay people, when we’re not responsible. In this particular case, the shooter was:
a white— look at him!
young—23.
Male— taking right wing rhetoric at it’s face value, transgender doesn’t exist. So mail it is.
The vast majority of shooters fit his profile to a T— the T doesn’t stand for transgender. Young, white, male, angry, stupid, and psychotic. With access to guns, and nothing to stop him from getting them.
Funny thing about all of those accusations about sexual abuse being directed at gay and transgender people. You can google “gay men sexual abuse“ or “transgender sexual abuse”, and you will get a few hits over a few years. The cases accusing transgender people are almost always a person with a penis harassing women in a woman’s changing room — what we would call in any other situation heterosexual men. Or, you can Google “protestant pastor sexual abuse or “catholic priest sexual abuse”, and you will get literally hundreds of thousands of hits every single year, with 300 to 400 arrests, convictions, or sentencings every single year. And those were just the ones that show up in my newsfeed.
And of course, if you know anything about the subject on the whole, you will know that the majority of sexual abuse occurs within the holy heterosexual family, with the father or stepfather being the perpetrator.
I am 75 years old now. Nothing has changed in the 54 years i’ve been out. The same people accusing innocent people for exactly the same ideological and religious reasons.Any attempt to do anything about our gun problem is ignored and squashed, the only argument being that we need more guns. Somehow, Cracker Barrel changing its logo excites a huge amount of MAGAt outrage, but dead kids do not, and all those guns they need to protect themselves against the tyrannical government somehow has gone missing in Washington DC, Los Angeles, and any place else where these diaper vipers have stationed troops.
But above all from my perspective, is the Christian obsession with what they think I do with my dick, and that invites them to commit any atrocity against us, any violation of their own so-called religious beliefs, and then Claim persecution when somebody objects.
You forgot to add "COVID" isolation caused this dude to shoot little kids 3 years after the fact. I am so sick of this country using "COVID' as an excuse for every behavior problem that is a result of a specific unaddressed issue.
I wouldn’t buy that as any kind of an excuse. But this young man was clearly mentally ill. His “manifesto“ pretty much said that, and clearly.
Your comments are right on spot. Too many look for scapegoats and refuse to address the real problem. Unfortunately, the Republicans and some Democrats are afraid of facing the real issue head on. It's time to organize and elect men and women with courage to change the direction we're heading. Thanks for the thoughtful collum.
MOST Democrats aren't afraid of identifying guns as the issue, and anyone who tries to drag any blame over there is helping to block any real action. We have had it so beaten into our heads that we have to be "bipartisan," even though no one ever asks Republicans to be, that we turn into a circular firing squad.
Trans ally. I cringed when I read that this person identified as TGF. I knew exactly what would happen from those who seek to demonize the marginalized TG community. Attack the weak. It's like burning witches as the stake, except via social media.
I no longer trust any politician to do anything substantive on guns. If Sandy Hook did nothing of true consequence. If Uvalde most recently changed nothing. What do we expect this attack will do? Same effing thoughts and prayers. I don't trust the Dems or the Reps. They are all bought and paid for by lobbyists. Get money out of the politicians and then we can talk about fixing problems, imho.
Again my response is that since virtually all other shooter is a straight white male let’s take away THEIR guns.
Exactly which party is responsible for making sure money has been kept in our political system? GOBS of money? Oligarch money? Pretty sure there's a reason Republicans have corrupted our entire system--our government, our judicial system and the executive branch. Which party STACKED our Supreme Court with corrupt RW trash? Then that RW court voted to allow the use of more money to keep a specific party and politicians in power to then get even more corrupt power-crazed politicians in our government. It's no coincidence our government is stacked with Oligarchs and power insane politicians screwing the rest of us out of our rights and into poverty. We people pretty much created this mess. We did this to ourselves by being idiot voters. Republicans tell us who they are, what they're going to do to us and the majority of people still give them their votes. It sure would help if the American people weren't so proudly gullible and uneducated. You think people were being FORCED to vote for corrupt Republicans and had no other choices. Republicans and Democrats are NOT the same. WAKE UP America. It's time to REVOLT!! STOP voting for Republicans! LOOK where it's gotten us. How can a nation be so STUPID?
