The World's Common Tater

I’m watching The Today Show until it is time to get ready to go to work. I’m watching the coverage of the shootings while contemplating what to write. Most of my thoughts are about the shootings, the response, and the coverage. I’m not sure what else I can say and if anything I say will matter. What do I write after 24 hours of hate-filled violence?  I don’t feel like it would be honest to just ignore it and write some other random post since the shootings and the response are what is occupying my mind. So, here are a couple of thoughts I’ve had this morning.

I saw the tweets from Trump this morning in response. He does say that it is time for legislation but then follows it up by saying they should marry it with immigration reform. So, our president’s response to a bunch of hate-filled white guys killing people is to say that we should change our immigration laws? How the fuck will immigration laws fix white nationalist terrorism? Does he think the fix is to reduce the number of brown people so the white nationalists will be happier and, thus, stop killing people?  Is he just using the deaths of these people as a tool to get his agenda passed? I will give you the needed gun control if you give me my immigration reform? I guess that isn’t a shock. That’s politics as usual. No one in Washington cares about anything but their agenda and their reelection.

I’ve also heard several people on TV and one post on Facebook blaming video games, movies, and rap music.  This is also nothing new. People said some of the music I listened to in high school was evil and leading to moral decay. I would go to my church in small-town Kentucky and hear guest speakers talk about the Satanic influences in rock music. I’ve seen people pick something new in every generation that is the cause of the bad things in the world/ Somehow, they still can’t bring themselves to blame guns for gun violence.  Everything else is at fault – music, movies, video games, no formal prayer in school, etc. – but don’t you dare blame easy access to instruments of war. That’s just crazy talk.

So, today I head out to my job in a public building, my daughter heads out to her job in a public building and my wife goes out to a shopping center on her day off with the hope that we all make it home safely. The fear that we will be shot while doing these things should not be the norm.