Ghost Stories - Un-Normalizing Mass Shootings

Cognitive warfare and mass shootings are the same war

I never miss Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s weekly Lucid meetings. The community she has created - like the community we are building here - is one where we can share our fears about the attacks on our democracy, gain insight into the who and why, and also learn productive ways we can prevent the descent into an authoritarian abyss.

So on that Friday morning last year when my daughter was graduating from Wellesley, after I witnessed the spectacular moment where she accepted her summa cum laude honors and posed with her diploma, I plugged in to Lucid.

I needed to steady my nerves with Ruth’s calm voice and also help provide security from troll raids. No better way to lower anxiety than being of service. The reason my anxiety was spiking is because the Uvalde shooting had just occurred three days earlier, and as I watched all these brilliant young women graduate I kept nervously scanning the crowd.

I had no way to protect them from a radicalized mindf**ked soul with an AR-15.

We have a mass radicalization problem in America, where we have more guns than we do people, and I wanted to protect these beautiful girls who are going to change the world, and I knew my willful heart could not stop a barrage of bullets.

I reflected on another Wellesley graduate - Hillary Rodham Clinton - who should have been the rightful 45th President of the United States of America, but who was virtually assassinated by Vladimir Fucking Putin in a crime scene that has not gone cold, much to the dismay of Fifth Column accessories trying to bury the recent past.

So grounded by Ruth, I tweeted some words…