Caffeinated Politics

The Bite of Seattle became yet another horrific crime scene in a nation that treats gun massacres like the latest weather report. Apparently unavoidable.

Three people dead. At least four others were wounded. Including a toddler — a toddler — caught in the blast radius of our national cowardice. We have already heard the tired and threadbare verbiage of thoughts and prayers. Across the nation, we hear statements about “senseless violence” from officials who have spent their careers ensuring it remains very much the same with ongoing campaign donations from the blood-soaked NRA and gun lobbyists. To these peddlers in death, guns mean more than human lives, and the Second Amendment has been tortuously misconstrued while the right to not be shot at a food festival is some kind of optional luxury not meriting legislative time.

Yes, the man who sits at this desk is again reminded that America remains a place where you can’t attend a parade, a concert, a school day, a grocery run, a church service, or now a summer food festival without mentally mapping the exits. A friend who attends Concerts on the Square in Madison talks about calculating escape routes should a horror unfold. That is our nation in 2026.

And still, we’re told that demanding change with gun laws is politicizing tragedy. As if the gun lobby doesn’t politicize every waking moment of our lives by insisting that the rest of us live inside their dystopian fantasy where everyone is armed, paranoid, and one bad mood away from gun owners creating catastrophes. I would frame the dead bodies and the wounded at Seattle Center as political and policy choices. They are arrayed as the result of legislative indifference starting in Congress.

The toddler wounded in Seattle will grow up in a country that shrugged at his/her trauma. The families of the dead are to be folded into the ever‑expanding ledger of American grief. And the rest of us will be told to move on, keep calm, and accept that this is simply how things are now.

I say that it is absolutely unacceptable. America deserves better than this endless cycle of mourning. Seattle deserved better. That toddler deserved better. We all do.