Will the customary "thoughts and prayers" do anything for the high school kids shot in Texas this morning?

“thoughts and prayers” is nothing more than mockery.
Moreso than even “stop hitting yourself”.

I just turned on the news to see this.

I used up all my thoughts and prayers way back at the Sandy Hook massacre.

All we can do now is vote, and talk, and try to change people’s minds about guns, and gun violence. So far that hasn’t worked. Indon’t know what else we can do.

^^ Word

Save the wear and tear on your knees and from putting your hands together.

Right now they are saying 2 people are involved, including the 17 year old student gunmen. Apparently there were also explosives, but it’s inconclusive if they were detonated. 10 fatalities.

Unfortunately we all disagree about what we should do about it, so in effect nothing actually gets done. We just talk about it after one of these shootings, some people get enthusiastic and once the reality of political inaction sets in, we get discouraged until the next shooting. And there’s always a next one right around the corner.

No.

Here we go again….it was two students, an inside job as they say. Unless you believe thoughts and prayers will bring comfort or protection, I assume the answer you want is ‘no’.

Now quick everyone go to your proper corners and dig your heels in, then we can be sure nothing will ever get done.
Don’t even try and meet the other side in the middle, and maybe work on some tougher, sensible ,firearm laws, just stay in your corner and keep screaming, it’s worked so well in the past to curb these shootings why stop now?
As for prayers and thoughts, I think that is supposed to bring a little comfort to those that are deeply bothered by this, nothing more.

@Squeeky2. You seem to be the main one screaming here on Fluther! Give it a rest.

Uh no!!!^^^^^^

You can get in some serious legal trouble for buying beer for kids in high school and letting them party at your house.

Just saying.

I think we should expand Obama’s P.R.O.M.I.S.E, program and continue letting these young felons go undetected so that we don’t harm their future. Cruz of the infamous Parkland shootings, it turns out, was let go six times by P.R.O.M.I.S.E and I doubt these shooters got that many pardons between BOTH of them. We can always blame Trump since his name’s sullied anyway. And of course the N,R,A,

I still insist that these incidents are destined to climb in frequency, as long as there are people indifferent to death wading around in a virtual sea of guns. Our country is the great experiment in this all too obvious fact, but our gun glut is already so huge, that the rest of the miserable world is already reaping the “benefits” of the overflow.

@Yellowdog Cruz was not held accountable to the PROMISE program when he was supposed to be referred to a judge.

AH! You’re THERE Stanleybmanly— Will the customary “thoughts and prayers” do anything for the high school kids shot in Texas this morning?

I think thoughts and prayers should do about as much good as the Safe Spaces, Counselors and Politicians giving their anti-Trump speeches and rhetoric against Republicans did at the Parkland shooting.

One thing currently absent is more security at the schools since the Parkland shooting, which should have wisened us up a bit. But I think the idea of having armed security was rejected.

Zenvelo: Cruz was released six times due to PROMISE. Numerous SPECIFIC warnings were given but he was protected. Do AWAY with (Obama’s} PROMISE. And Stop blaming Trump.

Get SOME GODDAMN SEMBLANCE OF PROTECTION at the schools so that a shooting cannot take place. Quit using these rallies for school safety from shooters to push your political delusions of unseating Trump—and PROTECT THE CHILDREN / STUDENTS !!!

@Yellowdog I didn’t blame Trump. I didn’t blame anybody or anything. I just said for everyone to save themselves the time and energy of “thoghts and prayers”.

Well, why not save the energy of holding an Anti-Trump rally in Washington and pretending its a Student led event? It may have started out as one, but it ended up—Ta Da! An Anti-Trump rally with thousands of democrat causes—about the only pretended connection to school shootings was a anti-NRA mob.

Safe spaces and counselors and flowers and politicians giving speeches against their imagined foes does not boost school security. Why not expend some time and energy on that? And why not stop ignoring the signs that someone is planning and advertising on their clothing and social media that they are going to DO it?

@Yellowdog Oh you make me laugh!! Really and truly. Nice to see someone with energy to sass back, most everyone else stays quiet or just leaves. :)

@Yellowdog What are you raving about? This isn’t a Trump issue. These shootings are going to roll on regardless of who sits in the White House or whatever laws or restrictions are enacted. The shooting epidemic is a replica of the heroin epidemic. The death rate is a direct reflection of “product availability” plain and simple. Converting the nation’s schools to forts will be an expensive (and useless remedy). Locking up everyone violating the gun laws NOW would bankrupt the country, just as the war on drugs has landed us the greatest percentage of incarcerated people in the history of the world.

@stanleybmanly The question is an obvious dig at Reps and theists, although I agree with you actually, that it’s an epidemic and both parties need to TRY to solve it. During this extreme polarizing though, I’m not that hopeful. We adults aren’t leading by very good example lately.

This shouldn’t be a left-right issue. And no genius or even insight is required to understand that when guns are more common than hammers, people are going to be shot, and schools are the current fad target, but that can shift to any “crowd”;baseball games, funerals, rock concerts, political rallies. This is “the land of opportunities.”

The rally in Washington after the Parkland shooting started out as a student-led event—but by the time it took place, there were a lot of well-protected (with heavily armed guards) democrat leaders denouncing Trump and the NRA.

Not one thing was done to protect or secure the schools.
And it happened again.

Of course. Everyone wants their share of publicity. The skinheads and alt right were there as well —remember?

yeah, but skinheads are “fine people”, according to the orangutan.

anyone who flatters the fool is “fine people”

I think Trump was referring to people who came there to defend the Confederate Memorial.

Not the skinheads, the KKK or Antifa—who instigated the violence against just about everyone

He said there were fine people on both sides, Normal people DO defend historic monuments—some of them are History professors.

Antifa, not even the Klan, instigated the violence with weapons and Ninja-type antics

Now you are just making shit up.

Funny thing is I got this email from my mom earlier. You are just as nuts but on different sides.

https://i.imgur.com/s8HDCYF.png

She is 70 years old.. What is your excuse?

There were a lot of people there that day—its never good to hang around when the Klan or a White Supremacist group is present—but Trump was referring to people on both sides of the issue of the removal of a Confederate monument.

The actual VIOLENCE was instigated by Antifa—not the klan.

That’s nonsense, and the exact argument the racist South made against the civil rights movement. The demonstrators were responsible for the vicious dogs and firehoses then, and now antifa is responsible for white supremacists mowing people down with automobiles. It’s bullshit, and you should have better sense than your idiot President in seeing it for what it is.

Prayers. And what would be the content of these prayers? Even prayer cannot undo what has already happened and to pray to God that it never happens again is just a cop out when we ourselves take no action to prevent it happening again.

@Yellowdog . Am I mistaken? I thought there were two guards, at this School. Needing more than two seems unrealistic. One is/was in critical condition…

Also. Claiming that the side that showed up with guns at a peaceful protest were not the ones looking for violence, is being deliberately obtuse. Right? What if all those people started shooting people? Bringing a weapon into a situation only escalates it. It was not a calming strategy. It was stupid. Nobody can tell me that the liberals were going to show up armed to the teeth, wearing body armor… Such a presence was completely unwarranted…

You have to realize that the alt-right was there to be inflammatory. I am unsure of how many history professors showed up with rifles, and sidearms. But, I wager that you and I disagree on the unverifiable number.

Are you seriously suggesting that the ones on the right, were history professors, and peaceful people? Or that those who stood with them, deserve anything other than being shamed? And that the ones who showed up to protest hate, were in fact the violent ones?

I can’t think of many causes that I parallel white-supremacists on, but if I found myself on their side of ANYTHING, I would have to closely consider my position.

I want to understand your side. But you’re making it hard here…

Antifa instigated the violence. It was very pronounced, and extremely violent.

A lot of people will protest the removal of a Civil War monument. or anything else historic,
We had a beautiful statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest removed from his grave in a park in Memphis, The entire area was desecrated. Do you think the ones who marred this historic park and desecrated a grave were the good guys?

Probably so. But in any case, at Charlottesville Antifa were the guys with blades, clubs, iron pipes, chains, and inflamatory chemicals. The police stood down and let the violence escalate to where someone was run over with an automobile. The mother of the girl run over did not blame Trump. Trump’s comments were made before the automobile incident. The violence was instigated by Antifa, And was all over the news, by the way.

150 years after the Civil War, in an historic area, there is nothing offensive about a Confederate monument—nor the other historic monuments that have nothing to do with the Confederacy or slavery that have been desecrated, destroyed, or removed. People have a right to protest their removal. Even the Klan had a permit to be there and did not instigate what went on that day.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that answer.

You are also making the preposterous and continual accusation that the Right are racists.

