Sorry, everyone – there won’t be anything funny posted here today. In fact, there will probably be a lot of completely unfunny things posted here.
You see, I just finally watched one of the many videos from the latest school massacre.
I have to admit, I was too cowardly to watch them yesterday. I was also too cowardly to watch them today, but one autoplayed in my Twitter feed and I saw it.
I didn’t want to see it, because I did not want to feel it.
I was afraid that if I saw it, and felt it, that would make it real.
Like a Schrödinger cat. I didn’t want to “open the box” and make 17 people die.
But I did see it.
I saw dead children lying in pools of blood.
I saw the look on the surviving children’s faces as they were forced to file out of the school, stepping over their friends’ dead bodies and strewn backpacks.
To the NRA, the fear mongering lawmakers, and all the American citizens who support them through their ideals and their votes: it is time for YOU to see it too.
It is time for you to value our children’s lives more than you value your precious guns.
It is time for you to stop blaming mental illness while you strip funding to care for the mentally ill and strip the laws that limit their access to guns.
It is time for you to value the life of school age child as much as you value the life of an embryo.
It is time for our children’s lives to be worth more to you than donor money or the next election cycle.
It is time for you to sit down in front of hours of footage of gunned down children, toothpicks holding your eyelids open, Clockwork Orange style until you finally SEE it.
Until then, I’m sending you my thoughts and prayers, because, if there is a God, you are going to hell. And if there’s not, living without the capacity for empathy or compassion must be its own special hell.
