The Question After Uvalde: Has There Been Enough Death Yet?
A version of this was posted on Facebook on May 24, 2022 after news of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
I'm not good at sharing emotion in tough moments. Lots of reasons for it. Those aren't the point.
I have incredible sadness today. Or some kind of intense emotion. And it was already around very much before the Uvalde, Texas mass shooting that killed a bunch of kids and two teachers.
I know what the emotion is from.
It's way, way worse watching the tragedy in Texas. But it was already here.
It's because I'm scared.
It’s because I've been suspecting we’d come to this kind of moment for a long time. A moment of incredible overwhelm; where shock after shock hits and we don't seem to know what in the hell to do about it.
I didn't think it would suck quite so much to live through.
I didn't think we’d be in such a collective trauma freeze.
So much seems so out of control.
So much fear and hatred and intolerance. So many guns. So much disempowerment. So much fear. Oh wait I already covered that one. Well you can see why it bears mentioning twice. There's a hell of a lot of it - fear. On all sides.
We're on this precipice, and we've been there for a while.
We're probably going to stay here for a while.
It's a reckoning.
It's a question.
Here we are in the most powerful country in the world... and we're not sure if we can keep it together.
That's the truth of it.
We're the biggest superpower backing up everybody else and their democracy… but we're not sure if ours can hold.
There's a lot of casual talk about its supposedly impending collapse.
As if there's anything casual about that possibility.
I don't think in my heart of hearts that this country is going to collapse.
I think we're going to hold it together.
But I'm scared about what happens if we don't.
I'm scared about what happens in a few weeks (or sooner) when an expected Supreme Court decision takes the rights of women like myself away.
And also the rights of who the hell else? What kinds of cascading effects are going to come out of the legal hellscape that that likely Supreme Court decision creates?
No freaking wonder I'm emotional. Good reasons for it.
I don't usually share those reasons with the wide internet... but why not?
I'm sitting here watching everybody trying to figure out if today's shooting will be enough death to finally cause some change in gun laws.
Because too often that's how we do change up in this country.
Has there been enough death yet?
That's where our regulations come from.
Hell, that's where our stoplights come from.
How many fatalities does it take to get a new stoplight at a bad intersection?
Results vary by community.
It has to be enough fatalities to make it "worth" putting in a stoplight that will cause an extra hassle to all of the traffic that's so important to get down that road. There’s usually extra pressure for particularly tragic stories.
And that’s now where we find ourselves with a particularly tragic active shooter story: whether that leads to any real-world stoplights on the steady flow of guns down the roads of this country.
The question is even trickier to answer because our morals are all turned on their head the last few years. As if decades of culture wars and hypocritical pro-lifers weren't enough… that same forced-birth, pro-gun crowd decided to go completely anti-vax and anti-mask the last few years.
We've had hundreds of thousands more covid-19 fatalities than we would have had otherwise because so many people refused to take preventable action to mitigate virus spread + death.
So how do you fight for gun safety in that kind of climate?
How do you fight for anything for the collective?
For the greater good?
We need some kind of massive movement to champion the greater good. To speak for the collective. To energize the freaking majority of voters so we stop being ruled by a minority in the world's most powerful democracy.
I'm scared because I think that can work… but I'm also afraid and nervous about what it's going to take to get something like that off the ground. Which is what we’re fixing to do here.
It's uncomfortable. It's awkward. It's going to be very difficult.
It's going to put a lot of us outside of our comfort zones.
Honestly, though, I'm more scared to keep living like this. With oppression looming.
Yet how much worse could things get in the US under permanent minority rule across the whole government?
We’re very close to that. Very close.
Good god. We're already looking the impending oppression of women directly in the face.
We're seeing blatant, blatant, blatant racism, hatred, and intolerance. Of nearly everyone. Of everyone who's not a pale dude. Everyone else.
The racists are not even bothering to hide anymore. There's no shame.
What the hell have we done to our society where it's not even uncool to be a racist?
I'm scared because I don't want this country to fall.
I don't want it to fall to a bunch of bullies and jackasses who can't do science at the level of even basic first aid. Or basic virus mitigation.
Good heavens.
We can be so freaking much better.
I know we can.
