Tomorrow’s date, May 24, marks a year since an eighteen year old male, armed with an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle, walked into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and shot to death 19 grade school children and three teachers. He wounded seventeen others who somehow managed to survive, even though most of them had been shot and lay bleeding for over an hour before police officers finally confronted the shooter and killed him.
Honestly, Lucian, I don't know how you have the stamina to exhume all this.
But I can just image your computer-like mind has stuff filed away, yet accessible.
I have gained much by fishing in your waters for the past year, and was pleased to upgrade my status to Founder, if only to make sure those kittens are well maintained in a style to which their mother has become accustomed.
The big burly brave officers, sirens screaming, brakes screeching as they arrived in droves, jumping out of their vehicles guns drawn running down the hallways ready for action, but wait! they hear shots, they turn around and slink back the way they came down the hallway back to who knows where as they are now off camera never to be seen again. As for the rest, we all saw on the many videos how every single later just stood around casually as Lucian described, chit-chatting while children not yet dead were bleeding out, some dialing 911 pleading for help. As for Abbott and the state legislature, did any of them even suggest a state investigation or visit the site? Or did they just pass more laws making it even easier to buy guns? The red states are more worried about what books will do to damage young minds than what guns will do to damage young bodies.
Why doesn’t CNN host a useful town hall? Put grieving parents on stage. Put maimed survivors on stage. Put EMS and medical front-liners on state. Ask them about their experiences. Have audience also full of survivors, friends, co-workers. Show video and photos. Show the non-rescuing “police.” Show the do-nothing Gov. Abbott. Show blown up pics of politicians who vote against gun safety. Re-run on continuous loop. Just getting started but general idea.
I am not sure that the laws belong to all of us anymore. The shootings Mr. T. mentions are gut-wrenching examples of the will of crazy people being imposed on all of us ... just as Donald Trump was. I no longer understand how people like MTG and Paul Gosar and even Kevin McCarthy are elected. I no longer understand the cruelty and punitiveness of so-called religious people who've taken it upon themselves to deny abortion, even to women who will die without it. I no longer understand the war on poor people, Blacks, and Jews -- as out in the open as it's ever been. It is possible this country will be turned inside out until there is anarchy. I hope not to be around to see it.
Thank you, Lucian. The gun laws in this country are crazy. There is no rational defense for the notion that weapons of war are suitable for everyday citizens to carry or walk around with, or keep in their homes. None. All the blather about the 2nd Amendment is just that—blather that ignores history of where the country and its citizenry were when the Constitution was written, and what was meant by “A well regulated Militia…” The founders certainly did not envision that self-styled “Patriots” like the Proud Boys, The Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, Boogaloo Movement, Et al would have a perfectly good “Right” to don military gear and swan around in public in Peace Time flaunting their military hardware and intimidating school board meetings, state legislatures, or even—as we saw on January 6th, 2021–proceed to trash the United States Capitol on “Live TV” in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. Most of us still can’t get over the fact that this happened in our own country. That we have fallen this low.
Right wing gun advocates, fueled by the NRA and Talk Radio B.S., believe all sorts of nonsense about gun rights in this country that is simply not true. Gun registration, for example. They’re against it. Say it’s Unconstitutional. Nonsense. Back in Washington’s time records were kept of who had muskets and where they were kept. But we have not been in the age of musketry for a long time now, and it is definitely past time that the elected representatives of the American people recognize that this gun mayhem is directly correlated to legal access to weapons that make killing human beings all too easy. For anyone. Nor did the founders imagine a day when those who assaulted police who were doing their sworn duty to protect the seat of our government were hailed as “Heroes” and those same officers, outmanned and overwhelmed, fought on for hours until relieved by additional forces—those brave officers were vilified as “Traitors” and “Cowards” by the same people who would have our nation’s politics decided by the bullet, instead of the ballot. Thanks again, Lucian.
So grim. In so many ways. The evilness seeps down from acclaimed law enforcement, purchased politicians, politicians who keep being voted into office despite the public awareness that so often the politicians have responsibility for the shooting death toll that permeates daily lives of Americans, day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out. Count the bodies. Count the available and unregulated guns. Count the anniversaries of mass shootings. In our schools, in our churches, in our homes, in our shopping destinations, in our streets, in our entertainment venues, wherever one stands in America, the politicians, law enforcement, too many voters, abdicate responsibility for the safety and welfare of American families, citizens. So grim. In so many ways.
