You know, expressions of shock and grief and anger don’t work.

Attempts to discuss the easy availability of guns don’t work.

So let us try another tack.

Let us try polite applause.

Yeah, let’s fucking do that.

You see, I’m old enough to remember when mass shootings involving no more than five or six or seven victims left us horrified and beside ourselves.

Sure, there were occasional exceptions, like Whitman and Huberty, but they were outliers; rare events, like perfect bowling scores.

Numbers that exceeded a dozen were so unheard-of, comparatively, that we were still discussing them, with awe, years later.

But as in so many human endeavors, the spirit of competition kicked in, and the art advanced, and the numbers climbed higher than was once dreamed possible.

In the same sense that climbing Everest was once thought impossible and people are now doing it in caravans like theme park tourists trying to get into Pirates of the Caribbean, it has become routine; easy enough, for anybody willing to make the effort.

These days, a mass shooting of five people or less doesn’t even make the national news. Really. Investigate just how many mass shootings there were last year. They were almost daily. Only the big ones got our concerted attention.

Ten people? Why, that’s bad, but you almost suspect that the son of a bitch wasn’t trying. We can’t cover this without more of a hook.

Twenty? Hardly unprecedented. Please give us a detail that makes it worse. A kindergarten? Wow! Yes! Say it was a kindergarten! Extra points if the kids were cute.

Fifty dead? Two hundred casualties in toto?

And it wasn’t even a muslim? Really? A white guy? Reclaiming pride of place for the white Christians?

USA! USA! USA!

Since we won’t bloody do something to stop this, and indeed since it’s only a matter of time before truthers start telling us it never happened and moralists start saying it was Vegas anyway, let us take the tack of praising this as a manifestation of our nation’s ingenuity and drive to excel at something, anything, even at this.

Wow! Nobody ever thought of hitting a country musical festival in Vegas before! What genius!

Fifty! Send up the flags! Unfurl the streamers!

And start laying odds that this record will be smashed within the year!

Tags: Assholes, Politics | Category Commentary, Politics