Thursday Thoughts - So how many daughters, tell me, how many sons do we have to have to put in the ground

I don't even know what to say anymore. Living in this country is fucking stressful for me as an older white lady of privilege. I cannot imagine adding in the other factors - being Black, native, LGBTQ+, any other marginalized person, having less money, having less resources, being without family, being chronically ill, being a gig economy worker, not having stable housing, being of true childbearing age while the right to my agency over my body is chopped, having kids in schools, working in a school, being a nurse, being disabled, etc etc. This is not sustainable. It's like watching society collapse in real time and not being able to do anything about it. I wish there was a quick cure for Fox News indoctrination that has functioned as a lobotomy for a large portion of our population. The call is coming from inside the house. 

There are people out there trying to meet very calmly in the middle about mass murder of children by guns. I am not calm and I am not interested in a midway point. Today, news that the cops and armed security guard did not act. Today, news of a total abortion ban in Oklahoma while a nation sits and says it can do nothing about its actual living children being slaughtered in schools by people with guns. Today, news that the husband of one of the teachers who died protecting her students in the Uvalde mass shooting dead from a heart attack. Their four children left with no parents. And today is not even over yet. What next. What else. 

How in the fuck can anyone out there say, "I don't know what the answer is?" Really, everyone? At this point we are going to dance around the fact that other countries have mental illness, bullying, poverty, despair, crime, and other countries have guns BUT they do not have these rampant incidents of mass murder by gun. Hmm, I wonder why that is...maybe because it is not fucking easy or cheap to get them, they don't operate by "well criminals don't have to get them legally,"  you need to work to keep them, white supremacy and toxic masculinity and a sentence written in a document in the 1700s by people WHO OWNED OTHER HUMANS that people today have taken absolutely wildly misinterpreted liberties with isn't fucking strangling everyone and everything. America has a goddamn gun problem and common sense gun reform that the majority of this country supports is the goddamn fucking answer. Stop dancing around it. We have TRIED more guns, more cops, active shooter drills, locking fucking doors. Sit and fucking spin on the suggestion of arming teachers, you won't even let them pick the goddamn books, accuse them of being groomers which is absolutely unmistakably top level grade A tinfoil hat Fox News drivel bullshit, and you think YOU know more about curriculum than they do. So no, we are not going to fucking arm teachers and put another item on their to do list that you will not appreciate nor pay them enough for. They are already literally putting their bodies in front of the shooters YOU will do nothing to stop. Do we want fucking schools to be prisons kids cannot thrive in so people can buy a gun in under five minutes and never have to re-up their license for it or store it correctly or insure it? Fuck off out of here with the fucking bullshit. Common sense gun reform and stricter firearm ownership and use protocols now. Universal background checks now. Universal healthcare now. Republicans stop cockblocking everything using minority rule now. Gun nuts STFU now. Revoke NRA tax exempt status now. Kill the gun lobby now. Overturn citizens united and get money out of politics now. Kids and teachers are fucking dead, AGAIN. The ones who lived through it will be traumatized forever. No one wants your tired 2A arguments being trotted out and dumped on the fucking table urging sensibility and waiting and not politicizing. Stop asking people to air grievances over this civilly while you brush your hair back with blood on your hands.You are banning every other goddamn fucking thing you can certainly make guns harder to get. SHUT UP

Regular existence is dwarfed by daily tragedies and fascism. I'm tired. From talking to a lot of you, I know you're tired. 

I would rather talk to you about my weed killer, which is white vinegar, Dawn, and table salt. 

Or how my job is really cool sometimes, and I get to see dinosaurs as part of work, and how my nephew and I just the night before were talking all about dinosaurs and what a joyful dancer my niece is and how amazing she looked dressed for her dance photos.

Or how these pull shorts for $13 and these forever soft v-neck tees from Gap Factory are going to be my summer wardrobe. 

I'd rather campaign for pockets in everything, without exception. And tell you how I'm only wearing athleisure shoes forever. 

Or talk to you about the stack of books on hold that came in at the library and how I don't even recall asking for one of them...who put me on to The Good Left Undone? It does not sound remotely familiar.

Or how we're pretty ready for the shore summer season and are testing out a new drainage system a la MFD for chair storage and a new bag Aub found. First renters this weekend.

Wait, Ray Liotta died? Another WTF today.

Or how much I enjoyed my city lunch walk when I was in the office this week. And I survived the dentist and got to see my chiro.

Or how we all need to really try to do this as much as we can even when it is hard. Via Nadia Fisher

Instead, we are talking about a mass murder event of children that was imminently more preventable while the GOP and all of its echoes tell us that nothing can be done. 

This is motherfucking America. You are telling me we can't do something here? Are you telling me the entire American persona is a lie? That's what it sounds like. 

Everything getting banned and zero reform on the thing that really, really needs it - guns. This is a  hard pill to swallow on the eve of Memorial Day Weekend. Have we not sent people to Afghanistan and around the world under the guise of protecting the American way of life? Are bodily autonomy, schools as safe havens, the freedom to learn, the freedom to be who you are without punishment, the freedom to exist while Black, and freedom of religion not the American way of life? Is the only God your personal Christian God who you think belongs in all schools, when literally the country as it is today was forced into existence by people who did not want anyone else's God forced on them by the state? Do you even know "under God" was not in the original pledge? I could keep going.

 Are we only down to one freedom? Doesn't sound like the Land of the Free to me, which means the brave have died for what, exactly? Soldiers have died thousands of times over and we say they have died for our freedoms. The freedoms are as follows: kids can be murdered in schools, Black people in grocery stores, elders in churches and Synagogues, people at concerts in clubs just anywhere while we do absolutely fucking nothing so the GOP Senators can continue to swim in the blood money donated by the NRA and the NRA can run this country, not citizens and definitely not God. Oh and the freedom to ban books, control women, inject Black people in a school to prison pipeline, and legislate trans and gay people out of existence. Sounds extremely free. Pass me a Budweiser. Did I do that right?

Something to think about this Memorial Day Weekend, before you bring out the land of the free because of the brave sentiments. 

What appears beyond the hyphen in Thursday Thoughts titles is what I'm listening to when I'm starting this - this week is The Killers Land of the Free.