I am so with you on this Lucian, I’m afraid we are going to see a continuation of this nightmare. We have over 20 million of these killing machines loose among the general public, and evidently a public that is clueless about what a threat that is, to all of us. When I was in grade school in the 50’s there was no such thing as a school shooting, much less multiples of those tragedy’s, now they are common. All of this shit started in Texas, wouldn’t you know, with a deer rifle. Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde, are four that spring to mind. I knew no one at any of those schools, but I feel a deep burning rage at what happened in those schools to those innocent children and their caretakers. Anyone that has any idea what these weapons can do to a person and still not do everything in their power to get them off the streets, is beneath contempt, as are the cops standing around in the halls of Uvalde. I’m a combat vet, firefights are no fun, in fact they are terrifying, but to stand around while children are being murdered on the other side of a door that you never tried to open, and do nothing for over an hour, is beyond my comprehension. The repugnantkin party is ok with all of the above, they would far rather talk about a Drag Show, than murdered children, WTF? It’s become obvious to me that they need to go the way of the Wigs, we need two parties to have honest conversations with each other about how to best improve our common good, we only have one. The repugnantkins have no interest in the common good, all they care about is making the very richest families even richer, school shootings are inconvenient, but somebody else’s problem. Steve Scalise is a classic example of our problem, he was shot, I think multiple times, damn near died and had a long recovery, you and anyone with a brain would think he might lead on the weapons of war issue, not a peep. If someone that has been shot won’t help with our gun problem, how are we ever going to get these killing machines off our streets?
Dick, I'm with you all the way. We seem to have a shared experience. At this point I just feel numb to it all. At worst I feel powerless. At best, I have hope. And so it goes.
Thank you for the reminder. Kaddish should be said within a community of mourners, but I will say it tonight. Too many to pray for, with all of the dead taken into consideration.
Tomorrow, one of my dearest friends will be going into Stanford to endure brutal and intense chemo treatments for 5 days until she receives abone marrow transplant for Acute Myeloid Leukemia. She knows the donor is a woman and carries 10 out 10 of the criteria needed to help my friend live a longer life. This is my life right now but these anniversaries of shootings just get to me. My stomach churns, my heart beats a little faster as each disastrous event is mentioned. Yes, Uvalde is especially one I grieve the most for. The fact that the so-called cops did absolutely NOTHING to save these sweet souls is maddening! They are cowards, every. single. one. of. them. They all deserve a prison sentence. They all deserve to have to view the missing faces and bodies of the victims, everyday of their lives. They should be subjected to screams and pleas in their cells as they try to go to sleep. I don’t want them to feel freedom. I want them to feel the same hell they are putting the mothers, the fathers, the spouses through by their chosen inactions. Let them rot.
Father, I pray for the little ones who have lost their lives so far this year and those who are yet to lose their lives far into the foreseeable future because the United States Congress won't ban these powerful weapons of war that only soldiers should have in times of war..,
Hi Marlene, I fully understand. I was raised in the Christian tradition and went through a bit of a religious spell as a youth and in England during and after WWII when we kids would be at the movies, they would show newsreel of the war effort and I distinctly remember at some point they showed soldiers driving bulldozers pushing hundreds of bodies into mass graves at the prison camps in Germany. Later as I read that most were Jewish, I too couldn't understand how God could let this happen, One even questions if God exists. Many years later after my near death experience I knew in my own mind that for reasons we can't possibly understand, the Gods whoever they are or whatever they are do not intervene in our free will. There are higher powers because I saw them and conversed with them, not that anyone would believe me, and we too will be there with them one day but not until we have learned to love one another and put all hatreds aside and literally become as Gods ourselves. deeply spiritual human beings. The following statement will shock and not be believed by our Judeo-Christian society but one short lifetime is insufficient to make much progress. It takes many,. many lifetimes to reach that level but when we do we will never again have to experience the physical life on this earth.
You will see all of your relatives again following your time here and it will be a grand reunion. As far as death in the ultimate sense, there is no such thing. PI'm afraid my religion has a lot of stuff wrong, especially that only Christians go to heaven. .
