No More Thoughts and Prayers

In my view, two things made the mass shootings in Colorado Springs and San Bernadino possible: (i) religious based hatred and (ii) the ease with which military style weapons can be secured by individuals.   The latter could be addressed with some ease if American politicians had a spine like was done in Australia when over 650,000 weapons were confiscated after a gunman with a semi-automatic rifle killed 35 people and wounded another 28.  Instead of meaning action like this, we get blather about "thoughts and prayers" from politicians who make tawdry whores look virtuous. Making this worse is that most of these politicians claim to be "pro-life" when in fact they support a culture of death and gun violence.  The second causation is more difficult to address because most Americans refuse to acknowledge that the Bible, just like the Koran, can be used to justify almost any kind of violence and evil.  Both books promote evil and the public needs to open their eyes and face this truth.  A column in the New York Times looks at the hypocrisy of bloviating politicians - most Republicans - and the evil influence of religion.  Here are highlights:  

We never had enough time to rationalize, in the uniquely American way, why that middle-aged white man killed a cop, a mother of two and an Iraq war veteran in Colorado Springs, when the latest slaughter of human life intruded. He was — what, pro-life? Screaming something about “baby parts” while he unloaded in a Planned Parenthood clinic?

In Colorado Springs, the man arrested in the killings, Robert L. Dear Jr., fit a profile. Here was another bearded introvert who lived at the edge of modernity, his head stuffed full of hate and half-truths. “He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic,” his ex-wife wrote in a court document. “He is obsessed with the world coming to an end.” And of course, he had a semiautomatic rifle to go with his delusions.

How did this malcontent become a domestic terrorist? We’ll never know for sure if his withdrawal — to a shack in the South, then a trailer in Colorado — led him further down the path to savagery. But we do know that isolation can breed ignorance. And when people with abhorrent views are not challenged, their hatred only hardens.

But what about San Bernardino? A young man and his wife drop off their 6-month-old baby at Grandma’s, and then go mow down a room full of people at a workplace holiday luncheon. . . .

On the surface, the homicidal couple were living the American dream. One, the son of immigrants, with a degree from a California state college, the other, his bride from overseas. Had a good job. But this suburban couple was making pipe bombs and assembling an arsenal to murder people in the country that took them both in, educated one of them, provided him with a good job. The surface life was a mirage.

When we heard the identity of the homicidal couple, Syed Rizwan Farook, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, another explanation immediately came to mind. They’re Muslim. Too much of the most deadly, inexplicable violence in the world today is committed in the name of this religion, and its strain of radical Islam. The shooters are people like Farook, kneeling at prayer in the back of the mosque, kindly and devout. Oh, we never suspected a thing, the imam says. The explanation is tiresome, and increasingly implausible.

We all know the ritual by now. Politicians of one cowardly type will say their “thoughts and prayers” are with you. What garbage. Better to say nothing at all.

And politicians of another cowardly type will refuse to see that hundreds, maybe thousands of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims find justification for mass murder of innocent people in their holy book.

“Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage,” tweeted Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing — again.”

[W]e’ll hope that it doesn’t happen again tomorrow. But it will happen tomorrow — on average, one multiple-victim shooting a day. Every day. It will make sense in the only country where mass killings make sense.

Republicans Get Mocked for "Thoughts and Prayers" in Wake of Mass Shooting

Perhaps Americans are finally waking up to the hypocrisy and insincerity of Republicans who bloviate about "family values" yet support discrimination and bigotry and refuse to take any effective measures to rein in the culture of death and violence promoted by the NRA and its financiers in gun manufacturer circles.  As Vox noted in October and again today, after the mass shooting Umpqua Community College,  Americans make up about 4.43 percent of the world's population, yet own roughly 42 percent of all the world's privately held firearms.  Not surprisingly, the direct corollary is that America has nearly six times the gun homicide rate as Canada, more than seven times as Sweden, and nearly 16 times as Germany.  Gun violence is utterly out of control, yet rather than enact any legislation to restrict gun ownership, especially the automatic weapons used in mass shootings, all Republicans offer up is "thoughts and prayers" for victims and their distraught families.   As the saying goes, "talk is cheap" and "actions speak louder than words."  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the all too justified backlash against disingenuos and insincere Republicans.  As for accusations of "prayer shaming" from conservatives, we need a lot more of it in my view.   Conservative religion is one of the biggest rackets going and it needs to be mocked without cessation.  We are living in 2015, not 1015 after all.  Here are article highlights:

It used to be that “thoughts and prayers” was the least controversial thing a politician could tweet — the bereavement equivalent of a baby-kissing photo-op. But on Tuesday, two gunmen in San Bernardino, Calif., attacked a social services center, killing 14. And then a mob of frustrated Twitter users attacked that phrase.

“Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing — again,” tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who represents another town on America’s map of tragedies: Newtown, Conn. “God isn’t fixing this,” blared the front-page headline of the New York Daily News. ThinkProgress’s Igor Volsky tweeted out the amount that thoughts-and-prayers-bearing politicians have received in donations from the National Rifle Association.  


Conservatives accused liberals of mocking their faith. The Atlantic called it “prayer-shaming.”

Most of the online ire was directed at political figures with the power to affect gun control laws — not everyday prayerful citizens.

“I don’t see it as anti-religion as much as I see it as a response of frustration to people who are using a simple phrase of condolence without really being sincere about it or being responsive to what is happening,” said Christopher Coyne, the Catholic bishop of Burlington, Vt., who is active on social media.

After the attacks in Paris last month, there was a similar outcry against prayer . . . others chimed in with, “The terrorists pray. Good people think.” 

“Try this: Stop thinking. Stop praying. Look up Einstein’s definition of ‘insanity.’ Start acting on gun violence prevention measures,” tweeted Think Progress’s Zack Ford. 

Will Republicans get the message?  Probably not.  They are too busy counting the money they receive from the NRA and prostituting themselves to far right lunatics.