Thursday, February 16, 2023

Sanity has been postponed, Part Deux

So remember yesterday, when the Blob said tomorrow or the day after or next week there'll be another active shooter, and people will die, and afterward there'll be more decorative Thoughts and Prayers from the usual suspects?

Turns out I was right, sadly.

This time it happened at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, where yesterday, two days after an active shooter killed three people and critically wounded five on the campus of Michigan State University, two men walked into the Cielo Vista Mall food court and started shooting.

One man died. Three more were wounded. Shoppers and mall workers fled screaming or hid wherever they could. Usual Suspect Ted Cruz, a Texas Congress creature, weighed in with the usual decorative Thoughts and Prayers.

Thanks for nothin', Ted-O.

Because, see, now this madness has been going on for so long, and has become such a regular part of regular American life, that it's literally nothing new to some folks.

The shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall, for instance?

Happened right next door to the site of ANOTHER mass shooting four years ago, when some fringe wacko walked into Walmart and opened fire, ending the lives of 23 people.

And the shooting at Michigan State?

One student who sheltered in place during the two or three crawling hours when the active shooter was roaming the campus was Jackie Mathews. Ten years ago, she cowered in a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., while some crazy geared up like an Army Ranger slaughtered 27 people, 20 of them children.

Mathews still has PTSD from that, unsurprisingly. And the other night she was right back at Sandy Hook again, which means she'll have a whole new set of nightmares to deal with when she lays her head down at night.

As will Marie Hall, who works at a salad joint in the Cielo Vista Mall food court and hid in a walk-in freezer with several others.

"I didn't really feel safe (going to work) in the beginning because of the shooting in 2019," she told CNN. "It is definitely going to be more difficult to be going to work (now)."

No kidding. Used to be when you went to the mall or a grocery store or your Econ 201 class, you didn't wonder -- not even idly -- if you'd still be alive by the end of the day. But now?

Now it's unavoidable. Because as the Blob said yesterday, this is America, and America does what America does.

No matter how insane.

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