No question about it, Marlene. I have no way of proving that what I saw was real, but my observation was that life on the other side is basically a continuation of life here but familiar surroundings as far as landscapes are concerned, even our homes, but much more beautiful and serene and without any of the problems of the physical world, Yet we are still exactly who we are now. They don't have work as we know it but plenty to do, music, art, literature, great halls of learning, etc., , animals,. our pets of course, children naturally. And although this all sounds heavenly there are even higher levels of consciousness populated by more advanced souls. It stands to reason there are lower levels too which I also observed. Very unpleasant I'm afraid, each level is created by the collective minds of the inhabitants. No God judged them and sent them to these hellish regions, they accomplish this all by themselves by the way they lived there lives. If the haters and the white supremacists, neo Nazis could see all this they would change their ways in a hurry. As far as beliefs, we take them with us. I have no doubt that if you enjoy religious fellowship that cab be found too. Two good friends now deceased wrote books on this subject, Henrietta Bernstein and William Eisen. Bill wrote Agasha Master of Wisdom, and The Agashan Discourses and Henrietta wrote on a slightly different subject, Bill's books cover lectures we used to attend. He took the audio tapes and reanscribed them. What is interesting is I saw much of whatt they described for myself, including the various levels of consciousness. Another interesting thing to me is that all those who write comments here (and ones that don't) but who read Lucian's newsletter are to my mind on the spiritual path whether they think they are or nor t, and will certainly get to experience a lovely afterlife. We are not expected to be angels here, just to be for justice and goodness and try to do the right thing in life even if we fail sometimes. The fact that we all agree basically and that we don't like some of the things the Republicans are doing. I have no doubt we won't find many Republicans in heaven (Kidding! there are good and bad people everywhere but also many just misguided, perhaps heavily influenced by their news sources that have no problem distorting things for sensationalism.
You are having a calming effect on me, Robert. I so wish for a utopian world without hateful conflict, where people actually work things out by having meaningful discussions. I feel for our children as they have never really known freedom to appreciate the little things you speak of. Seems like every move they make is being assessed and challenged. On the other hand, I am grateful for the progressive thinkers in our nation, especially our youth. They will be our saviors and I hate burdening them with that but it is how I feel.
Thank you for sharing your friends’ writings with me. I will look them up. In the meantime, Substack is a blessing to invite the greatest reporters, historians, and writers to their site. We get to engage with people of greatness, like Lucian, and actually sometimes get a response back. My joy is meeting people like you who share similar viewpoints. My days would be of despair if I didn’t have this wonderful outlet.
Honestly, Lucian, I don't know how you have the stamina to exhume all this.
But I can just image your computer-like mind has stuff filed away, yet accessible.
I have gained much by fishing in your waters for the past year, and was pleased to upgrade my status to Founder, if only to make sure those kittens are well maintained in a style to which their mother has become accustomed.
Thank you Babette. I can't tell you how much it means to me to have a reader give me the vote of appreciation a founders subscription represents.
This particular newsletter was the final tipping point for me to upgrade as well.
The big burly brave officers, sirens screaming, brakes screeching as they arrived in droves, jumping out of their vehicles guns drawn running down the hallways ready for action, but wait! they hear shots, they turn around and slink back the way they came down the hallway back to who knows where as they are now off camera never to be seen again. As for the rest, we all saw on the many videos how every single later just stood around casually as Lucian described, chit-chatting while children not yet dead were bleeding out, some dialing 911 pleading for help. As for Abbott and the state legislature, did any of them even suggest a state investigation or visit the site? Or did they just pass more laws making it even easier to buy guns? The red states are more worried about what books will do to damage young minds than what guns will do to damage young bodies.
Thanks!! All of those brave, heroic peace officers should be fired and never allowed to be a “law enforcement official” again 😡‼️
Grateful that you continue to write about this.
Why doesn’t CNN host a useful town hall? Put grieving parents on stage. Put maimed survivors on stage. Put EMS and medical front-liners on state. Ask them about their experiences. Have audience also full of survivors, friends, co-workers. Show video and photos. Show the non-rescuing “police.” Show the do-nothing Gov. Abbott. Show blown up pics of politicians who vote against gun safety. Re-run on continuous loop. Just getting started but general idea.
all that aside, those god-fearing texans' legislature has just proposed to put the 10 commandments on the wall in every classroom.
just SO damned tired of all that "howdy ma'am" crap from those people.
I am not sure that the laws belong to all of us anymore. The shootings Mr. T. mentions are gut-wrenching examples of the will of crazy people being imposed on all of us ... just as Donald Trump was. I no longer understand how people like MTG and Paul Gosar and even Kevin McCarthy are elected. I no longer understand the cruelty and punitiveness of so-called religious people who've taken it upon themselves to deny abortion, even to women who will die without it. I no longer understand the war on poor people, Blacks, and Jews -- as out in the open as it's ever been. It is possible this country will be turned inside out until there is anarchy. I hope not to be around to see it.
Maybe someone will just shoot me.
I don’t wish that on you, Margo.
Guns and more guns....throw the guns away.
