Some realism about "Thoughts and Prayers"

and what the Left should do about it.

Another mass shooting. Wait. Actually two in the space of hours. Nope. Three in one day.

The people at The Onion are going to have to repost their “‘No Way to Prevent This’, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” piece again. That piece of satire has its own Wikipedia page¹.

The cycle of shock, political pablum, debate, indolence, and social reset is so predictable that it’s a meme.

The “thoughts and prayers” and social media debates were different in the olden days before the internet. The National Rifle Association would handle most of the flak, but it did not matter much as the worst thing that might happen is a congressional committee (and occasionally a state legislature committee) would have a hearing on the tragedy.

The social media debate was this old-fashioned thing called letter writing. Thousands of letters would arrive in congressional offices demanding action. In the case of pro-gun advocates…inaction. And therein lies the public relations genius of “thoughts and prayers”.

A politician, who opposes gun control, can appear concerned and worried without actually doing anything. And while with each mass shooting pragmatists hope for support to do something and gun control idealists hope for some sort of electoral reordering, realists set their sights on a much lower bar.

Stop the “thoughts and prayers” hogwash and call it for what it is — pablum designed hide their indolence bought and paid for by the gun lobby. So call your local politician on it.

Suggested language:

“(Fill in name of politician here), please tell me how much time you plan to allot to thoughts and prayers here. I need to know the number of minutes you plan to pray for each and every victim. I find it blasphemous that you continuously pray and yet God eithers tells you to do nothing or that you ignore God’s message to you. Do us all a favor and stop praying for victims.

“And whatever thought process you are using is not working. If these tragedies keep happening despite YOUR ‘thoughts and prayers’, I can only assume gun lobby money or an insufficient amount of praying is the reason.”

Handwrite. Use certified mail. Get your friends to write as well. Funny thing about mail, it actually impresses those subject to electoral judgement. In the world of spin, bad political messaging dies from neglect.

Will it change very much? No, but the cycle posted above changes. If there is no “political out” by invoking thoughts and prayers, then it become mass shooting, media extravaganza, social media debate, political parsing, doing nothing, social reset.

Note the change in political dynamics. Thoughts and prayers precedes the public debate, but parsing follows it.

Pro-gun politicians on the Right and nihilists do well sounding like they care. Political parsing, though, is not their best thing — especially nowadays. It’s hard to parse 198 mass shootings² in United States so far in 2022 with over 200 dead and more than 800 wounded.

End “thoughts and prayers” and the United States will take a step toward realism on gun violence.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens

2. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099008586/mass-shootings-us-2022-tally-number