Yearning for passivity
by digby
As David noted yesterday, after Aurora, I wrote this:
We aren't shocked anymore when children are killed. It's become a normal part of American life. The taboo has shifted from horror at the shootings to horror at talking about shooting. This is called "politicizing tragedy" as if these mass murders are an act of nature rather than an act of human evil or madness (or both) enabled by easy access to the tools of mass murder.
But let's not go there. We will mourn the casualties the way we mourn the deaths of those in hurricanes and tornadoes. Gun violence is now a "natural" event in America, as unpredictable as the weather, and there's nothing we can do about it except gather together in the aftermath to help the victims. Indeed, the only enduring threat these events foretell is from those who would question a culture that deifies the gun as if it were a religious symbol rather than a lethal weapon
Unbelievably, today the Wall Street Journal editorial board writes this:
A very long time ago, the ancients would have attributed such tragedy to fate or to the gods. The dead would be honored, grief in time would recede and the living would push onward, as if there were any other choice.
No longer. For better or worse, we inhabit a more modern world that feels compelled to submit all such events to analysis. The details of the killer and his life history are still spilling out and we will learn in the days ahead more than we probably want to know. From analyzing all this, it is assumed, a protective salve of public policy will emerge. So we will debate after Newtown, and perhaps something worthwhile will come from the effort.
The emphasis is mine ---you can almost feel their ennui at the very idea that we might be forced to debate the merits of our violent gun culture. But they needn't worry that anything too major will happen. Their gun nut allies have already lurched into action demanding that kindergarten teachers be required to carry loaded machine guns at all times.(And thus armed they will have no excuse for failing to thwart madmen who wish to kill them and we can properly place the blame for all these deaths where it belongs -- with teachers.) Their more intellectual types are running "thought experiments" about how to best get more bullets flying in elementary schools in these times of tight budgets. Meanwhile, the religious among them are claiming that their allegedly benevolent God punished these five and six year olds for the sin of banning coerced prayers in school. (No really.)
"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"
So I wouldn't worry if I were the Wall Street Journal. Their friends are so shameless that there is little danger that anyone will be able to enact a sane policy any time soon. They will probably have to endure some unfortunate caterwauling from people who think that tiny children shouldn't have to fear automatic weapon fire in kindergarten. But they'll quiet down soon and we can go back to celebrating our freedom to kill. Well, those little kids won't have that chance, of course. But there's nothing we can do about that.
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