0:00 / 6:00 The Clash - Police & Thieves (Official Audio)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3A8uNG3GH4
Thank you, Lucian. The gun laws in this country are crazy. There is no rational defense for the notion that weapons of war are suitable for everyday citizens to carry or walk around with, or keep in their homes. None. All the blather about the 2nd Amendment is just that—blather that ignores history of where the country and its citizenry were when the Constitution was written, and what was meant by “A well regulated Militia…” The founders certainly did not envision that self-styled “Patriots” like the Proud Boys, The Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, Boogaloo Movement, Et al would have a perfectly good “Right” to don military gear and swan around in public in Peace Time flaunting their military hardware and intimidating school board meetings, state legislatures, or even—as we saw on January 6th, 2021–proceed to trash the United States Capitol on “Live TV” in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. Most of us still can’t get over the fact that this happened in our own country. That we have fallen this low.
Right wing gun advocates, fueled by the NRA and Talk Radio B.S., believe all sorts of nonsense about gun rights in this country that is simply not true. Gun registration, for example. They’re against it. Say it’s Unconstitutional. Nonsense. Back in Washington’s time records were kept of who had muskets and where they were kept. But we have not been in the age of musketry for a long time now, and it is definitely past time that the elected representatives of the American people recognize that this gun mayhem is directly correlated to legal access to weapons that make killing human beings all too easy. For anyone. Nor did the founders imagine a day when those who assaulted police who were doing their sworn duty to protect the seat of our government were hailed as “Heroes” and those same officers, outmanned and overwhelmed, fought on for hours until relieved by additional forces—those brave officers were vilified as “Traitors” and “Cowards” by the same people who would have our nation’s politics decided by the bullet, instead of the ballot. Thanks again, Lucian.
“Illegitemi non Carborundum” (Sigh….)
So grim. In so many ways. The evilness seeps down from acclaimed law enforcement, purchased politicians, politicians who keep being voted into office despite the public awareness that so often the politicians have responsibility for the shooting death toll that permeates daily lives of Americans, day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out. Count the bodies. Count the available and unregulated guns. Count the anniversaries of mass shootings. In our schools, in our churches, in our homes, in our shopping destinations, in our streets, in our entertainment venues, wherever one stands in America, the politicians, law enforcement, too many voters, abdicate responsibility for the safety and welfare of American families, citizens. So grim. In so many ways.
I am so with you on this Lucian, I’m afraid we are going to see a continuation of this nightmare. We have over 20 million of these killing machines loose among the general public, and evidently a public that is clueless about what a threat that is, to all of us. When I was in grade school in the 50’s there was no such thing as a school shooting, much less multiples of those tragedy’s, now they are common. All of this shit started in Texas, wouldn’t you know, with a deer rifle. Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde, are four that spring to mind. I knew no one at any of those schools, but I feel a deep burning rage at what happened in those schools to those innocent children and their caretakers. Anyone that has any idea what these weapons can do to a person and still not do everything in their power to get them off the streets, is beneath contempt, as are the cops standing around in the halls of Uvalde. I’m a combat vet, firefights are no fun, in fact they are terrifying, but to stand around while children are being murdered on the other side of a door that you never tried to open, and do nothing for over an hour, is beyond my comprehension. The repugnantkin party is ok with all of the above, they would far rather talk about a Drag Show, than murdered children, WTF? It’s become obvious to me that they need to go the way of the Wigs, we need two parties to have honest conversations with each other about how to best improve our common good, we only have one. The repugnantkins have no interest in the common good, all they care about is making the very richest families even richer, school shootings are inconvenient, but somebody else’s problem. Steve Scalise is a classic example of our problem, he was shot, I think multiple times, damn near died and had a long recovery, you and anyone with a brain would think he might lead on the weapons of war issue, not a peep. If someone that has been shot won’t help with our gun problem, how are we ever going to get these killing machines off our streets?
Dick, I'm with you all the way. We seem to have a shared experience. At this point I just feel numb to it all. At worst I feel powerless. At best, I have hope. And so it goes.
Thank you for the reminder. Kaddish should be said within a community of mourners, but I will say it tonight. Too many to pray for, with all of the dead taken into consideration.
I would like to know what percentage of those 400 fraudster cops had military training. My guess is 70%. Disgraceful conduct.
Its not going to get better. The Gregg Abbotts of the US are adding to their war chest. They are planning on using all their weapons to MAGA.
