Get Up.

All through the afternoon I have been unable to begin anything. Not even to look at the to-do list, never mind to add or subtract anything from it.

I think this is a danger of coming-to-terms from afar with the sorrow of Uvalde, Texas this week. The usual go-round of voices limiting the potential causes of an event like this and prescribing what can and cannot be done in response have begun again – almost immediately in fact. One network played a series of videos of Ted Cruz (R-TX) from 2018 or before repeating almost the same words again and again in the aftermath of mass shootings, accusing his political opposites of ‘politicizing’ the event. Senator, with all due respect, freshen your words and your approach. This latest has occurred in the state you represent. These are your constituents and their deceased children and loved ones. Can you not muster one moment of actual human connection or one new idea as to how we might at least mitigate future disasters of this kind?

The beyond-Cruz danger is that good people are already demoralized in terms of hoping and being energized toward any effective response. I have spoken to friends today who are feeling that way. But we cannot – in honor of the dead, and the soon-to-be-dead as this will happen soon again in some measure – allow ourselves the luxury of becoming demoralized. We must instead become ‘moralized,’ filled with consistent and lasting moral outrage at what we have allowed ourselves to become.

This is Memorial Day weekend. We rightly pause to remember and honor those who over the centuries have given their lives in service to this nation. I daresay that it is a disservice to their sacred memory to believe for a moment that they bravely faced the firepower of wartime foes so that we might become a people who face each other and fire thousands of rounds again and again and again, killing ourselves and wounding the best of our principles and traditions.

So I rouse myself and you to stand and walk and work and converse to one goal: This Must Stop.