Tragedy in Uvalde

Our society continues to under-value its children. That is, the ones we allow to actually be born into the world, after they avoid being one of the millions who are killed in the womb - or just outside of it in some states - each year.

Once they’re born, both political parties use them as political tools for their campaigns, as props for causes like climate change and for indoctrination in our public schools. Despite all the Republican boasting about keeping CRT out of our schools in Texas, it is pernicious in them, even here in fairly conservative little Mansfield where I live.

And we don’t protect our schools, even after Columbine, even after Parkland, even after Blacksburg, even after Newtown and too many other mass school shootings to list here that have happened since the advent of the Internet in the mid-’90s.

We harden our banks with guards. We harden our airports with guards, x-ray machines and more invasive machines that see us in our undies. We damn sure harden our buildings that house our public officials with all that and more, because we know that class of cowards will always go overboard to protect their own sorry skins.

But we don’t harden our schools with any of that, even though the schools are where our children are housed for hours most days of the year. Salvador Ramos murdered 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde Tuesday, something a good security fence and a few locked entry doors would have prevented. Never mind stationing a security guard or maybe even - gasp! - 2 in the school and what that might have added to the security situation of those kids.

How about just a real damn security fence to slow him down long enough for the local Sheriff to arrive?

But instead of pointing out the obvious, we get Sen. Chris Murphy, an anti-gun demagogue - and of course, a Democrat - rushing to the floor of the Senate literally within minutes of the shooting to beg his colleagues to pass gun control laws that would have done exactly NOTHING to prevent yesterday’s shooting.

We can’t build a fence around our schools, we can’t put in some security doors and maybe even hire a security guard or two. Ask yourself why that is. Is it lack of money? Good lord, no. We just printed and mostly wasted TRILLIONS of dollars in idiotic efforts to fight COVID, none of which worked.

We have flooded our school systems with millions of additional administrative personnel over the last few decades whose jobs mainly are to ensure brainwashing curricula like CRT and climate alarmism get beaten into our childrens’ brains every day. We in Texas can damn sure afford to spend hundreds of millions on shiny new football stadiums with Jumbotrons in each endzone so all the parents can watch instant replays of 16 year-old little Johnny Jr. picking up 3 yards on an option play.

But we can’t afford to build a fence, put in some security doors and hire a security guard or two at each school? Give me a break.

You know why our governments at the local, state and national levels won’t do those common sense things to protect the children we all cynically call “precious”? Because there is no well-heeled lobby for fences, security doors and security guards.

That’s why, folks. It really is the reason we continue to do nothing effective to protect our children in schools. Trust me: If fences and security doors and security guards had lobbies as effective as the wind and solar industries have, they would not only already be installed at every school in America, they would have their own permanent tax credits in the IRS code.

You know that’s true.

So, you won’t see Chris Murphy giving impassioned speeches on the Senate floor about the need for fences, security doors and security guards, because those things won’t produce millions of dollars for his next re-election campaign. That is the simple truth about this ongoing tragedy.

God bless the people of Uvalde, a town where I worked for a summer back in college. And God damn the politicians who refuse to do the right things to protect our children because doing the right thing won’t advance their political career.

That is all.