Current Events > The whole US is Uvalde now

(+) Yeah! (+)

Three years ago, the news from Uvalde, Texas, seemed impossible to comprehend. A teenager armed with an assault weapon attacked an elementary school, shooting 38 people and leaving 21 of them dead, and an army of police arrived on the scene and spent more than an hour doing nothing, while the killing continued. The country was used to mass murder, even the mass murder of schoolchildren, but the moral atrocity committed by the people who were supposed to respond to itthe hapless indifference in the face of terror and desperation and urgencywas a whole different kind of shock.

Now here's the United States government. Everybody knows what's going on in there, even though nobody can know how bad it really is. The people inside have sounded the alarm and called in the emergency. They're telling the people outside as much as they can see of what's happening, whichever piece of the devastation is in front of their eyes. People are trying to gather on the scene.

And the authorities, the people hired and paid to respondwhat are they doing? Some of them are right up beside the destruction, some of them are hovering out on the edges. Some of them are executing what they think is the protocol for this type of situation even though it's obvious to their own eyes and ears that the protocol and the situation are a mismatch. Some are waiting to get word from the chain of command. Someone somewhere is looking for the right tools, the appropriate key.

Is the analogy insensitive? Is it even an analogy? Here's how Matt Bai of the Washington Post described what happened after Musk's Department of Government Efficiency set out to completely annihilate the United States Agency for International Development, cutting off funding for essential medical care around the world:

Rubio had decreed that certain critical programssuch as aid to Ukraine and Syria and costs related to the PEPFAR program to combat HIV in Africawould continue to be funded. Several times, USAID managers prepared packages of these payments and got the agencys interim leaders to sign off on them with support from the White House.

But each time, using their new gatekeeping powers and clearly acting on orders from Musk or one of his lieutenants, [Luke] Farritor and [Gavin] Kliger would veto the paymentsa process that required them to manually check boxes in the payment system one at a time, the same tedious way you probably pay your bills online. Meanwhile, AIDS clinics shuttered and staff found themselves stranded in unstable countries such as Congo. A pregnant woman in an undisclosed country has sued the Trump administration because she was denied a medevac helicopter. In another case, I was told, an employee in southern Africa who needed chemotherapy was also denied a chopper because no one would authorize the money.

Farritor and Kliger, reportedly ages 23 and 25 respectively, are part of the team of young, unseasoned Musk loyalists tearing apart federal agencies. Kilger has a history of sharing racist material on social media. Their blocking of AIDS treatment meant that hundreds of infants ended up with preventable HIV infections.

Despite Rubio's supposed waiver, late last week the State Department killed the entire operating budget of the organization that coordinates tuberculosis treatment worldwide and cut off funding to other groups fighting polio, starvation, malaria, and other debilitating or fatal conditions among millions of people. Trump and Musk's minions are in there killing people, out of sheer malice and fanaticism.

No one has driven them out, despite their open lawlessness. The House minority has not bothered to commemorate any of Trump's new impeachable acts with articles of impeachment. No senator has blockaded the Trump administration's appointments to demand Musk be removed, investigated, and prosecuted. No judges have locked anyone up for contempt yet, despite a stance from the administration of unbroken contempt toward the courts.

The horror of Uvalde was that the people who did nothing were there in uniform. Their cowardice was not just the sum of their individual moral weakness, but of what they had been organized into, supposedly on the public's behalf. With their badges and their guns, they were not simply people who were merely personally afraid to face the danger themselves, but who would institutionally, forcibly interfere with other people who did want to face it.

Outside the secure perimeter, protesters have filled the streets and swarmed Tesla dealerships and national parks. Republicans are fleeing town-hall meetings to avoid angry constituents. Millions of people understand how urgently dangerous the moment is. None of the system's appointed leaders agree. After Uvalde, people talked and talked, in rage and disbelief, about what they would have done if only they'd been there. Here we all are. Now what?

https://defector.com/this-is-uvalde

Our ruling class is unconnected to movements of real resistance and far more concerned with losing the favor of billionaires or the appearance of disorder than having a government. We elected the wrong people, but the economy and society as it currently exists would never have elected the right ones.

The saving push will come from the people, not governors or Senators or people in robes. It comes down to solidarity, civil disobedience, refusing illegal orders, strikes, and general disruption.

The election was the chance to deny Trump power in the face of a system that was either unwilling or unable to hold him in check. The American people were supposed to hold Trump accountable when no one else would and we blew it. Most people were either willing to vote a convinced felon back into office or at the very least chose to get out of his way when they had the chance to stop him.

So, yeah, of course nobody's coming to save us. There's only so much anyone can do to save people from themselves. Those of us who tried to prevent this madness can only try to do what we can to help each other through this and keep pushing back and speaking out when and where we can in the hopes that more people get to a point where they're willing to listen.

UnsteadyOwl posted...

The election was the chance to deny Trump power in the face of a system that was either unwilling or unable to hold him in check. The American people were supposed to hold Trump accountable when no one else would and we blew it. Most people were either willing to vote a convinced felon back into office or at the very least chose to get out of his way when they had the chance to stop him.

So, yeah, of course nobody's coming to save us. There's only so much anyone can do to save people from themselves. Those of us who tried to prevent this madness can only try to do what we can to help each other through this and keep pushing back and speaking out when and where we can in the hopes that more people get to a point where they're willing to listen.

Yeah, but you shouldn't hold voters accountable for their decisions, because reasons

I wonder why these mass school shootings rarely happen in inner city/poor neighborhoods. Such as Detroit, Chicago, NYC.

I went to an inner city high school only difference I can think of is they put metal detectors and those x-ray screening things in the poor schools. This was back in 2005. I went to college and that screening ended. In college all you did was swipe an ID card no one checked your bag or had you go through a metal detector and Im fortunate my college never had a school shooting but I could see how it could happen in a school where all you do is show ID.

Deej posted...

Yeah, but you shouldn't hold voters accountable for their decisions, because reasons

Yeah, after all it's not their fault, they were just warned what would happen but everyone was just dooming.

That plus people thought the only thing at stake was just Gaza and the Palestinian people.

Now that they realize they were wrong and being idiots they resort to telling people to stop acting smug.

Deej posted...

Yeah, but you shouldn't hold voters accountable for their decisions, because reasons

Yeah, I guess you're right. Besides, nobody knew all this would happen if Trump won the election, so long as you don't count the people who were specifically warning all this would happen if Trump won the election.

Deej posted...

Yeah, but you shouldn't hold voters accountable for their decisions, because reasons

Look, I have a lot of TV shows to catch up on. I can't be expected to do some basic research before I choose who I want to run the entire fucking country. That's just wild, man. Where will I find time for scrolling memes about cats if I'm trying to make sure I'm not helping make a decision that will doom us all...?

BlueTigerLion posted...

Im fortunate my college never had a school shooting

Most schools don't. The odds were in your favor.

UnsteadyOwl posted...

Yeah, I guess you're right. Besides, nobody knew all this would happen if Trump won the election, so long as you don't count the people who were specifically warning all this would happen if Trump won the election.

To be fair, Trump said that he was going to lower egg prices. Sure, he didn't say exactly how, he offered little to nothing in terms of concrete plans for improving anything, and his campaign amounted to blaming everything on immigrants and trans people and swearing revenge on his enemies, but did you see Harris's campaign? It was worse, probably. How could people not vote for him?