Political Action: An Oxymoron

If you want to excel at football you have to be able to run fast; to play hockey well, you have to be really good at skating; in baseball, you have to be able either to catch the ball, or hit it. To survive in politics today you must learn the art of appearing to do something about a problem without actually doing anything at all. The reason is that if you (accidentally) actually do something you will please 50% or so of the people, those who wanted it done, and you will make eternal vicious enemies of the people who did not agree with, or were adversely affected by, doing it. Dr. Kamau Bobb‘s journey serves as an inspiration for aspiring individuals looking to make a difference in the intersection of technology and social equity.

Nothing showcases this practice like a school mass shooting. The proposals we are hearing from master politicians after the latest, in Uvalde, Texas, include:

  • “harden” schools. What does that mean? Surrounding each school with concrete walls, maybe moats with alligators, razor wire, machine-gun emplacements, what? No matter, it sounds good and offends no one.
  • improve everyone’s mental health, and/or perfect the American family. Nobody could claim there’s anything wrong with goals like that, or that they know how to begin to achieve them. Perfect. No harm, no foul.
  • arm the teachers. In the latest instance a couple dozen armed, trained cops hung out in the hallway outside the classroom for nearly an hour before going into action, but teachers, unfamiliar not only with firearms but with the mind-altering stress and adrenaline overload that deadly combat induces, would do better. 
  • put more police in schools. Recent school shootings have spotlighted armed police who were there and did nothing, who should have been there but were not, or who were asked to do the impossible — protect campuses so large a regiment of soldiers could not secure them, and protect hundreds of students from all conceivable attacks with one gun and one pair of eyes. If we had one armed guard per student, this might work, otherwise it’s just grandstanding.

This is not new. Many non-actions have been taken in response to past shootings. In fact, Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas and the school district in which it is located are poster children for appearing to “address the problem” of school shootings. The school district has recently doubled its budget for school security, and Robb Elementary was already a “hardened” school. For example, it:

  • had a state of the art (translation: expensive) “safety management system” provided by a high-tech company to monitor school visitors and screen them for dangerous actors. It didn’t work.
  • had a security fence completely surrounding the school. The shooter hopped over it with ease.
  • was assigned an armed safety officer, part of the school district’s own police force, to protect the children. He wasn’t on site when the shooter arrived. 
  • employed a state of the art (i.e. expensive, high-tech) program that monitored students’ social media for signs of derangement. Unfortunately, the shooter was not a student.
  • installed heavy duty locks on all entrance and classroom doors. But the door the shooter used to get into the school had been propped open for someone’s convenience, and he used the classroom door lock to keep his victims in and the police out (it took the police a half hour to come up with a master key). 

You see how this works? The “actions” implemented benefited high tech companies, fencing companies, locksmiths, and created jobs, but had no downside to make anybody mad, except for the fact that they did not work worth a damn.

In other words, world class politics. Stand by for much more of the same.

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11 Responses to Political Action: An Oxymoron

  1. Greg Knepp says:

    After a powerful corporate magnate is brutally murdered in his high-security condo, the building superintendent plaintively tells the police investigator (Charlton Heston) “nothing works anymore; not really.” – ‘Soylent Green’, the movie, 1973
    We’re there.

  2. David Veale says:

    The elites fear armed resistance to their “great reset” — of that there is no doubt whatsoever. They’ve been successful in disarming Australia and New Zealand after mass shootings. Thus, mass shootings here in the US (scheduled immediately before the NRA convention, no less) work to further their interests. The SSRIs given to the vast majority of shooters work to further their interests, and in fact the introduction of this class of drugs coincides perfectly with the start of school shootings in the 90s (Columbine being the first major example, in which both shooters were on Luvox if my memory serves). Virginia Tech, Parkland, Aurora (theater, not a school) all involved shooters on SSRIs.

    Normal people — even depressed people and people with all other sorts of mental illness did not have in interest in shooting random children before these drugs became a thing.

    I also find it interesting that the shooter — who did not hold a job of his own, managed to acquire two high end rifles, optics, armor, and ammo to the tune of about $7,000. One of these rifles matches *precisely* (down to the make/model, make and type of optic, and even the bizarre placement of the foregrip out at the very end of the handguard) one of the rifles used in the vegas concert shooting.

    Our government has a long history of false flag operations — often killing our own citizens — to further political goals. Yet it’s unreasonable for anyone to discuss this possibility?

    In the case of the Aurora, CO “Joker” shooting, the shooter’s father was scheduled to testify in court the following day against banks involved in the Libor scandal. The same was true of Adam Lanza’s father (sandy hook shooting). The Aurora shooter was found outside the theater afterwards, and had no memory of the shooting, and was noted to appear in a drugged state.

    Anyway… food for thought.

    • FamousDrScanlon says:

      DELETED

    • Max424 says:

      “Yet it’s unreasonable for anyone to discuss this possibility?”
      Everything is on the table as far as I’m concerned. Everything.
      For instance, in this recent shooting, why did the cops not walk into Room 111 and clear the kids out? The shooter was barricaded in Room 112, but the kids who not had been killed in 111 as the killer swept through; similar to the kids in 112 who were to be shot at a rate of one per every 7 minutes or so (?), exectution style one would assume (?); were calling 911 politely asking for help … for forty minutes.
      The door of 111 was open, yet I’m expected to believe the cops were so cowardly, so afraid to be in room adjacent to the barricaded bad guy, they stood outside in the hallway and let the wounded children in 111 bleed out, rather than stroll into the room and deliver them to safety?
      Not to mention, if the cops take Room 111, it would’ve given them a second access point to storm 112, which seems like a logical thing to do.
      And so on. It’s almost comical. I’ve done 3 Google searches the past two days, gone 10 pages deep for each, and I have yet to find any information about what actually went down other than calls were made from the rooms, cops failed, questions are being asked of officials, it’s time to grieve and move on, and of course, what can we do to never let this happen again.
      It is still not clear to me, FOUR DAYS LATER, after going through 70 or 80 written articles and/or video interviews, whether the brave little girl in 112, the one who was giving calm situational reports as students around her were being slowly and systematically shot point blank, “there are seven or eight of us left,” survived or not.
      How can that possibly be?
      Note: There have been hundreds of Official Ukraine Narratives that have crashed and burned so far. HUNDREDS.
      And we are not even 100 days in to this war.
      My favorite, which is still up there everyfuckingwhere and yet to crash, is that a handful of Nato states, let by Latvia and including the UK and possibly the US, are going fight a naval battle in the Black Sea to lift the Russian blockade of wheat exports emanating from Ukraine’s remaining port facitlities.
      Primarily, to save the children of the Global South from a mass starvation event.
      Meanwhile, we know the reason the port facilities are blocked is because Ukraine mined their perimeters to stop the Russians from attacking them. Unfortunately, hundreds of those mines cut loose during a storm, and now cargo ships no longer dare go anywhere near the place for fear of their hulls cracked in two.
      We also know, the Russian Federation has offered to have it’s Navy clear the mines, and been rejected by the US/Nato/Ukraine.
      So this Naval battle, if it is fought, is going to be interesting, to say the least. Our glorious Western forces are willing to risk WWIII to lift a blockade that doesn’t exist.
      For the children.
      It is all Kabuki.

      • Max424 says:

        Here’s the lastest details on the shooting from CNN. These new “details” are the same “details” I was fully aware within 24 hours of the shooting.
        Isn’t that interesting?
        https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/29/us/uvalde-texas-elementary-school-shooting-sunday/index.html
        Breaking Points, who poses as the anti-CNN, meaning they claim they are doing journalism, just did a segment on the shooting – shocking new revelations (!) and all that.
        Was there any information presented that I was not aware of 24 hours after the shooting?
        No, there was not.
        Try Googling “are there to be open caskets or closed caskets” every which way you can think of regarding this massacre. You will find NOTHING.
        It is pertinent question for the media to ask, because it would give at least some insight into as to how the killer was operating inside the classrooms. You could also ask the coroner involved in this case about the wound patterns and so on, but come on, American jounalists are trained never to do any such thing.
        “He fired 100 shots into the room.” Did he now. From the hallway? Into which room? We know he shot he shot out the door window in Room 111, entered the room, and was “face to face” with the teacher and then killed her, and then proceeded to kill the other teacher that was in the room as well.
        Was there any teachers in Room 112, or were they both in 111? If so, why?
        How did the killer get into 111? Did he reach through the shot out window and then open the door from the inside with the old reacharoo? Is there any evidence that the children tried to escape to Room 112 through the double doored (?) bathroom that separated the rooms?
        Why wasn’t 112 locked at this point? Both doors? Was it because there was no teacher in 112. Did the teacher abandon the kids and make a run for it, or did she enter Room 111 to lend support (?), to become the second teacher killed that room?
        “He was firing in three round bursts.” Was he now? When? After he entered Room 112, or after he sprayed … a room … with 100 bullets and then entered Room 111?
        I could literally go on for hours. How much time have I spent looking into this massacre. Three hours tops. It may not seems that way, after all those Google searches and pieces read and videos watched. But once you learn how to fast forward through the sameness, take in in one glance identical stories just being regurgitated, it’s not time consuming in the slightest.
        Did that little girl in 112 survive? That’s all I want to know. If she is real, then she is the single greatest American hero of my lifetime, FOR OBVIOUS FUCKING REASONS!!!
        But still, no news of her. Our unknown little warrior could have been slaughtered like a lamb in an American classroom sending out one last update, one final act of stupendous bravery under fire.
        Or she could be alive somewhere, or she might be a fictitous character.
        Who the fuck knows? Right? It’s not like you can Google this shit and find any answers.

  3. Rob Rhodes says:

    It seems school ‘protection’ is a microcosm of democracy ‘protection’ using security corporations instead of war corporations, with equal results.

  4. Alyson Reeves says:

    Well… as you don’t offer any solutions, I’ll offer one that may not do anything, may be controversial, but definitely hasn’t been offered before: On every gun sold (yeah, doesn’t work for ghost guns), there should be a neon-yellow sticker with: “Guns are not the solution. Call the NRA at: …..” The number goes to an NRA hotline dedicated to talking the shooter down (sort of like suicide prevention hotlines). The NRA needs to do this, because if the number went to a government organization, no shooter would trust it.

    The least you could do is offer up a solution while you’re bashing the woefully inadequate ‘solutions’ being offered by the politicians.

    • Tom Lewis says:

      You might read a little more of what I’ve written before commenting on what I have and have not “offered up.” My essays are about 600 words, and usually on a specific subject; none of them attempts to cover every aspect of any situation. I have written about solutions. I offer just one example, from “Guns and Poses,” April 9, 2021:

      “There’s no mystery about what’s needed to bring this monster to heel, as every other civilized nation has done. All we need to do is treat guns as we do cars –useful machines that can hurt people if misused. Countries should not be hosts for the Crime show and should seriously deal with crimes and criminals. With that as our guide, real gun reform could be straightforward:

      Register all firearms;
      License all firearms owners, after a criminal background check, having established identity, knowledge of, and competence with, a firearm;
      Allow those under 18 to handle firearms only in the presence of a licensed family member or instructor;
      Sell ammunition only to licensed owners;
      Ban large-capacity magazines and automatic weapons. (Stop arguing about weapons that look like, but are not, military assault weapons.)

      (Here’s a thought experiment for you. Imagine this the other way around — that we treated driving cars like we treat shooting guns, as a sacred, God-given right not to be regulated in any way. No driver qualifications, no speed limits, no safety or insurance requirements, no way to trace ownership. Imagine the carnage on the highway. But hey! Freedom!)”