LyndaGood

And the numbness spreads. If three dead and fourteen injured can mirror the language of an “illegal war,” that says less about geopolitics and more about what we’ve come to tolerate.

Maybe the most chilling part isn’t the comparison.

It’s that it works.

We’ve blurred the lines between battlefield and hometown. We argue about legality overseas while normalizing lethality at home. We debate war powers in Congress, but accept that a Saturday night out might end in a triage tent. Different causes, same body count. Different rhetoric, same funerals.

That’s the part that hits hardest, isn’t it?

The fact that you had to pause and think, “Wait… which tragedy are we talking about?” Foreign bombs or domestic bullets? War zone or nightlife district?

When the scale of loss feels interchangeable, something is deeply broken.

And maybe the saddest part isn’t that this happened on 6th Street.

It’s that somewhere, in another city tonight, someone is already writing the next headline.

Not sick enough to demand something different.
Not sick enough to treat it as abnormal.
Not sick enough to refuse to normalize it.

So it becomes background noise sirens folded into city nightlife, another cautionary tale filed under “America.”

The shock has been sanded down by repetition. The outrage expires before the next news cycle. Thoughts and prayers have become the punctuation mark at the end of an exhausted sentence no one believes will change anything.

Does anyone get sick of these headlines?

Yes. But not sick enough.

We compare body counts like grim statistics have Yelp reviews. “At least it wasn’t worse.” “Could’ve been more.” “Only three?” Only.

That word should haunt us.

There was a time when a mass shooting would stop the country cold. Now it barely interrupts brunch.

We read it the way we check the weather. Three dead? Fourteen injured? That’s awful. Scroll. Was the suspect caught? Yes. Okay. Scroll. What’s for dinner?

We’ve become connoisseurs of tragedy

And the headline lands with a dull thud.

Not because it isn’t horrific. It is. Three families just had their entire futures ripped apart. Fourteen others are living in the blur of hospital lights and phone calls that start with, “They’re in surgery.” It’s catastrophic.

But it’s also… familiar.

3 dead, 14 hospitalized in 6th Street mass shooting, Austin EMS chief says Three people are dead, including a shooting suspect, and 14 were hospitalized after a mass shooting in downtown Austin, according to local officials who held a news conference early Sunday morning.

Three dead. Fourteen injured. Another sunrise, another push notification.

This time it’s Austin. Specifically 6th Street the neon spine of the city, where people go to celebrate birthdays, bad decisions, promotions, breakups, and being young on a Saturday night. Now it’s a crime scene.

"HOW AMAZING OF DONALD TRUMP TO SAY, YOU KNOW, THAT OFTEN HAPPENS IN WAR. AND THAT'S A COST HE'S WILLING TO TAKE. GREAT FOR HIM. IT'S NOT HIS KIDS. IT'S NOT HIS FAMILY. IT'S NOT HIS BILLIONAIRE DONORS WHO ARE HAVING TO GO OFF AND DO IT." FORMER ARMY RANGER REP.JASON CROW

@DCcartoonist To prevent bee stings, I'm preemptively striking this beehive Smart

NicKANDERSON 92-26-26 THE CONTRARIAN Launch airstrikes against Iran! We can't. Kash Patel is using the aircraft.

JD Vance * @JDVance Twenty years ago we invaded Iraq. The war killed many innocent Iraqis and Americans. It destroyed the oldest Christian populations in the world. It cost over $1 trillion, and turned Iraq into a satellite of Iran. It was an unforced disaster, and I pray that we learn its lessons 7:50 PM, 3/19/23

The global economy still runs on oil, and a narrow strip of water half a world away can shake it to its core.

We like to believe we left the 1970s behind. But if Hormuz closes and $100 oil becomes the floor, not the ceiling, we may rediscover just how fragile modern prosperity really is.

Add $5 $6 gas and rising food prices, and the social temperature rises fast.

Some will argue markets would stabilize quickly. That alternative routes and spare capacity would cushion the blow. Maybe. But “prolonged” is the operative word. A few weeks is volatility. Months is structural damage.

Energy shocks do more than empty wallets. They test political systems. In the 1970s, economic pain reshaped elections, empowered populist movements, and eroded trust in institutions. Today’s political climate is already combustible.

And geopolitically, the stakes are higher. A closure wouldn’t just be an economic event; it would be an act of war in slow motion. Insurance rates on tankers would skyrocket. Naval escorts would increase. One miscalculation one missile, one seized ship could widen the conflict overnight.

But global markets are deeply interconnected. Even if American supply remains steady, prices are set globally. If Asia and Europe scramble for barrels diverted from the Gulf, the ripple hits U.S. consumers anyway.

Central banks would face an impossible choice: raise rates to fight inflation & risk recession, or ease up and let prices run hot

The dangerous part? The world is less prepared than we think

Yes,the United States produces more oil domestically than it did in the 1970s.Yes, strategic reserves exist

Oil at $100 a barrel doesn’t just hurt drivers. It seeps into everything: groceries transported by diesel trucks, airline tickets, heating bills, plastics, fertilizers. It raises costs for businesses already squeezed by higher interest rates and global instability.

Stagflation that toxic mix of high prices and weak growth became a household word. It wasn’t just an energy crisis; it was a psychological one. Confidence collapsed.

A prolonged Hormuz closure could ignite a similar spiral.

They would panic first and ask questions later.

And panic is expensive.

We have seen this movie before. In 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, the Arab oil embargo sent shockwaves through the United States and Europe. Gas lines stretched for blocks. Inflation exploded. The economy stalled.

Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. If Iran were to block or seriously disrupt it amid escalating tensions with the United States under Trump, markets wouldn’t wait for tankers to pile up.

$100 oil? Prolonged Hormuz closure could spark a 1970s-style energy shock Energy analysts are bracing for a possible oil supply shock after U.S. strikes on Iran reignited fears of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.

When oil traders start whispering “$100,” it isn’t just about gas prices ticking up a few cents. It’s about the Strait of Hormuz that narrow artery of the global economy and what happens if it closes.

Are we prepared to say we did everything we could for those children, or will history judge us as a nation that heard children struggling to breathe on emergency calls and chose bureaucracy over compassion?

Because listening is not enough action is long overdue.

It is a choice to defend a system rather than reform it, even when the evidence echoing through calm but desperate 911 call logs shows a pattern of harm.

At some point, a society that claims to value human dignity has to confront its own contradictions.

These are real, preventable harms happening under our government’s watch.

This is a choice. It is a policy choice to detain children in places ill equipped for basic pediatric care. It is a choice to ramp up immigration enforcement without the infrastructure to ensure humane treatment.

We scroll past the details: a 22 month old so ill first responders wanted to transport him by helicopter, only to be thwarted by weather; children with oxygen saturations so low they risk permanent damage. These are not abstract policy debates.

Third, we have willfully dulled our collective conscience. Images and stories of suffering children once galvanized public outrage think back to family separations and border crises but this new wave of distress barely registers in the national conversation beyond fleeting headlines.