Nothing we can do to prevent this, says Congressman from only country in the world where things like this happen regularly

“We’re not gonna fix it.” This is what Tennessee Republican Representative Tim Burchett said Monday in the aftermath of three children and three adults being shot dead at a school in Nashville, Tennessee, and the remainder of the school’s some 200 students, staff, and families, being left traumatized for the rest of their lives.

“Three precious little kids lost their lives, and I believe three adults, I believe, and the shooter of course, lost their life too. So, it’s a horrible, horrible situation. And, we’re not gonna fix it,” Burchett told reporters Monday, in an incredibly bold-faced assertion about what a member of our government believes government is even for: nothing.

“Criminals are gonna be criminals,” Burchett continued, making the incredibly cynical claim that people are immovable, unchangeable beings. “And my daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, ‘Buddy,’ he said, ‘if somebody wants to take you out, and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it,’” seemingly comparing mass shooters to foot soldiers in the world’s deadliest war. . . .

“I think you got to change people’s hearts. You know, as a Christian, as we talk about in the church, and I’ve said this many times, I think we really need a revival in this country,” he continued, as if his version of Christianity is the answer to the school shooting in his state or the 128 other mass shootings that took place before it.

It’s always a tricky business to sort out the stupidity from the mendacity with these people, but my assumption is that you’ve got to have generous helpings of both to make the whole thing go.

Critical elements include:

(1) A profoundly fatalistic theodicy (“it’s God’s will that nine-year-olds be slaughtered by assault weapons, and who are we to question that?” Thanks Jean Calvin, you fanatical schmuck).

(2) A profoundly incurious attitude towards the rest of the developed world, where children and teenagers — and adults for that matter — being shot to death are extraordinarily rare events. How do they pull that off? Nobody knows, because (a) they don’t have freedom over there; and (b) God works in mysterious ways, or something.

(3) Profoundly bivalent thinking, whereby if you can’t eliminate a problem altogether there’s no point in trying to ameliorate it because . . . I don’t really know why, but see (1) and (2) I guess.

(4) Profoundly stupid magical thinking, whereby structural social problems should be addressed via exhorting people to have a change of heart, preferably by converting to whatever precise sect of Christianity aka “Christianity,” the speaker putatively professes, although 72% of these people couldn’t tell you the difference between the Book of Revelations and The Late Great Planet Earth.

It’s all profoundly depressing.

. . . also too: