The right wing is a death cult
This piece by Melissa Ryan is on the money:
For the Right, mass shootings are a feature, not a bug.
I’m tired of dancing around this. Because it’s true of the people in power and the MAGA base that supports them. Mass shootings are a tactic of the Right. Deployed to terrorize Americans. Priming America for authoritarianism. The Right doesn’t stop mass shootings or work to curb gun culture.
I’ve seen the polling showing that most American voters support gun control. But I’ve also seen the local activists and parents on the Right terrorize school boards and local communities for the past couple of years over masks, trans students, and critical race theory. These same folks could easily organize a similar response on gun safety. They choose not to. Because they don’t want it to stop.
America generally doesn’t value human life much these days. Both the Associated Press and the New York Times have covered our country’s indifference to mass death as straight news and questioned if we as a nation value human life at all. These articles acknowledge the reality that there’s no moral outrage or social movement that’s come from these tragic, preventable deaths. The Right chooses to let mass death continue, and frankly, the rest of us haven’t put up as much of a fight as we should.
I’ve known this about America since Sandy Hook. But as a parent, I feel it so much more intensely. Last week parents across the US were reminded, yet again, that there’s no system in place to keep their children or their teachers safe at school. That the best schools can offer are active shooter drills that don’t actually help. That law enforcement won’t enter the building to stop an active shooter loose in an elementary school. That Congress is fully aware of how many mass shootings there are in the US and how other countries don’t have this problem but still does nothing.
So what do we do? We can’t rely on Congress or the Federal government to pass gun safety legislation, but that doesn’t mean we’re powerless. It’s time to take a page out of the Right’s playbook. We need to make the people in power uncomfortable. And we need to cause disruption wherever we can. At school board meetings, in Congressional Districts, and community events where elected officials appear, and yes outside of their homes. With corporations that donate to Right-wing politicians and big money donors generally. When schools resume, we should consider how to cause disruption there as well, everything from targeted protests to walkouts to shutdowns.
These tactics might feel uncomfortable, especially if you’re still clinging to the notion of civility. But what I’m suggesting isn’t that much more radical than tactics laid out in the original Indivisible Guide. If we want common-sense policy changes on guns and school safety, our response to the slaughter of human beings, especially children in schools, needs to be all-encompassing. And it needs to match the intensity that this crisis calls for.
I would just add that this must be a sustained effort, not just a one off until we run after the next crisis. I’m thinking the kids have to be the focus. Walk-outs, sit-ins, all of it. Civil disobedience has to start in the home.