The parade of descriptors is growing shorter, and more impotent. Depravity, darkness, evil—they all miss the mark more often than they hit it anymore, mainly due to overuse.

The footage of SWAT teams and ambulances, family members and strangers consoling one another in the aftermath, the sickening party line sound bytes offered up by mainly Republican officials, the oh-so-predictable fallback to the “primary concerns” being for the investigation and the families of those lost to another mass shooting…

The impassioned pleas of Steve Kerr and Sen. Chris Murphy and others are liable yet again to fall on deaf ears, dismissed as over-the-top Democratic theatrics, the cowardly cries of weak-kneed liberals who just can’t hack it in Wild West America. How sick can this get? What and where is next?

There are no rays of sunshine, no glimpses of hope, just fear that memories are short and inaction is the hoped for outcome—because Republicans don’t want to lose their jobs, their power?

It was the last days of school! A time I remember as anticipatory and euphoric as summer vacation approached. Instead, in this day and age– and largely only in this country– it was the last day on earth for 21 people, most of them young children, along with two adults trying to protect their kids, trying to be quiet, terrified beyond imagining, their lives snuffed out by yet one more animal with weapons that were way too easy to get his grimy hands on.

“Those who conceived this war want only one thing—to remain in power forever, live in pompous, tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity… I simply cannot any longer share in this bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy.”

This from Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat to the U.N. Former Russian diplomat to the U.N., if these statements are accurate. He apparently has turned in his resignation from that post, adding, “The aggressive war unleashed by Putin against Ukraine and in fact against the entire Western world, is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people, but also, perhaps, the most serious crime against the people of Russia.”

If such a sentiment enjoys even a modicum of distribution, one could dare think that this would help open eyes or at least cause people to reconsider the Putin line on this whole human disaster. How much lying and disinformation can people take before they realize it for what it is, before they realize they’ve been played, kept in the dark, told some manipulated and doctored version of reality?

One might expect these folks to be mad as hell.

We must be up over 200 mass shootings this year, and we’re still in May. Have there been anything approaching this number in the rest of the countries on earth combined? Don’t tell me we have an obvious problem that can’t be addressed by legislators with a backbone. Second Amendment adherents need to take a step back, then take a closer look, and bite the bullet. So to speak.

We’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we can’t handle a firearms free-for-all. In a perfect world, we’d have a handle on mental illness and who might be susceptible to acting out in mind-numbingly violent ways, but this isn’t a perfect world. Folks need to be satisfied with the arsenals they already have, and we need a crackdown on assault weapons availability. I know this wouldn’t address the proliferation of handguns and the rest of accessible weaponry, but we have to start somewhere.

Everybody is a tough guy with a gun in their hand. What happens if we do the hard work of addressing underlying causes that have people feeling like there’s no other way to behave? Is there still time, or the will, to do that?

We seem to be trending toward a society that will be crying out for a strongman, which bodes well for a damned Donald Trump reboot, despite his being a bloviating fraud. The stock market is in bear territory, society seems to be unraveling a bit every day, and it seems there will be a clamoring for someone who can talk a good game and promise a crackdown on crime. And how about a chicken in every pot, climate change be damned?

The mere prospect of another Trump presidency, besides being achingly depressing, would probably pull the market back into bull territory practically overnight. Or not. I don’t really know. All I know is that at the moment it’s hard to watch my retirement funds disappear before my eyes. Infuriatingly hard. The bleeding has to stop, and soon.

It’s amazing—the concessions we’re willing to entertain in order to hold onto our money. I won’t vote for him, but I’m sure enough people would, if things continue to trend as they currently are and the Democrats can’t legislate some positive vibes, get folks believing there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe someday we’ll be shocked and embarrassed by the things that got our attention and took up our time. The things that evoked passion and that we talked about breathlessly, but which turned out to be nothing more than distractions.

Questionable causes, unsubstantiated political opinions, video games, horsepower and torque, golf equipment, the best power tools and beer, action heroes, movie franchises, actors and athletes who undeservedly got put on pedestals. So much fluff and shallowness and envy. The list is probably way longer than we’d like to admit.

Things might be better if we all had a handle on how we should be spending our time on earth. As it is, we fritter it away in frivolous pursuits, in unwinnable arguments, and, perhaps worst of all, idleness. There’s a difference between idleness and stillness. Stillness is therapeutic, intentional, a recognition of the need to rest and observe and listen. Idleness can be laziness, or evidence of a lack of creativity and imagination, or perhaps a symptom of something amiss physically or psychologically.

