Today should be a day like any other in the US. It doesn’t matter if today is Wednesday. Or fifth or sixth. If today is an ordinary day, before midnight 123 Americans could be shot to death.
Just over half —54%— will commit suicide, 43% will be victims of crime and the other 3% of deaths will be accidental, although predictable in a country with 120 firearms for every 100 inhabitants.
Why should tomorrow be a day like today? Because this grotesque and unique normality in the world is guaranteed by the Republican Party. And, of course, by voters who put degenerates in power like Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, a state that competes with Florida for leadership in massacres.
Ignore the Texan governor’s false mourning over the Uvalde school massacre, which left 21 dead, including 19 children 10 years of age or younger. The word competition here is accurate. The politician himself wrote on Twitter in 2015 that he was in a competition: “I’m embarrassed: Texas, #2 in the country for new gun purchases, behind California. Let’s speed this up, Texans. @nra.” The at sign is a reference to the NRA (National Rifle Association), the firearms lobby that has Greg Abbott in his pocket.
Last September, Abbott celebrated an insane law that allows anyone to openly carry weapons anywhere, without special permission or training. Because going to the supermarket or a park full of kids with an automatic rifle slung over your shoulder is normal.
A clear majority of the population of Texas is against the law enacted by Abbott. But in the US, not only are massacres normal, but one of the two parties has a long-term political strategy to govern for an increasingly smaller and more radical minority. Ignore the prayers that the repulsive Senator Ted Cruz prayed for the dead children, whose parents had to give DNA samples to Uvalde police because their faces had been ripped apart by the killer’s bullets.
The perpetrator, who previously shot his grandmother at home, needed just a week, after turning 18, to legally buy two automatic weapons and enough ammunition to wipe out most of the school’s 535 students. Normality becomes even more banal when we discover that he proudly displayed the photo of the two rifles on his Instagram profile, along with the purchase receipt.
The post did not raise awareness on the platform of the great facilitator of the spread of violence Mark Zuckerberg. Shortly before the killing, the gunman announced his crimes on Facebook: “I’m going to kill my grandmother,” he wrote on Tuesday (24). “I shot my grandma,” he posted next. And the final post – “I’m going to shoot a school” – was published 15 minutes before the massacre began.
In the normality idealized by Republicans, the only life that deserves protection is the one that lasts nine months in a woman’s womb. Then, if this life is extinguished by malnutrition, lack of medical care or fire bullets, the watchword is to denounce critics as socialists in pact with satan.
On Friday (27), the NRA will open its convention in Houston, Texas. A parade of politicians the organization has purchased, such as Ted Cruz, Abbott and gangster-in-chief, Donald Trump, is expected. But when Trump speaks, the event will become distinct from the rest of Texas. It will be forbidden to enter the convention armed.
