Sandy Hook Memorial courtesy of winkipedia.org
She wasn’t a Congressional candidate from my district. She was a progressive Democrat challenging an incumbent Joe Biden supported. The incumbent was a moderate. He had a political war chest. She didn’t. His ads bombard the airwaves. Some were self-congratulatory messages. Others vilified his opponent. She aired one ad, occasionally. I expected her to lose.
Instead, she won. She must have managed it by knocking on doors until her knuckles were sore and by walking precincts until the bottoms of her feet felt numb. Friends and admirers helped, I imagine. Mostly, she had a wind at her back. The times they are a-Changin’.
The 2022 midterms could reflect an inflection point for Democrats. Georgia gutted its voting procedures to discourage Democratic voters. The plan backfired. There was a record turnout. Brad Raffensberger, the Republican Secretary of State Donald Trump worked to defeat, won reelection. The times they are a-Changin’.
Whoopi Goldberg says she’s tired of sending “thoughts and prayers” to families who’ve lost relatives to gun violence. Rage won’t take us far. We’d do better to stop pointing fingers. Both Democrats and Republicans are distraught to see schools, churches, supermarkets, and theaters become places of mass murder. Both sides want to see reform. Two hurdles exist.
First, the Senate filibuster must go. Alexander Hamilton condemned the rule. He saw it as a way to give a minority a negative upon the majority.” The filibuster gives small, and largely rural populations veto power over the masses. Those who defend it do so for self-serving reasons, thinking they can use it as a bargaining chip. What fools these men and women are who play politics with children’s lives.
The second hurdle is fear. Those who fear losing the right to bear arms link arms with those who profit from their sale. Together, they propose to end public massacres with more guns. With bloodstains still fresh at Robb Elementary, the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Texas talks about hardening these targets so no one can get in, ever… The state’s attorney general agrees. These crimes can’t be curtailed, he mutters. The best defense is to arm everyone.
Officials who offer more guns as a solution should be laughed out of office. We’ve bought that argument for too long. The United States is a county awash in guns. Hardening one target creates another target: a church, a grocery store, a political rally, a theater, a family picnic in a park…
We can’t defeat massacres with more guns. What we create is a dystopian society where people make prisoners of themselves. Few Democrats or Republicans want to live in such a world. That is the common consensus. We must turn away from those who seek to profit from or politicize the deepening tragedy. They are deaf, dumb, and blind to our shared belief. The Times They are a-Changin’.
