El Paso, Dayton... and on and on. We live in a fearful age where horrors are swallowed by new horrors, daily and sometimes hourly
Our social media feeds bring us outrage after outrage now to the point where it can be difficult and sometimes even dangerous to our mental health to try to keep up.
But I want to write today about one outrageous story in particular that looked like it was getting lost, to the point where even the president of the United States - who wanted to take credit and receive web clicks - started to fume about it.
It turned out that Donald Trump wanted what he always wants: to be the center of the news cycle, not to get lost in it.
To do this, he and his wife posed for an image that will come to define the wanton cruelty, racism and carelessness that have marked his lamentable car crash presidency, in a moment for the ages that will be among the first thing that historians of times not yet discerned turn to for insight into our horrifying age.
The moment was captured and recorded for us in a single photograph. Snap. Flash. There is was. Raw American history.
With the emphasis on raw.
Read more: Big Tech, not Trump, is the real threat to US democracy
You can't always tell when an image is becoming historic, but in this case, there was no question at all. In this unforgettable photo, the almost ecstatic looking 72-year-old Republican leader was shown giving a big thumbs up to the cameras as his grinning 49-year-old wife Melania held up a recently orphaned infant.
They looked like they were at the premiere of a prestigious Hollywood blockbuster. They looked like they had just won at roulette in Monte Carlo. They looked like they were having the time of their lives.
The Trump's El Paso Hospital visit has defined this administration and this era
But the photograph was taken in the El Paso hospital were the multiple dead and injured were taken after the latest American racist assault weapon massacre, this time in a local Walmart, leaving 22 dead.
Just think about that for a moment. Think of having your evening trip to the department store interrupted by the terrifying roar of an AK-47 assault rifle, with the shooter's magazines carrying 250 rounds of live ammunition, enough to go war with.
Any previous American president would have used his visit to solemnly console the wounded and comfort the wider nation. But Trump began his by lashing at out at the local politicians and calling them losers on Twitter. It was an ugly start to one of the ugliest days in American political history.
The photograph was political Kryptonite the moment it hit the wires, but it says something about the president and First Lady that they had completely failed to recognize just how callous and heartless it made them look.
The picture was first published to Twitter after an anxious staffer was yelled at by the furious president, who roared that they were not releasing it fast enough to make the news cycle, which meant he was not receiving enough public “credit.” It was all about him, in other words. He had no thought for the bereaved.
When the photo appeared on the First Lady's Twitter feed (going instantly viral) a Trump staffer added, in a craven attempt to sooth the distracted President's molten rage, that both Trump's had received a “rockstar reception” at the El Paso hospital. As though he were Mick Jagger kicking off the latest Stones concert, rather than a celebrity apprentice president who's only thought is always himself.
It wasn't true about the rockstar reception, of course. The eight survivors of the El Paso racist gun massacre wanted nothing to do with either Trump. Previously they had blasted Trump's incendiary and racist “invasion” and “infestation” language about Mexicans and Latinos, claiming that it had helped to inspire the shooter. Now they just wanted him to go away.
So with no one to meet in front of the press cameras Trump's staffers desperately went in search of the little infant called Paul, whose parents tragically died trying to protect him. Baby Paul couldn't protest becoming a photo opportunity, to wit an infant prop.
It had turned out that some of the relatives of Baby Paul's deceased parents Jordan and Andre Anchondo (aged 24 and 23 when they were killed) are conservative Republicans. They were amenable to a meeting with the president. But other family members strongly opposed the meeting and the family is now split over the decision to put the unwitting infant before the world's cameras.
What got lost is what gets lost in every assault weapons ban debate here, humanity. Paul is a person, not a prop. He will grow up without his parents now because another racist white man with a high powered rifle killed his parents for being what he thought of as an invasive infestation.
It's no small thing to lose both your parents. To have your birthdays and holidays and glowing report cards become measures of your own loss.
I keep thinking about all the Paul's out there who are being left behind by the media, the government, the president and history as the circus moves on and the next outrage hypnotizes us.
He doesn't know how bad he has it yet, but he will learn, year by year and day by day. He will learn too of the part that Trump played in his life by relentlessly targeting his own community, over and over for years on end, with language intended to mark and dehumanize them (and as it turns out, inspire racists).
Then he will look at the image that defined his life and the Trump presidency, locked together in a moment he didn't ask for, for all time.
I will pray for Paul. I will pray for his future. Until we vote out this lamentable presidency I will pray for us all.
Read more: A tale of two cockatiels, Boris and Donald
Comments