I know we can.
I don't know what it's going to cost.
I suspect there's quite a bit more death coming between here and the other side of this precipice. Whether that's from covid-19, more active shooters, or whatever the hell unfolds next.
I'd like to think there's a whole lot of amazing between here and there, too.
Big vision and big partnerships and big coalitions and big connection and big community.
That's the stuff we'll need if we're going to activate the majority.
And energizing the majority is behind the whole mission here at Shift the Country.
But the majority has to find its footing, and decide to fight.
The majority has to decide to do something different.
The majority has to shake ourselves out of this god-awful trauma freeze even though we're stuck in the middle of it.
Which is really hard to do. I get that.
We don't have Russian tanks bearing down on our cities so it's a little harder to understand the threat, too.
The reality is that we have to walk this walk.
The only way out is through.
As Morpheus said in The Matrix, "There's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."
It was always going to get tougher.
I knew in the summer of 2017 that we weren't doing enough to counter the threat that Trump and the culture wars bring. Not nearly enough.
Not much has changed in how we fight since then.
Most of the new game Democrats brought came in the spring and summer of 2017.
Massive mobilization and activism helped hold the Affordable Care Act (ACA) together. More of that same organizing and activism did help us hold the democracy together in 2018 and 2020. But just barely. By a razor-thin margin.
The Jim Crow era filibuster provision in the US Senate allows partial minority rule right here in the most powerful democracy in the world. Winning the Senate by a razor-thin margin in 2020 still hasn’t allowed Democrats to get most things done, or to make changes that can help stabilize and reinforce the democracy.
We're not a stable and fully functional democracy. We're deadlocked. It's like a couple of bull elk with their horns locked.
That instability and minority control is why we can’t laws passed for certain gun safety provisions that the majority of Americans want. It’s not a functional democracy when the majority can’t get what the majority demands.
Not much is happening for that majority in the meantime but a permanent and extended fight. Atrophy. Frustration. And persistent disechantment.
It’s been this way for years - at least since the US Senate decided to be intentionally obstructionist while President Obama was in office, if not before. Since then, the US Congress has barely if ever passed a full federal budget without continuing resolutions.
The Trump Administration and the “make America great again” MAGA crowd have blown the norms and thrown out the rules. Republicans have been waging a culture war for decades, and they’ve been consistently ramping it up.
Democrats have continued to operate within now-outdated norms. They follow traditional campaign practices, use old-school political science, and bend to polls. They’re terrible at messaging, and haven’t yet learned how to frame a point in terms of values and not data. They’ve never yet taken on the culture war in any serious, persistent, committed, long-term way.
Now we're in everything way deeper than my original worry in the summer of 2017. Way deeper.
It does indeed suck to walk this path. To live it.
But here we are. These are the cards. This is the hand we've been dealt.
What are we going to do with it all... that is the question.
The answer is to fight. To get in the game. To mix it up. To do the uncomfortable. To leap into the seemingly impossible.
To have great faith in potential and possibilities and humanity. And in the dream of what this country can be: a more perfect union.
One thing that people who pick fights often forget is that people who think they have nothing to lose can be remarkably motivated. It’s relevant on both sides of whatever the fight is.
Ask a Ukrainian with Russians blowing up their cities what's important and they'll tell you. They're not confused. Clarity has arrived.
Every day up in this country is bringing a fresh challenge.
I suspect what's important here in the US is going to continue to clarify, too. What we're willing to fight for will clarify as well.
My hope is that as that clarity arrives, we will go all in on the fight for this democracy. For governance by a true majority. For the dream of what this country could be. For a true multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy.
We can’t keep living like this. What happened in Uvalde today isn’t the last. More tragedy is coming. We can be sure of that.
Whether we decide to shift the direction of this country is not as certain. I hope we decide to make the shift happen. For all the kids and all the schools and all the families… and for all those who come after us.
We can do better. We can do so much better. We have to decide to, though. And we have to be serious about actually making that shift happen. Not just hoping someone else will.
Be safe out there. Breathe. Remember to eat.
Keep the faith. We've got good people.
We're going to do amazing things. I know we are. I absolutely know we are.
And thank you for listening. We help each other through.