That last sentence speaks volumes: Elect a Democratic Party that will DO SOMETHING about the problem. The current Democratic Party just wants to defeat MAGA. They want us to believe that will do it - it won’t. The Dems have had the power to change things - they want us to believe they “couldn’t”. They lie! They REFUSED to
Act!
The Democratic Party has very seldom had the POWER to ACT and make real change! Truly unfortunate that some of you actually eat up RW bullshit about the Democrats. Last time they had a slight senate majority, they had at least 2 traitors in their ranks who stopped Democrats from passing much of anything that they had hoped. Sounds good tho to blame Democrats for our country's problems when it's really the republican fascists and all their compromised followers that have destroyed this country. So exactly when is it you think Democrats have had all this power to ACT? Or are you just another RW interloper spreading your usual maggot BS? That would be my guess. That and you have NO CLUE how our government functions and what it takes to actually create ACTION.
Dick!
They did not. When Biden's bill came up, the senate was evenly split, and since the Senate can barely move without 60% and Joe Manchin was still there, they did not have the umbers to do anything. Again, we need to stop blaming Democrats for not doing the impossible — which is how WE help block any potential action from happening. Unhelpful.
Awesome summary!!! Thanks
Trump has expanded the traditional "thoughts and prayers" solution to mass murder of our children by adding flags at half staff. I call BS.
The bottom line among republicons who refuse to enact common sense gun safety laws is keeping votes. Kowtowing to their voters. Follow the brave example of former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who, in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a mosque outlawed automatic weapons.
This petrifies me because i have grandkids in school and i am a counselor who deals with trauma. The damage we are causing little children in this country by inaction may not be reversible. We will blame mental health but the truth is we are the cause of their mental health issues for putting them through trauma. We hold the power to solve this problem but instead we allow politicians to send thoughts and prayers. IT WAS A CATHOLIC SCHOOL!!! Prayers are said daily there.
One has to wonder if part of the disaffection and ennui of younger generations has to do with the fact that they have spent their lives in a constant fear of random violence by a stranger while being at their assumed safe place, school. Perhaps the use of social media is a soothing mechanism, you can at least protect your back while texting. Covid only increased the sense of alienation.
Republicans are always cherry-picking incidents and blowing them up for effect.
They refuse to see the forest for the trees.
Thanks for this writing, Mike.
Yes, I have been feeling the same way about getting a gun and about the fake Christians in this country- there are more fake ones than real ones, that's for sure.
We need people in Congress- I don't care of which party- who have some balls to step up and put the hammer down on those 2nd Amendment fakers!!!
Prayers my ass! We need to kick ass and throw the cruel bastards out!
CRUELTY is in vogue now in our government, thanks to the bastard-in-chief.
Democrats, even in majority, are not going to act bravely. That is the situation with the party. They will start pleasing the GOP in the name of bipartisanship, and never get these hard issues a final resolution. I wish they start owning this country, and not act like a second fiddle to GOP and conservative manipulation of our population, institutions and economy. Owning the Truth alone is not enough for Democrats. Truth, to win, must have strategic thinking, planning and playing the game of chess to win for the Truth. Are Democrats there? Hope God helps us.
This is false, and once again, I will fight this with every ounce of my being. The more we train our metaphorical guns Democrats and blame them, the more we're letting Republicans off the hook. They LOVE to hear comments like yours because they know such thinking lets them keep their grasp on power.
