Today, like on far too many days, there was a mass shooting in the United States. After the news broke, all the politicians and lawmakers who do nothing tangible to actually stop the ongoing public health crisis that is gun violence in America took to Twitter to share their “prayers.” Prayers to whom, one could wonder? Well, to God, of course. The New York Daily News has a pitch-perfect response to this:
An early look at tomorrow’s front page… GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS: https://t.co/eKUg5f03ec pic.twitter.com/j4gEFg9YtJ
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) December 3, 2015
While politicians pray to God for help, there is surely no small number of their constituents praying to, well, them for help, for some sort of surcease from sorrow. What do those two prayers have in common? That neither God nor Washington have demonstrated any interest whatsoever in answering them.
So in the words of the late great Mary Harris Jones, “Pray for the dead. Fight like hell for the living.”