The Minneapolis Murders Accelerated Our Sense of Powerlessness
The shooting, which has so far left two children dead and 14 hospitalized, adds to the sense of terror that the Trump regime is spreading.
Shattered stained-glass windows raining down on children should rouse us against guns. But Trump has too many people paralyzed.
You don’t have to be Catholic to be horrified by bullets shattering stained-glass windows to kill Catholic school children, while they’re at a “back to school” Mass, as we saw in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. But as a Catholic school kid who attended many of those Masses (plus many other holidays that required all-school Masses), I can see it. Too clearly.
You can’t unsee it. As a Catholic child, we were taught to see God in the sun, streaming sometimes prismatically, through those stained-glass windows. Sometimes you couldn’t look away. Especially when Mass got boring. As it often did to Catholic school kids. The windows stayed fascinating. I still visit churches to look at them.
A 10-year-old boy who was in the church, Weston Halsne, interviewed (unethically, in my opinion) by multiple news sources, said he was only two kids away from the shattering window. Weston could place himself. I believe it; those windows are definitive. He said a friend jumped on his back, under the pews, and that child got shot. “But he’s OK.”
How long will Weston carry that trauma? So far, two children have died and 14 went to the hospital, along with three adults. It’s reported that the hospitalized children are likely to survive. But for all of them, their trauma will equal or exceed Weston’s.
I don’t know that there’s political sense to be made of this nightmare—the alleged killer left behind signs of every political dementia known to mankind—but I unapologetically add it to the sense of terror the Trump regime is spreading. We can’t change gun laws, obviously, in this anti-progress political climate. (And we still don’t know if the killer broke any—The New York Times reports that the shooter “purchased all three weapons lawfully.”) But as Mayor Jason Frey said: “We have more guns than people in this country.”
The tragedy—understandably—interrupted the coverage of other news, including our accelerating slide into authoritarianism. I started the day wanting to write: “The Sandwich Guy Gets Justice, But the Soros Family Is Threatened With RICO Charges”—a grand jury refused to prosecute Sean Dunn, the hero who threw a hero (sue me) at a federal agent, but Trump threatened George and Alex Soros with racketeering charges for fomenting domestic unrest (which they haven’t done).
But then I couldn’t look away from the coverage of Minneapolis. And it reminded me of the assasination of Minnesota Democratic House leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark (and dog, Gilbert). That faded from headlines almost immediately. Pro-democracy folks feel powerless right now. The grand juries refusing to indict people in Washington, DC, is great news. But most of the news is horrible. And even when judges rule in the favor of the law, and the Constitution, it doesn’t always matter.
We are so traumatized. I was paralyzed, unable to write about any larger issues, thinking about children seeing bullets coming through stained-glass windows. Where are the leaders of the Christian right, standing up against this abomination? Young Weston said his Catholic school did monthly “active shooter” drills, but they’d never done one in church.
So should all churchgoers now line up for active shooter drills? You might think even Christian conservatives would draw the line there. But many probably believe the answer is making sure more parishioners are armed.
Stained glass is common, and venerated, in so many cultures. There must be many people who are traumatized by this horror today. I felt, for a while, that my horror at the scene didn’t matter. But the horror of any of us at violence matters. And it will all get worse.
