The tragedy of Uvalde and the toxicity of politics

What a bizarre juxtaposition. On one hand, many rightfully demand protection for vulnerable school children from abhorrent violence. On the other, many wrongfully demand the removal of protection of vulnerable unborn children from abortion violence.

Stay with me.

The massacre at Robb Elementary School was an act of heinous evil and cowardice. Terrorists never choose targets that can fight back. I mourn with the families whose loved ones were violently killed in the massacre.

I’m all for trying to figure out how to do better. This needs more than a legislative or political solution. This evil is deeply spiritual. If stopping homicide were so easy, why hasn’t humankind already figured it out? If we just do X, Y, and Z it will solve it all. Right?

Our culture is drowning in violence. Hollywood profits from it. Our music industry glorifies it. Social media is steeped in it. Our local news outlets always seem to lead with it. It’s a plague in our society. As much as faith is both demonstrated and demonized in these situations, we must pray and act to effect change.

Even before the ordeal was ended, blame became the immediate response from predictable politicians and celebrities (who make a living from film violence) airing their uninformed “omniscience” to millions of followers. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proclaimed she knew the cause of the violence at Uvalde — white supremacy. Never mind the shooter was Hispanic, but okay.

She went on to accuse men of being murderous, particularly white men. It seems she’s not ever looked at FBI homicide statistics. But that would require considering the facts instead of celebrating her own fiction. It is true that men comprise 64% (or 10,335) of our nation’s 16,245 murders; women comprise 9% with the remaining labeled as “unknown.” But if she’s going to brand an entire gender of violence, the .008% of the U.S. male population (18 years and older) who commit these crimes annually don’t represent the 127 million men in this country. Of those 16,245 murders in the last reported year (2019), 40% of the offenders were black — those of my complexion. Twenty-nine percent were white. The only form of supremacy that is clear is sin’s (temporary) supremacy. No single color has a monopoly on the evil of homicide.

But it doesn’t matter when you’re trying to exploit a horrific tragedy to gain likes and shares.

AOC went on to accuse men of “toxic masculinity” and blame the favorite scapegoat of toxic feminism — “the Patriarchy.” There’s nothing masculine about massacring the innocent. In fact, many shooters came from broken homes where a loving father figure was absent, including Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos. He was living with his grandparents, and his parents were separated. His uninvolved father, in a recent interview, said that his son would “probably would have shot me too, because he would always say I didn’t love him.” According to the National Center for Fathering, 70% of adolescents in juvenile detention are from fatherless homes. Fatherless children are 11 times more likely to have violent behavior and 20 times more likely to be incarcerated.

Law enforcement is largely “patriarchal.” Eighty-seven percent of police officers are men who daily risk their lives. Many parents understandably feel like the Uvalde police department failed to protect and serve the way men are expected and designed to do in times of crisis and danger.

Masculinity did come, however, to the rescue in the form of an off-duty border patrol agent and several other federal officers. As reported by the New York Post, Jacob Albarado was at the barber shop and rushed out with the barber’s shotgun to save his wife and daughter. His wife, a teacher at the school, had texted him that there was a shooter in her school. He did what many good men do — risked his life to save others.

An ever-confused AOC, though, went on to lament on Instagram that there are “very few role models and examples” of good men. She never mentions Albarado, of course, because her post was just a misandrist tactic to dismiss men as predators. AOC ranted in confusion: “We need to evolve out of a world that is predatory toward women, gay, non-binary and trans people because traditional regressive patriarchal values really create men’s identity and uplift men’s identity in relation to other things, in relation to, like how women treat them, and how much stuff they have.”

What in the??? What is she even talking about? What does this Uvalde tragedy have to do with misogyny, homosexuality, transgenderism or materialism? Sadly, AOC is a thought leader to millions with thoughts that are, too often, incoherent.

Instead of making pathetic political points, we need to make principled points.

Masculinity isn’t to blame. AOC’s false narratives harm instead of heal. Lack of biblical masculinity (and the responsibilities that go with it) leads to some of our society’s biggest failures — especially violence in and out of the womb. It’s our culture’s rejection of God’s intentional design for us and the denial of the inherent equal worth with which He creates us that leads to so much death and destruction.

AOC kept mentioning “babies” in her hour-long screed and the need to protect them. Well, there’s one area of agreement I share with her. However, she is radically pro-abortion and celebrates the slaughter of nearly one million babies every year as “equality.” How do you demand protection of the vulnerable and decry predators when you support the most predatory and murderous industry on earth? The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, exploits fear and preys on the vulnerable. The 862,000 annual abortion deaths in the United States are completely avoidable. Those unborn lives and their mothers are just as precious and just as deserving to live free of violence as the rest of the human family.

My heart weeps for the children and adults in Uvalde who will never be able to fully live out their God-given purpose. I’m so tired of the status quo when it comes to any form of violence against the innocent. I’m filled with a righteous anger that the shooter will not have to pay for his horrific crimes this side of eternity. But he will face justice on the other side.

Originally published at the Radiance Foundation.