Week of 08/12/2019

Maybe You Should Say Nothing
– by David Matthews 2

I’m putting this article together just days after back-to-back mass shootings in 2 different locations in Texas and Ohio.  I’m reading about various people giving statements about their take on the shootings and what should be done about them or who is to blame for them. 

And, I’ll be honest with you... I was tempted to come up with something to add to the reaction and discussion.  But, ultimately, I decided not to.  I’ve said plenty on this column on the subject over the twenty-three-plus years that I’ve been doing it, and, honestly, I couldn’t come up with anything more to add to the subject.  I’m sorry that they happened, but that’s really it.  At this point, with over two-hundred-and-fifty mass shootings in 2019 alone, I am beyond shocked or scared or sad or outraged.

I am numbed by it all.

It’s like the death count in Iraq and Afghanistan ten years ago.  It’s like the death count from Vietnam fifty years ago.  It’s like the number of times that Narcissist President Donald Trump lies or repeats a lie or retweets a lie without consequence.  It’s happening so frequently now that we cannot help but be numbed.

And, no, conservatives and fascists, “thoughts and prayers” do not work.  They are lazy, shallow, self-serving empty gestures.  They did not work to stop school shootings after Columbine twenty years ago.  They did not work to stop terrorist attacks after 9/11.  They are not working now to stop the increased mass shootings.  They are failures, like you and your lot and your narcissistic orange-skinned messiah.

But it is from the comments of these past few shootings that have led me to this revelation...

Maybe certain people should just shut the hell up.

The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech, and I’m not proposing censorship here.  I am, actually, calling on people to think before opening their yaps when it comes to tragedies like this and ask yourselves if you’re really contributing to the discussion, or even if you should.

For instance, Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He’s an otherwise very intelligent man, and in certain situations I’d even have to consider him smart.  He is carrying the torch of his mentor, Carl Sagan; a man who inspired people to explore and to learn.  Tyson does the same thing... or at least he tries to.  It’s hard to promote learning in the time of Trump where ignorance and idiocy reign supreme.

But when faced with the question of the recent mass shootings, Tyson decided to take the scientific look at death and how many people we lose through other means than by a gun.  A cold and analytical comparison that is, I would speculate, to be true.  However, it is not really appropriate when it comes to the heavy emotions involved in a man-made hate-fueled act of domestic terrorism and mass-murder.  And the online world let him have it.

In that regard, with respect for the man, it would have been better if Neil deGrasse Tyson had said nothing on this subject.  Dispassionate, scientific, statistical-heavy comparisons between various methods of death work on paper, but not in any kind of social media, where emotion runs rampant.

Other people whom would otherwise best be left in silence are any politicians or religious leaders who decide to pin the blame of this tragedy on their own personal laundry list of things they virulently hate.  Like cornflake Ohio State legislator Candice Keller, who used the back-to-back mass shootings to put the blame on former president Barack Obama, protesting athletes like Colin Kaepernick, video games, the supposed “anti-Semitic” Democrats, the legalization of marijuana, and, I quote her directly here on her now-hidden Facebook post... “transgender, homosexual marriage and drag queen advocates”.  No different than the original “God’s Anointed Candidate”, former governor Mike Huckabee, who used the school shootings of twenty years ago to go down his laundry list of personal hate, or, for that matter, the bloviated late Jerry Falwell, who used the tragedy of 9/11 to go after his enemies list.

Look, I get it... you want attention, and there are things in this world that you desperately want to get rid of.  I can understand, because at the top of my list of bad things that the world would be better off without... are people like you and your followers.  Sadly, I know that wishing it could be so won’t work.  And truth be told, in most instances, the people doing the shootings have more in common with you than they have with cross-dressers or pot-smokers, never mind with practical libertarians such as myself.  So, yeah, I can understand why you’d want to move the discussion to the things that you hate.

Let’s get brutally honest here... even though we have the right to speak our mind, there are times when it would be best if we didn’t.  If you can’t contribute meaningfully to times of extreme tragedies, such as mass-shootings, then don’t.  Stay silent, or, at the very least, say as little as possible.

Mass shootings and other forms of domestic terrorism are heavy on the emotion.  The media helps to magnify that emotion for the sake of viewers and likes and clicks.  They are a problem for another time.  But you don’t need to add to that problem. 

If all you can offer in the face of such carnage is the empty platitude of “thoughts and prayers”, then don’t say it.  Don’t proclaim it.  Just do it.  Because both thoughts and prayers are meant to be silent.