Almost immediately after the news broke of yet *ANOTHER* mass-shooting event, this time in Louisville KY by a bank employee that was about to be terminated and decided he was going to be the terminator instead, we got this tweet from one of the usual suspects in the “thoughts and prayers” squad.
Yep, I get it that this latest atrocity is in the Senate Minority Turtle’s backyard and I would hope that deep down in a heart that one presumes he has though we rarely if ever see it that he truly does feel devastated even though the people who have bought and paid for his seat would could really care less about the senseless loss of life caused by the irresponsible ownership and usage of their products.
After all, McConnell has done so much to shoot down (no pun intended!) common-sense gun control legislation that a strong majority of Americans (both *REPUBLCAN* and *DEMOCRAT* as well as many third party supporters) actually support, especially when he was the Senate Majority Turtle.
He and his many colleagues in political office at various levels throughout this country have been bought and paid for by the NRA and like-minded political action groups who do actually understand what the “well-regulated militia” bit of the 2nd Amendment entailed when it was written but want to conveniently forget it as they stock up enough guns and ammo to take over a third-world country.
And that’s my main problem with the “thoughts and prayers” ghouls who turn up immediately with absolutely rank hypocrisy after yet another mass murder must-see media event that perhaps might have been avoided had they chosen to put the needs of their constituents ahead of the ammo-sexuals of the gun lobby and their own political survival.
They can’t even be bothered to own the fact that they are owned lock stock and barrel by the gun lobby who are only interested in selling more guns and getting rid of any impediments to anyone buying or possessing a gun in a country where the number of guns is significantly higher than the number of people who actually live in this country.
I’m sorry Mr Minority Turtle…you don’t get a pass on this one. The blood of many people who have died needlessly at the wrong end of a discharged gun is on your hands and on the hands of all of the others that are utterly beholden to the ammo-sexual lobby.
Own it.
And instead of offering empty platitudes such as your “thoughts and prayers”, how about doing something productive and actually *LEAD* for *PRODUCTIVE CHANGE* for once in your political life?
Somehow, I don’t see that happening when you can’t be bothered to make eye contact with those who would call you out on your hypocrisy because you know with all of the campaign bribes (sorry, contributions) sloshing about in your accounts in a state where competitive elections are rarer than a politician telling the NRA what it can go do with itself, you don’t really have to.
If we’re ever going to fix this problem, it starts by finding a way to take the drawing of electoral maps on all levels completely out of the hands of the politicians and mandating a national standard where districts are drawn by completely independent commissions without regard to political affiliation and without gerrymandering.
Once that’s done, we need to use those maps to boot out the ones taking the massive graft to look the other way and do the opposite of what we’ve consistently said in the polls we want done about guns and gun violence.
At least in that scenario, if a particular part of the country has competitive maps and elected officials that’s actually representative of where the people live and are politically, I’d have an easier time accepting when there’s a differing view that achieves a majority of support.
But with so many seats completely being noncompetitive due to hyper-partisan gerrymandering and the desire for those benefiting from that system to not only not change it but make the gerrymandering and partisan advantage even more entrenched now that the Supreme Court has left us to fend for ourselves, I’m thinking it’s going to be a long time before we see our democracy (such as it is) actually working as it was intended.
In fact, I’m sure the “thoughts and prayers” ghouls will make an appearance way sooner than that.