Spoken Word: “21 gunmen salute”

How can this piece on school shootings still be relevant more than a decade later?

Image by Midjourney

I wrote this piece sometime in 2014, and it breaks my heart that that I’m still reading new articles like Arie Kruglanski’s “Why do mass shooters kill? It’s about more than having a grievance”. How can a nation care so much more about an idea that they’re not allowing themselves to have nuanced discussions about, than about the lives and quality of life of their own children?

I’m not even talking about gun ownership, that’s a whole silly can of worms all by itself. What I’m talking about is a people that are clearly suffering, more than the rest of the western world, from frustration and dissatisfaction and alienation, along with merciless indentured servitude to the very institutions that claim to serve them.

I would argue that while significance is most certainly a part of what these shooters are after, it goes beyond significance: they’re looking for agency. A while back I listened to an incredibly insightful video connecting the dots on…