Uvalde shooting: And again, here we are, with bullshit “thoughts and prayers”

Sadly, I wrote this initially after the Orlando nightclub shootings.

After San Bernardino, there was a bit of a backlash on the whole ‘thoughts and prayers’ culture. That’s only logical. I think the Orlando numbers and context are terrible, but … Sandy Hook is probably the worst thing to happen in America in the last five years (in some respects) and basically nothing happened as a result of Sandy Hook — aside from, you know, Peter Lanza speaking to The New Yorker for a long profile.

Today when Obama makes a statement, it will be the 18th time in his Presidency that he’s had to make a statement following a shooting. That’s basically 2.25 times/year. This stuff doesn’t happen 2.25 times/year in other industrialized, first-world nations. In some nations, it basically never happens.

The thoughts and prayers culture that has come up around these events is, of course, total bullshit. We all know it. But it’s also super logical from any type of basic human psychology standpoint.

Where does the ‘thoughts and prayers’ culture come from?

I think this one should be fairly obvious. The range of human emotions really isn’t as wide as we’d like to think. There are a lot of things we can’t…