#EnoughIsEnough is trending… again… just as America attempts to come to terms with a body count that might yet eclipse the last body count it came to terms with.
It’s difficult, at times like these, not to descend into cliché. Life increasingly feels like it is lived in shorthand. Even if the details change, the fundamentals stay the same. This time it is elementary school children shot dead in their classroom alongside their teachers. The body count stands at 21, though from the public’s point of view there is a distinct lack of bodies. Americans are again protected from the true horrors of an atrocity because, of course, civilised nations don’t show the victims except via the usual wholesome pictures taken in more innocent times: children proudly showing off new school uniforms, grinning at sports events, and relaxing in their family homes. America doesn’t get to see small bodies lying on large mortuary slabs. Nor does it see the grievous wounds caused by hollow-point bullets or any of the other by-products of a nation fetishistic about high-powered guns. It instead gets talking heads saying what they always say in the aftermath of every spree shooting.
