Texas school shooting is America’s latest exercise in 'child sacrifice,' says WaPo columnist
Washington Post column claims the Texas school shooting is part of America's 'ritual slaughter' of children.
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Crime scene tape surrounds Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the site of the latest deadly school shooting. (AP/Jae C. Hong)
Washington Post columnist Alyssa Rosenberg claimed on Tuesday this week's horrific Texas elementary school shooting confirms that America commits "human sacrifice" on par with the ancient Central Americans and ancient Greeks.
Actually, as she wrote, our human sacrifice is worse.
The piece opened with the comparison, declaring, "On the surface, contemporary America seems very distant from the world of Greek tragedy or the Toltec capital of Tula in 950 A.D. But our societies have something in common. We all practice child sacrifice."
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Rosenberg continued, "The latest young victims of the ritual slaughter our culture permits are the 19 children shot to death inside their school in Uvalde, Tex., on Tuesday."
AFTER TEXAS SCHOOL SHOOTING, TEACHERS WEIGH IN ON HOW TO STOP THE VIOLENCE
Stephanie and Michael Chavez of San Antonio pay their respects at a makeshift memorial outside Robb Elementary School, the site of a mass shooting, in Uvalde, Texas, U.S., May 25, 2022. REUTERS/Nuri Vallbona (REUTERS/Nuri Vallbona)
Rosenberg then pushed for gun control, explaining that the shooting in Texas just added to the body count of America’s unique child sacrifice ritual involving guns we refuse to regulate.
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"The massacre brings the total number of children killed in school shootings since the 1999 Columbine attack to 185. That figure doesn’t account for all the other settings in which children have been the victims of mass gun violence," she wrote.
Rosenberg added, "Given the lack of action after these spasms of butchery, there is only one possible conclusion: We are willing to tolerate the murder of children. We accept events that will gravely wound the bodies and psyches of many others."
She eventually explained that we accept these things for the sake of our guns. "But in exchange for what?" she asked. "For what Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has called ‘the fundamental, God-given right each and every one of us has to defend our lives, to defend our homes, to defend our children, to defend our family’?"
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Republican Gov. Greg Abbott addresses the Uvalde school shooting. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
Rosenberg followed that with her wildest claim: "At least in other stories and societies, the people who murdered children and the people who sanctioned those murders believed they were giving their children to the gods in return for something vital."
She mentioned some of the most infamous and bloodthirsty practitioners of human sacrifice in history. "Historians of the period believe that Minoans may have practiced human sacrifice in response to natural catastrophes. Archaeologists believe that Toltec and Aztec children were sacrificed to the rain god Tlaloc to ensure the success of the harvest," Rosenberg wrote.
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The author then compared America’s "child sacrifice" to that found in the Greek play "Iphigenia at Aulis," where the Greek leader Agamemnon is advised to offer his daughter as a sacrifice so that the wind will push his ships back to Greece from Troy.
"Agamemnon sends for Iphigenia under false pretenses — then balks at the enormity of what he’s been asked to do. But just when it seems he has recovered his moral sense, he changes his mind, because he does not want to appear weak to the troops he commands," Rosenberg wrote and compared his actions to GOP lawmakers who refuse to act.
UVALDE, TX - MAY 24: Members of the community gather at the City of Uvalde Town Square for a prayer vigil in the wake of a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas. According to reports, 19 students and 2 adults were killed before the gunman was fatally shot by law enforcement. (Photo by Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images)
"Agamemnon’s cowardice should be both ghastly and recognizable to anyone familiar with the contemporary offerings of ‘thoughts and prayers’ instead of legislation, of sympathy but not of courage," she wrote.
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The author then took one more cheap shot at American society. She referenced how Agamemnon’s wife was "horrified by the prospect of ‘buying what we most detest with what we hold most dear’" in terms of the sacrifice of their daughter. Rosenberg claimed, "so is every school shooting a sickening reminder of the choice American society makes over and over again."
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She made one clarification, however, "Clytemnestra describes children as ‘what we hold most dear.’ But for all American society says about children being valuable — Food and Drug Administration chief Robert M. Califf has called babies ‘our dearest and most precious people’— we don’t act like it."