Unspeakable

I try not to write about politics here. Not because I’m not interested; I follow it pretty closely.

But I learned a long time ago, in catering to film music fandom, that there are so few of us, it would only be reducing our audience to discuss topics like religion and politics that end up being divisive.

If you espouse your political views, you mostly end up only talking to people who already agree with you—and risk pushing away friends who just don’t see the world the same way you do. And you attract the occasional troll (ugh).

This latest school shooting in Texas has me extremely rattled and I just can’t stand it. My heart breaks for the murdered children and their families.

I don’t think you have to have kids to be affected by this—but we do have elementary-school-age twins and this has been especially impactful.

I don’t want to write at length about my feelings right now. It would take too much out of me, and only feeds a certain paranoia I have not to put too much information about my loved ones on the Internet.

I am generally a liberal Democrat, and proud of it, but I have conservative friends, many of whom are near and dear to my heart.

There have to be common-sense, reasonable steps we as a society can take to lessen the possibility for gun violence.

The fact that we don’t comes down to the fact there are demagogues—on both sides, true, but especially on the right—who weaponize people’s cultural grievances in order to grow their own money and power.

And the gun lobby has been so successful in making people crazy in order to sell a ton of guns—it’s that simple.

On a day like today, when the details trickle out about yesterday’s tragedy—well, you just feel like crying. Or at least I do.

There have to be patriots on both sides who put country and people first, and work to de-escalate the tribal warfare so we can all see each other as human beings and come up with better laws.

I wish, right?

Hug your loved ones.