Thoughts and Prayers

    

     According to Twitter, it's #EndangeredSpeciesDay. Cool! Let's get guns out of the schools and protect our kids because they're about as endangered a species as you can get.
     At Santa Fe High School, at least 10 people, presumably mostly students, who were alive this morning are now listed as dead. 10 people who should be looking forward to the prom or the junior prom, looking forward to graduation and a summer of fun or earning money, are now dead.
     They should've been captured in awkward driveway pre-prom photos taken by their parents and put on social media. They should be looking forward to going to college and worrying about student loan debt and making new friends on the new campus.
     Instead, the suits and dresses will be worn in their caskets when they're laid to rest just in time for the graduations and proms and parties for those who survived the Santa Fe High School shooting. So, you know what? Fuck your thoughts and prayers. If you must pray, they could go towards our vulnerable students and pray to get guns out of our schools. If prayers and disembodied thoughts actually made a lick of difference in this increasingly insane world, they should be used when and where ever you think they count, not to be withheld until the bodies start to pile up like cord wood.
     When Republicans offer thoughts and prayers they're basically telling you to shut the fuck up. Because thoughts and prayers are silent and we can't use the Santa Fe school shooting to talk about gun control and politicize the issue, now can we?
     And in case you think my comparison to the school shooting in Santa Fe and Planned Parenthood is a straw man argument, let me inform you that the Trump administration is seriously thinking of cutting off federal funding for clinics who advise pregnant women to get abortions, including Planned Parenthood. In other words, Republicans only care about kids when they're still in the womb. Then when they get killed 13-18 years later in a school shooting... Well, it's not time to discuss their needless deaths. That's politicizing them.