Swamp Rabbit and I were reading from a Washington Post story about local reactions to the slaying of nine students and a teacher by a gun-wielding student at a school in Santa Fe, TX:
“It’s not the guns. It’s the people. It’s a heart problem,” said Sarah Tassin, 61. “We need to bring God back into the schools.”
According to the Post reporter, the woman’s response was in keeping with how “most residents” of Santa Fe think about the killings. They think we need more God, not gun control. God likes guns, and he does not like people who question his motives or challenge his authority.
A typically lame story on NPR noted that the townsfolk were still up in arms, so to speak, about a two-decades old U.S. Supreme Court decision that stopped allowing student-led prayers at school events. It’s this sort of blasphemy that led to the carnage, get it? The fact that the area is awash in guns had nothing to do with it.
People’s thought processes don’t get that screwed up overnight. It takes many generations of worshipping a God too mysterious for big-city heathens to understand. A God who grew out of an especially nasty strain of Protestantism that stresses belief in predestination.
I tried to explain this to Swamp Rabbit. “This God of theirs isn’t real big on pity or mercy, and he never explains himself. If something bad happens to you, it’s your fault. If you offend him, you get cast into the dark.”
Swamp Rabbit scratched his mangy head and said, “Their God sounds a lot like Trump.”
“You got it,” I replied. “Most Bible thumpers can’t tell the one from the other.”
