"The gesture towards divine power invokes an American taboo -- we are not to criticize anyone who invokes God, no matter how obviously hypocritical and self-serving, as in this case. The taboo, once summoned, prevents us from seeing the obvious, fundamental thing: a basic reason that we have government is to prevent us from becoming a society in which we simply shoot one another all the time."

#MassShootings #BrownUniversity #guns #firearms #ThoughtsandPrayers #platitudes #EmptyPiety
/5

"The notion that all elected officials have are their thoughts and prayers, regardless of by whom it is uttered, is a direct attack on the purpose of government itself. It is not a response to the anarchy of gun violence. It is a normalization of it and one of the preconditions to its repetition and spread."

~ Timothy Snyder

#MassShootings #BrownUniversity #guns #GunViolence #firearms #ThoughtsandPrayers #platitudes #EmptyPiety
/4

snyder.substack.com/p/what-a-t…

What a terrible thing it is

Mass shootings as regime change

^{Timothy Snyder (Thinking about...)}

"Thoughts and prayers. The laziest phrase in the American lexicon. It costs nothing. It risks nothing. And it changes absolutely nothing."

#MassShootings #BrownUniversity #guns #GunViolence #firearms #ThoughtsandPrayers #platitudes #EmptyPiety
/3

"Thoughts and prayers for the students senselessly murdered at Brown University. Thoughts and prayers for Jewish families in Australia who gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate the start of Hanukkah, only to watch Day Two transform into a memorial after antisemitic violence shattered what should have been joy."

~ Michael Cohen

#MassShootings #BrownUniversity #guns #GunViolence #firearms #ThoughtsandPrayers #platitudes #EmptyPiety
/2

meidasplus.com/p/the-politics-…

The Politics of Hollow Platitudes

Thoughts and prayers have become America’s ritual of surrender; comforting the powerful, silencing accountability, and ensuring the next memorial is already being planned.

^{Michael Cohen (Meidas+)}