Nothing left to say

 Some nutjob armed to the teeth -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, the whole Second Amendment Valu-Pak -- shot into a chapel-full of schoolkids at Mass the other day, and I am all out of words. I have used them all, again and yet again. I have watched them go out into the ether, again and yet again, and seen them blow to tatters like old smoke.

Two kids died and 17 others were wounded this time around, at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Thoughts and prayers went out from the usual suspects, many of whom were too het up about some chain restaurant's logo to actually give a damn. But, boy, they're good at acting like they do.

It was left to Minneapolis' mayor, Jacob Frey, to put that to rights.

"Don't say this is about thoughts and prayers right now, these kids were literally praying," he said.

Me?

I have nothing new to add to that, as noted. Said it all before, as also noted. Words in the ether; shreds of exhausted smoke.

So I'll just offer again some of the old words, from two years ago: 

In the country where we live now, a college campus (North Carolina) gets locked down twice in two weeks because some meathead decided to show up on campus packing heat.

In the country where we live now, news organizations in American cities have a new feature: Shooting Of The Day.

In the country where we live now, in one of the cities referenced above, players and spectators at a high school football game flee the field when they hear what they think is gunfire -- only to have police discover it was merely homecoming fireworks ...

Fireworks used to just sound like fireworks. Now they sound like gunfire, because gunfire has become the musical score of  too many daily lives in America. It's a musical score as familiar to us now as the theme from "Star Wars", and what it too often precedes is blood and maiming and heartache and funerals, so many damn funerals.

In the country where we live now, some people think this is just America being America ...

And so it is, sadly.

And so the words I wrote two years ago, and now again today, will change nothing, just as they changed nothing two years ago. Only the human conscience can do that -- and right now the human conscience, at least where it could make a difference, is subservient to the financial interests that fuel our ongoing carnage.

Some people think this is just America being America ...

And God bless it. Or save it, as the case may be.