I guess I’m wondering what could happen if we as citizens of earth could focus on a task and engage one another and work together. There are needs being ignored. Many are in pursuit of their own happiness, however fleeting that might be, and we never quite come to grips with fostering a sense of community, and using our unrivaled brains to solve shared problems and challenges. It’s fun to imagine being able to do that.

Replacement Theory. To label it a theory is a disservice to the word theory. Mr. Gendron had to be buying into the whole white supremacy “dream” of fomenting a race war.

I’m not going to try to summon words worthy of the disgust and anger I feel. It’s a futile pursuit. I guess my anger manifests itself in what I wish would happen to this piece of shit human being who most likely is feeling like he’s done something great, something heroic and worthy of admiration. It must have taken every ounce of restraint among arresting officers to not mete out immediate justice or lay a hand on him for fear of providing a reason for mistrial or countersuits or getting off on a technicality.

Did he have the dead eyes like the rest? They seem to pride themselves on who can have the emptiest, most haunting stare. And it turns out he wanted to keep going to another store, if he hadn’t been stopped—in order to maximize the fear, so that Black people wouldn’t feel safe anywhere they went.

This disease goes back a long way in this country, and it has not been eradicated. It keeps popping up. It’s so blatantly paranoid and hateful, a conspiracy theory that gains traction among a certain subset of impressionable white people who believe that all human beings aren’t all human. This is such a maddeningly ignorant and dumb way of looking at the world. And it appears to be making its latest comeback.

Perhaps most disheartening of all is the Republican buy-in. Not all, but enough of them. Who in their right mind would believe that this has anything to do with American greatness?

There are many people who have opinions about the Trump presidency and the events of January 6, 2021. They’re all trying to cash in with book deals.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Opportunists all, though maybe some have more to say than others. Seems like a lot of gettin’ while the gettin’ is good. Or do these times require that people with something to say, find the means to say it?

What can you do, after the fact? Nothing, really, except cry, if only on the inside, for a society that has unraveled a bit more because the next troglodyte has emerged from his cave, the next in a continuing series of ghastly acts has unfolded, the latest reminder that America has a storehouse of people who will always be easily manipulated and pliable, and sick in the head.

Ten people killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY yesterday afternoon. Racially motivated killing, white on black, supposedly “inspired” by online hate speech, and streamed live on Twitch. Tactical gear and a helmet cam, armed to the teeth.

This is what MAGA looks like, everyone. This is a subsidiary of the MAGA brand, for all to see.

The thing about people like Donald Trump is that they have little or no capacity—or time or stomach—for evaluating their own actions—making the effort to review and critique, admitting to making the occasional mistake and learning from it. In Trump’s case, there is no way for such a thing to happen, because he, unlike human beings, doesn’t make mistakes. Everything is always someone else’s fault.

I get that an uninformed and impatient public, or a relentless press corps full of people yearning to distinguish themselves can get on a President’s or a Press Secretary’s nerves after a while. I also get that it’s not necessarily easy to handle critique of one’s behavior or actions or decisions, but a person in his position necessarily has to have this quality. And Trump in particular continues to provide a lot of ammunition for his detractors.

Bottom line is that people like Donald Trump should be coming nowhere near public office and dwelling anywhere near the seat of power. He didn’t, he doesn’t, and he never will have the tools for the job.

And yet,  

What’s frustrating is the lack of acknowledgement among the Tucker Carlson crowd that there is anything wrong with Donald Trump and Republican talking points.

Democrats are warning of the imminent fall of democracy or whatever this system of governance is rightly called, while most Republicans and Carlson and Fox News and the Breitbart universe are calling foul on Democrats. It’s all the Dems’ fault, those weak-kneed, liberal, baby-eating alarmists.

Better to wear Jesus on your sleeve and cast a wary eye on immigrants and support a ban on abortion and get behind the 2^nd Amendment and blow things up and act tough with a gun in your hand than admit that your platform is hopeless and dated and tone deaf and commandeered by people who are completely out of touch with reality, by people who claim they feel their constituents’ pain but really couldn’t care less about anyone but themselves. Their “vision” is not shared by a majority of Americans. Republicans wield fear as a weapon, even as, ironically, they themselves are terrified of change.

It all seems so entrenched and unsalvageable. Like we’re heading toward a place we shouldn’t want to go. Maybe this is what happens when a large enough number of people refuse to believe in evolution.

Nations can evolve, too. If you can summon the courage to let them.