I’ve been seeing this stupid quote everywhere and it never fails to make me want to put my fist through something:
Sandy Hook marked the end of #US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over. Via @DPJHodges https://t.co/3jHpCIqsze
— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) October 2, 2017
No. No no no no no. Just no. Stop it. Stop that sickness.
I woke up same as you all yesterday morning, just as I woke up in November and again in January, crushed and tired and sick in my soul at the preventable tragedy that strikes on a daily basis around this country due to a curdling fear too deep to name.
And in response to passionate entreaties to change, I saw this stupid goddamn monstrous tweet all over the place.
You think that’s some kind of profound statement? You think that makes you sound wise? You think that makes it okay to go to brunch, or turn off the news, or go numb? Fuck all the way off with that ironic detachment and smarter-than-thou condescension and laziness dressed up as superior knowledge.
What is wrong with you? Killing children is not acceptable. Not at Sandy Hook. Not the next neighborhood over. Not with guns and not with knives and not with economics. It’s not acceptable to me and it never will be so nothing’s over, not now and not ever.
But but Republicans, and the NRA, and money, and guns, and the culture, and the laws, and the political climate and the red-blue maps and the gerrymandering and it’s all too goddamn much, right? From a practical standpoint there’s no way any other vision of America at this point can come to pass.
How many times a day do we hear this from others? How many goddamn times do we hear it from ourselves? Roy Moore is gonna be the next senator from Alabama and Democrats are going to be crushed everywhere for all time and the Supreme Court is lost for a generation and Donald Trump might actually get re-elected and fake news and Russian bots and drone bombings and nuclear war and and and and STOP. Just stop.
It’s tempting, when you’ve spent your life fighting for something that is so vital, to hunger for victory. To want, just once, to strut across the finish line. To feel you’ve accomplished something, to feel you have something to show. To put an end point on something that’s neverending. You want to say, “I did this” and know your time was well spent.
You want to avoid getting your heart broken, too. You want to create some scenario in which losing is not a devastation, so you spout this cynical crap and you think it’s wisdom.
But you aren’t going to get what you want, not now and not ever. Every single magnificent thing that has ever happened here has been called impossible. Every single unlikely victory in the face of insurmountable odds has been unlikely because the odds were insurmountable. And you will not feel one iota better by pretending to be smarter than everyone else in the room, you goddamn narcissists. I swear, if the parents who lost children at Sandy Hook can get up to fight, how dare we say anything’s over?
I re-read Trinity every year, almost, and I went back to it last evening, thinking about Doug Jones and that infuriating tweet and how every day brings some new piece of bullshit to the surface, because I needed this:
All we can ever hope for is a glorious defeat. A defeat that may somehow stir the dormant ashes of our people into a series of more glorious defeats. Every man in the Brotherhood must defy, scream, kick, die hard, bloody, shake consciences. You see, the true job of the Brotherhood is not to expand to win but to sharpen its teeth to die hard.
Call your reps. Vote every Republican out, every one, from the township on up to the capital, and shout and protest and donate and raise your damn voice every second you can. What you think should be enough might not be, shameful though that is. But to say it’s over because we haven’t won is more shameful still.
You reading this?
You looking at the world, you’re not happy, you want different?
You breathing? You alive?
Then it’s not over. Not for gun control, not for the courts, not for Puerto Rico, not for lead, not for police killings, not for war, not for poverty, not for anything you give a shit about. Not for you and yours. Not for the wide world. This country is drowning, fighting, bleeding, dying, and being reborn every second and there’s no way out of this that doesn’t kill you, so in the meantime, keep fighting like there’s nothing but the fight.
A.