The first tweet is a checklist of supposedly suspicious behaviors from the Sandy Hook Promise website. The tweet makes the point for me, but to reiterate, equating a number of extremely normal and common human traits as indicative of a potential school shooter is extremely bad and potentially damaging to those children! Sandy Hook Promise is a charity founded in the wake of the eponymous massacre that describes itself as "moderate, above-the-politics organization that supports sensible program and policy solutions that address the “human side” of gun violence by preventing individuals from ever getting to the point of picking up a firearm to hurt themselves or others." And indeed, if you search their website, you'll see almost nothing about actual gun control. The people behind Sandy Hook Promise may mean well, but rather than fight for the most obvious, effective, and popular method of reducing gun violence, they gave up.
The second tweet is actually a good one. It links to an article by New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo where he makes a pretty basic (and correct) argument concerning President Obama's insufficient response to the financial crisis. The problem was the replies, which showed almost universal deference to and defense of Obama. In particular, the one from the screenshot above is a former Obama staffer literally arguing that better things aren't possible, a sentiment which seems to be representative of that administration's thoughts on the matter. Obama and his team may have meant well, but rather than user their power to make the case for a larger stimulus or a fundamental restructuring of the financial sector, they gave up.
The third tweet is a member of Virginia's national championship basketball team defending his former coach against an article from Deadspin. The article itself is an incisive critique of the recent news that Tony Bennett declined a pay raise and donated money to start a "career development fund" for former players. These actions may be good in a vacuum, but they don't change the fact that Bennett profits handsomely off his players' labor while they receive pittances. Furthermore, the way these items were promoted smacks of Bennett laundering his image with a relatively small investment. Bennett may mean well, but rather than advocate for a reality where players receive their fair share of the revenue they produce, he gave up.
To be clear, none of these parties are the root cause of these underlying problems. Barack Obama is not the main reason we have rampant inequality, Tony Bennett is not the reason that college players are not paid for their labor, and Sandy Hook Promise is most certainly not the reason we have gun violence in schools. These issues are all long-entrenched in American society and there are numerous structural barriers preventing any one person from changing everything for the better.
Furthermore, I have no idea what lies in these people's hearts. It's possible (and maybe even likely) that they don't actually support the same solutions I support. But what is clear is that Sandy Hook Promise cares about preventing violence in schools, Obama and his team care about the people of this country, and Tony Bennett cares about his players. Given that, why wouldn't they support the most comprehensive and meaningful solutions to these problems?
The answer to this question, at least in part, appears to be a shared sense of resignation. The last 40+ years of American politics and life has seemingly led to a broken and defeated populace. This sentiment is right there in the text of Dan Pfeiffer's tweet, but even when this feeling isn't made explicit it still seems to permeate every discussion of how we overcome our problems. In spite of all this, I still think a better world is possible. I don't necessarily know how we'll get there, but maybe the first step is simply not to accept defeat.
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