American society is hijacked by zombies in the right-wing media and political group. They have successfully convinced the public that killing is okay, that citizens don't deserve equal treatment under the constitution, that attacking science is cool, that public education is a hotbed of woke ideas that parents should avoid, and the list goes on and on. We cannot debate with people who are devoid of souls. We cannot engage with people whose only purpose to is to peddle half truths and distract people away from the real issues. Debate only happens with people with equal seriousness to solve a problem with a pure heart. We shouldn't be debating with satan's when their whole purpose is to steer society towards lower and lower levels of existence. May God help us.
Truth to power.
Is anybody listening?
A well-written article with common sense insights.
Well written by and large, though it would appear that the influence was from the far-left, the "rainbow effect" in full display! Sadly we now live in a world where competing for supreme victimhood, claiming moral superiority and thus asserting justification for violence as resistance has become commonplace.
What is this rainbow effect that you were speaking about?
Gay people and trans people actually are victims of hate, fear, stupidity, religious bigotry, bad parenting, closet based self hatred, culture war despite, and politically motivated fear mongering
It doesn’t mean we live our lives as victims— I certainly never have, because I refuse to be victimized— but we are certainly aware that there are people who have nothing better to do than wish we could be their victims.
A transgender friend, heterosexually married and the father of two in her previous life, wrote the following some years ago:
“Just a few days ago, I was noting that despite the years I've been out now, I still marvel at the pure, simple joy you feel when you're able to live your every day as yourself. For me, no day is dull and drab and commonplace, because every day I live is one more day I get to experience something I was for so many years denied--the simple and marvelous fact of being me. This is the sort of thing that people like you know nothing about, and have no desire to learn about. People like you have no interest in finding out who and what we are and what our lives are like. You simply want to control or ruin our lives. That's all. You want to plunge us into deep unhappiness and keep us there. If there were some good reason for doing so, if it really proved to be beneficial to humanity and human society to sacrifice our lives to some greater good, then perhaps that would be a praiseworthy endeavor. But people like you can never come up with a good reason.”
The "rainbow effect" speaks to how the extreme radical "far-right" and "far-left" have become indistinguishable in their rhetoric.
In no way am I commenting, nor did I wish to refer to anyone's personal lived experience of suffering and triumph in the face of the suffering, which should at all times and in every circumstance be rejoiced!
Thank you for clarifying. I’ve never heard it referred to that way, which is why I took a bit of Umbrage.
And usually, when someOne starts talking about rainbows in somewhat disparaging way, they are usually referring to gay and trans people. So that’s where I was coming from.
My apologies.
The generally accepted term for this, though I’m sure it’s not universal, is the horseshoe effect. The two ends of the horseshoe are closest to each other. Believe it or not, 60 years ago I wrote a paper for my junior high school civics class on the subject. it was 40 pages long, and I even got a note from my principal complementing me on that.
You are correct. We've been talking about this effect for years and I've never heard the term "rainbow" either. That would be coopting the commonly shared term for the LGBTQ+ community. It is indeed the horseshoe effect.
Oh my! Of course you are correct and I am embarrassingly mistaken! Talk about cognitive slippage at it's worse! I should be out out to pasture.
Don't worry about it. I've been in that pasture,The grass is always greener on the other side.
On a related note, the horseshoe effect is to my mind really more a product of the Overton window. The extremes keep moving further and further out. After all, we've gone this far--Death, destruction, stupidity on a grand scale--So what's a little bit further?
The horseshoe Simply sits on the Jackboot of the authoritarian horse. That's why there's really not much of a difference between the far left and the far right. Both want power over others, both have dispensed with any sense of empathy or morality. Sometimes they Justify it as the word of God, but a lot of them don't even bother with that anymore.
Agreed...it is also driven by a malignant narcissistic competition of who can be most outraged and outrageous in the quest for attention...
That's not called the "rainbow" effect, not commonly anyway. The term we all use for that is "horseshoe." People like Cenk Uygur, Tulsi Gabbard, Nina Turner, and RFK Jr, as well as the dead-end Bernie Bros who wouldn't stop even when Bernie told them to stop being jerks are typical horseshoes.