Another Black Person Executed By Police, Another Mass Killing, Another Useless Prayer Vigil. Check!

[stopbush]

Bread and circuses.

Another week of carnage in America, as the glories of our gun culture are on full display. Our R-controlled Congress finds time to hold "emergency" sessions to pontificate on just why Hillary Clinton should have been indicted for NOT commiting a crime, while delaying a vote on gun measures so they can decide whether sanctions should be leveled against the Ds for forcing the issue through a sit-in.

And just as our Congressional Rs are so effective at being totally ineffective, the country defaults to the useless spectacle of a prayer vigil to delay and avoid the real work it would take to make things different. Oh, sure, it's a ritual, and people love their rituals. But does it even provide solace to those mourning loved ones and/or the disintegration of our society? We're treated once again to clergy offering their meaningless prattle to the imaginary sky god, the very same god that the murderers more than likely prayed to before heading off to bed the night before.

What are we hoping or imagining these stale, ineffective rituals will accomplish? That after 80 years or so, such navel gazing will have a cumulative effect, that almighty god will add them all up and finally, finally decide to intervene in the affairs of men, setting things right and ending the carnage?

Right...and I've got a bridge to sell you.

Sorry, but this ritual is part of the problem, just as surely as would be any other exercise that serves not to focus us on the issue, but to offer a diversion from the same. And a diversion that has its own inherent evil, in that it gives people the feeling that they are doing something to address the problem, when all they're doing is gazing at the ground while mumbling to themselves, imagining that 1. some god is listening to their prayer and 2. that he gives a rat's ass about what they are asking.

If the last 60 years have showed us anything, it's that even if we stipulate to the fantasy of a god existing, he/she/it doesn't give a shit.

Last month, Congressional Ds walked out on the obligatory "moment of silence" that is offered up by the craven, gun-loving Rs every time their support of the NRA leads to its logical and deadly conclusion. I found that rejection of the moment of silence to be a step in the right direction. Let's continue down that path and reject the all-too-facile spectacle of the prayer vigil as well.