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"There is nothing more uncivilized than the political establishment's inurement to the constancy of mass shootings in the United States," reads a recent opinion on The New York Times, criticizing U.S. politicians' call for "civility" in the face of protests against prevalent gun violence.
"When politicians talk about civility and public discourse, what they're really saying is that they would prefer for people to remain silent in the face of injustice. They want marginalized people to accept that the conditions of oppression are unalterable facts of life," said contributing writer Roxane Gay in her last week's article "Don't Talk to Me About 'Civility.' On Tuesday Morning Those Children Were Alive."
An 18-year-old man opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde city in the U.S. state of Texas on May 24, leaving at least 21 people dead, including 19 children.
"Time and again we are told, both implicitly and explicitly, that all we can do is endure this constancy of violence," the author said. "And if we dare to protest, if we dare to express our rage, if we dare to say enough, we are lectured about the importance of civility."
However, the history of the United States, "founded on stolen land, built with the labor of stolen lives," has seen much incivility, she said. "The document that governs our lives effectively denied more than half of the population the right to vote. It counted only three-fifths of the enslaved population when determining representation."
The United States has seen at least 214 mass shootings so far this year, according to an online database that keeps a record of the country's gun violence incidents.
More than 17,000 people have died in gun-related episodes across the United States over the past five months, including approximately 653 children and teenagers.
"The United States has become ungovernable not because of political differences or protest or a lack of civility but because this is a country unwilling to protect and care for its citizens – its women, its racial minorities and especially its children," Gay said.
Texas's massacre is the deadliest American school shooting since the rampage in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. Before the Uvalde massacre, there were already 26 school shootings resulting in injury or death in the country this year, according to Education Week, which tracks shootings at schools.
The latest gun violence and tragic mass shootings in the United States have revealed the political cowardice of a large portion of the country's elected leadership, said an article published on The New Yorker's website on Sunday.
In a single 10-day stretch in May, 44 people were murdered in mass shootings across the United States – "a carnival of violence that confirmed, among other things, the political cowardice of a large portion of our elected leadership, the thin pretense of our moral credibility, and the sham of public displays of sympathy that translate into no actual changes in our laws, our culture, or our murderous propensities," said the article.
In addition to the mass shooting in Texas, the latest tragedies in the U.S. also included a mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo in New York that killed 10 people.
"The circumstances that allow for the mass murder of children are inherently political," said the article.
(CGTN)
