Before you read any further a courtesy is extended – if you believe that the right to own any kind of gun more important than the right to live, you should probably stop right now as this column is not an effort to try to convince anyone when it comes to the Second Amendment.

As you are reading this, the grieving families of the 19 children and two adults killed in Texas are trying to make sense of a universe that is now turned upside down and inside out in an unimaginable vortex of grief and pain.

And as you are reading this there are people like Texas Senator Ted Cruz who actually said that the best public policy strategy in the wake of this schoolhouse massacre would be to have more armed guards in the schoolhouse. After all, what could possibly go wrong with having even more guns in schoolhouses across this blood-soaked nation?

It should be quite clear by now that this nation is on a course that can only be described as suicidal. There is literally no other nation in the world which has the frequency of random murders by gun. These are murders with no particular ideological or religious motive because, in a bizarre and twisted way those killing make some kind of sense as opposed to someone walking into a church or a school or a synagogue or a supermarket killing anyone and everyone with no apparent reason.

There has been a lot written and said about so-called American exceptionalism but the uncomfortable truth is that among the league of developed nations the United States is first in deaths by gun violence, first in private gun ownership, first in maternal death rates, first in incarceration rates and last in national health care policy. The uncomfortable truth is that too many Americans are okay with that as long as certain preconditions are met.

Preconditions like white privilege, preconditions like a predatory economic system that rewards greed and punishes anyone who does not grasp and grab for a living. Preconditions like living in a country with a Constitution that institutionalized minority rule in the very first draft of the document – and minority rule works in the country to this very day, if you are a part of the white privileged minority.

It should also be known that those preconditions also include making some people without privilege feel good about themselves because of belief in the false idols of gun ownership, gender bias and gender dominance and a sad version of religious freedom that debases the spiritual beliefs and freedoms of others.

The massacre in Uvalde will be repeated as sure there will be unprecedented wildfires in the American forest and as sure as we will continue to see once in a century weather storms for the rest of our lives.

And I am sure that my seer and guide to the future, Negrodamus, will certainly predict that, by this time next week all of the hollow thoughts and prayers for the victims of this latest massacre will dissipate like the music of that mythical band going over the hill.

And then the gun lobby addicts posing as senators and representatives, men and women who have already sold their soul to the merchants of death, will look to make the American people believe that the right to own a machine gun is more important than the right of a ten-year-old little girl or little boy to dream and see their dreams come true.

America is exceptional indeed.

But not in a good way.