Caffeinated Politics

Some days it feels like this country is held together with duct tape and the hope that the next breaking‑news alert won’t be about another shooting. But then it happens again. Tonight, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, of all places. A night that’s supposed to be about jokes, journalism, and a little Washington glitz suddenly became another entry in America’s endless catalogue of pathetically absurd gunfire.

And the saddest part? The part that hits me in the gut? This is just another day in America.

We’ve gotten so used to gun violence that such a blaring news banner on television barely registers anymore. Donald Trump and his conservative cabinet, and those members of Congress who are tied to the checks and cash of the NRA, must not forget that this type of gun violence is felt in America every day. In urban neighborhoods. And in country bars. And in churches. And in movie theatres. And in kindergarten classrooms. Trump has his security team to protect him, as we saw in an amazing demonstration tonight. And I am glad that is so. But school kids who are learning multiplication tables also use those same rooms for active‑shooter drills. That is the messed-up world our sick gun culture has produced.

Tonight, the gun headline on just another Saturday in America took place at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. A place packed with journalists, public figures, and people who shape the national conversation was suddenly ducking and running. If even that room isn’t safe, what room is?

This is the America we wake up to every morning. Live in through every day. Go to sleep in this climate each night. An America where the phrases “shooting taking place” or “mass shooting” or “mass casualties” or “shooter down” barely slow the pace of our lives. An America where we’ve watched guns seep into every corner of public life. Malls. Parades. Grocery stores. College campuses. Birthday parties. Sidewalks. Subways. Now, one of the highest-profile annual events in Washington.

As I wrote recently, people say “this isn’t who we are,” but honestly, I have to call such rhetoric baloney and state matter-of-fact that it’s exactly who we’ve allowed ourselves to become. A country where the sound of gunfire is no longer an interruption. It is becoming a rhythm. A beat we’ve been forced to march to in the nation.

I know how the next hours will play out. The next days. There will be so many Americans shaking their heads that it might appear the earth could spin right off its axis. But it also happens in the environment of people just becoming more numb to the level of gun violence they are being forced to hear about daily. This nation has seen so many killed and injured by gun violence that our collective outrage has calluses.

This blog (in two separate foundations) will be 20 years old this July. The same theme about much-needed gun control has run from the beginning to this post tonight. I call this aberrant behavior from the gun culture sickeningly wrong. It is not normal in the sense that a healthy society cannot operate in this fashion with so many dead citizens because of a cause that can be changed, managed, and curtailed. Much of the world proves my point.

Today it was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Tomorrow? Who knows. In a gun‑soaked America, every place is a potential headline. And that’s the tragedy we’re living with, every day in America.