Its an infinite echo chamber on the part of the left—I used to think it was a lie to obfuscate the reality that the LEFT were the original Klan and the government that made gave them power, especially in the South during the Civil Rights era. I am at least big enough to realize that the Left has moved beyond that. But to blame it on Republicans, conservatives, or even people who have an interest in Southern history—is more than a bit hypocritical. No Republican ever owned a slave, and the Republican party never had a foothold in the South until the old guard Left was a thing of the past and racism was no longer common.

I know you have your own beliefs and it has become a significant part of your creed and runs to the very pith and core of your being, and I know the Left howls it ad nauseum—but the Republicans have never been racist. The old Democrat party is responsible for that past aspect of our history. And it IS in our past.

Ya know @Yellowdog I think I want to see links,to things you claim.

@Yellowdog

“Democrat” is not synonymous with “left”; Republican is not synonymous with “right”. If you understood history as you so claim, you’d recognize that. The Republicans of Lincoln’s day have almost nothing to do with the Republicans of today. Many Republicans of the turn of the 20th century were big government progressives who would be the Democrats of today. The parties began to switch poles with FDR but the switch wasn’t complete until the Civil Rights era.

The “Great Switcheroo” happened like this. God and Satan were talking one day. And Satan said, “I am going to change my name. I am going to change my name to God” And God said, “Fine! And I will call myself the Devil”

The great switching of poles did not take place, The Racist south was Democratic. President Eisenhower only gave blacks enough to win votes, and even made a statement to this effect after Selma. For decades, the reason for better educated blacks was so that they could serve you better and more exotic recipies.

The Republican party was never big in the South until racism had largely disappeared, in the late 1980s and 1990s.

@Yellowdog . I’m not claiming that all Republicans are racist. But the agenda is, and some are. Not all burn crosses. Many have friends who are minorities. It’s another baffling reason why some choose to associate with the Republican party.

If you want my support, for saying that the Democrats were racist, here you go sir. That said, it doesn’t change the present. This is the most the conservatives have been emboldened, and empowered,to be publicly racist ,in my memory.
The Republican agenda is a hugely transparent war on everyone non-white. It is a hugely transparent war on Islam.
It is hugely transparent, in it’s “support” of Christians.

@Yellowdog It amazes me that you remain a victim of that conservative pap. All of that nonsense you spout in those posts above amount to little more than breathtaking distortions of both truth and history. Take those sacred monuments to Southern valor; while you bemoan the removal of that statue to Bedford Forest, your gnashing of teeth is unaccompanied by any mention of the fact that Forest founded and led the KLU KLUX KLAN. And of course Republicans never owned any slaves for the same reason YOU never owned any Martians. Then there is the preposterous assertion on your part that today’s Republican party is the “party of Lincoln”, or that racism and bigotry magically disappeared in the South allowing for infiltration of the Republican party. The truth is that Lincoln would recoil in horror at what passes for Republicans nowadays. Here are the facts about conservatives and the South. Lyndon Johnson pushed the enactment of the Civil Rights Act, and overnight every vile and racist dixiecrat switched allegiance to the Republican party—and thus it remains. It wasn’t the end of racism that converted the South to the GOP. It is the persistent and unyielding effort to maintain racist traditions that plants the South solidly in the conservative camp. It’s called “the Southern strategy”.

There is a trend that since the Republican party is more powerful in the South than the North, that somehow they are associated with the KKK. That’s not true—the KKK has been a thoroughly DEMOCRAT institution until comparatively modern times.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was NOT the founder of the Ku Klux Klan—although he was a Grand Wizard for several years. As its mission tended to be racist and not reconcillatory, he left the organization for it having the wrong focus, In the early days, after the civil war, the Klan was a resistance to the North Its anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic focus caused many to abandon the organization. The Klan’s emphasis on these racial and religious intolerance was because insular,Indigenous people often blame their problems on outsiders or change. Forrest brought people together during the reconstruction period.

Mark Twain was quite a progressive thinker in his days but several of his books are banned because they are seen as racist by some. The views of historic figures need to be taken in context of when they lived. It should be understandable that figures who helped rebuild the South would have Nineteenth Century ideas about race. If you want exemplary anti-slavery, anti-racist examples of historic people, you may have to look towards Methodists, the Second Great Awakening, the Quakers, Unitarians, and various religious sects.

You WON’T find many from the annals of history of the Democratic party, Planned Parenthood, or the Dixiecrats