Lock and Load
Tomorrow, one of my dearest friends will be going into Stanford to endure brutal and intense chemo treatments for 5 days until she receives abone marrow transplant for Acute Myeloid Leukemia. She knows the donor is a woman and carries 10 out 10 of the criteria needed to help my friend live a longer life. This is my life right now but these anniversaries of shootings just get to me. My stomach churns, my heart beats a little faster as each disastrous event is mentioned. Yes, Uvalde is especially one I grieve the most for. The fact that the so-called cops did absolutely NOTHING to save these sweet souls is maddening! They are cowards, every. single. one. of. them. They all deserve a prison sentence. They all deserve to have to view the missing faces and bodies of the victims, everyday of their lives. They should be subjected to screams and pleas in their cells as they try to go to sleep. I don’t want them to feel freedom. I want them to feel the same hell they are putting the mothers, the fathers, the spouses through by their chosen inactions. Let them rot.
Father, I pray for the little ones who have lost their lives so far this year and those who are yet to lose their lives far into the foreseeable future because the United States Congress won't ban these powerful weapons of war that only soldiers should have in times of war..,
I stopped praying, Robert. Like my mother, a Holocaust victim used to say “Where was God when 6 million were murdered?”.
Hi Marlene, I fully understand. I was raised in the Christian tradition and went through a bit of a religious spell as a youth and in England during and after WWII when we kids would be at the movies, they would show newsreel of the war effort and I distinctly remember at some point they showed soldiers driving bulldozers pushing hundreds of bodies into mass graves at the prison camps in Germany. Later as I read that most were Jewish, I too couldn't understand how God could let this happen, One even questions if God exists. Many years later after my near death experience I knew in my own mind that for reasons we can't possibly understand, the Gods whoever they are or whatever they are do not intervene in our free will. There are higher powers because I saw them and conversed with them, not that anyone would believe me, and we too will be there with them one day but not until we have learned to love one another and put all hatreds aside and literally become as Gods ourselves. deeply spiritual human beings. The following statement will shock and not be believed by our Judeo-Christian society but one short lifetime is insufficient to make much progress. It takes many,. many lifetimes to reach that level but when we do we will never again have to experience the physical life on this earth.
You will see all of your relatives again following your time here and it will be a grand reunion. As far as death in the ultimate sense, there is no such thing. PI'm afraid my religion has a lot of stuff wrong, especially that only Christians go to heaven. .
Beautifully said, Robert. Maybe you and I will meet up there someday. 😻
No question about it, Marlene. I have no way of proving that what I saw was real, but my observation was that life on the other side is basically a continuation of life here but familiar surroundings as far as landscapes are concerned, even our homes, but much more beautiful and serene and without any of the problems of the physical world, Yet we are still exactly who we are now. They don't have work as we know it but plenty to do, music, art, literature, great halls of learning, etc., , animals,. our pets of course, children naturally. And although this all sounds heavenly there are even higher levels of consciousness populated by more advanced souls. It stands to reason there are lower levels too which I also observed. Very unpleasant I'm afraid, each level is created by the collective minds of the inhabitants. No God judged them and sent them to these hellish regions, they accomplish this all by themselves by the way they lived there lives. If the haters and the white supremacists, neo Nazis could see all this they would change their ways in a hurry. As far as beliefs, we take them with us. I have no doubt that if you enjoy religious fellowship that cab be found too. Two good friends now deceased wrote books on this subject, Henrietta Bernstein and William Eisen. Bill wrote Agasha Master of Wisdom, and The Agashan Discourses and Henrietta wrote on a slightly different subject, Bill's books cover lectures we used to attend. He took the audio tapes and reanscribed them. What is interesting is I saw much of whatt they described for myself, including the various levels of consciousness. Another interesting thing to me is that all those who write comments here (and ones that don't) but who read Lucian's newsletter are to my mind on the spiritual path whether they think they are or nor t, and will certainly get to experience a lovely afterlife. We are not expected to be angels here, just to be for justice and goodness and try to do the right thing in life even if we fail sometimes. The fact that we all agree basically and that we don't like some of the things the Republicans are doing. I have no doubt we won't find many Republicans in heaven (Kidding! there are good and bad people everywhere but also many just misguided, perhaps heavily influenced by their news sources that have no problem distorting things for sensationalism.
You are having a calming effect on me, Robert. I so wish for a utopian world without hateful conflict, where people actually work things out by having meaningful discussions. I feel for our children as they have never really known freedom to appreciate the little things you speak of. Seems like every move they make is being assessed and challenged. On the other hand, I am grateful for the progressive thinkers in our nation, especially our youth. They will be our saviors and I hate burdening them with that but it is how I feel.
Thank you for sharing your friends’ writings with me. I will look them up. In the meantime, Substack is a blessing to invite the greatest reporters, historians, and writers to their site. We get to engage with people of greatness, like Lucian, and actually sometimes get a response back. My joy is meeting people like you who share similar viewpoints. My days would be of despair if I didn’t have this wonderful outlet.