America's Favorite Passtime

This shooting was a tragedy. Not surprisingly, several Republican "leaders," both in and out of office, unscrupulously exploited it for the party's political advantage, blaming Democrats for the trend of uncivil political discourse. As usual, these alternative facts just don't hold up under even the most superficial scrutiny. And what's even more sickening (and still unsurprising) was hearing the NRA-bought and paid for Republican officials trotting out their usual dead-end solutions of further loosening restrictions on guns, as if somehow if we were all just armed to the teeth, none of this would ever happen.

Somewhere the gun manufacturers are rubbing their hands in glee and looking forward to yet another opportunity to further weaponize our society while they rake in even more revenue from having created the conditions for this senseless carnage. Meanwhile, our "President," spent about 5 minutes doing the right thing and then went right back to bullying and blustering about the special counsel's probe into his campaign's and administration's possible involvement with the Russians. Given a real opportunity to unite us as a country and to deescalate the violent political rhetoric and its predictable results, this is what we get instead: narcissistic, self-serving bellowing. I guess this is what "leadership" looks like in the Republicans' vision of America.