Switched to Overload

On January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer opened fire on the Grover Cleveland Elementary School across the street from her house, killing the principal and a custodian, and wounding eight children and a police officer.

Spencer barricaded herself in the house and when a reporter from the San Diego Union Tribune reached her by phone, the teenager said she shot up the school because "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."

The line inspired Bob Geldof, leader singer of the Boomtown Rates, to write “I Don’t Like Mondays,” which was the number one song in 1979 in the U.K. for four weeks.

That incident and those words came back to me last week after a mass shooting in the Atlanta area killed eight people, including six Asian women.

A police spokesman told reporters at a press conference that the alleged shooter had claimed the shootings were not racially motivated and that “he was having a bad day.”

A bad day? Really? We’ve all had plenty of bad days, but how many of us start gunning down innocent people? I have to wonder if this fellow would have been so flip if eight cops had been shot.

The murders—and those idiotic comments—sparked outrage, particularly in the Asian-American community, which has suffered through a shocking spike in racist attacks linked to the pandemic.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned nearly a year ago of a worldwide problem that the “pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering” toward Asian people.

Unfortunately, in America we were saddled with Donald Trump, the one-term president and Russian sock puppet who made racism great again.

Obviously, people are responsible for their own actions, but corporations like to talk about “tone at the top” in determining how the rank-and-file will behave.

'What Reason Do You Need to Die?'

So, when you have the leader of the most powerful nation on earth using stupid, bigoted terms like the “China virus” or “Kung Flu” to his jeering mobs of white supremist knucklewalkers you can hardly be surprised at the ensuing violence.

The racism also serves as camouflage for Trump’s own stunning incompetence and outright lying in his response to the pandemic.

The Atlanta incident was arguably the first headline-grabbing mass shooting that America has had in a long time, as Covid-19 has kept potential victims away from theaters, shopping malls, churches, schools and other places where gun-toting psychotics like to go to unleash their demons.

However, the lack of coverage is a bit misleading.

Mass shootings actually jumped nearly 50% during the plague year 2020, with the most dramatic increases in states with cities with large African-American and Latino populations. There was also a surge in gun sales.

Of course, the Atlanta shootings will change nothing. Americans will still buy guns, and angry, delusional people will emerge from their spider holes and claim more innocent victims.

And gutless politicans will blather on about freedom, and the Second Amendment and the founding fathers while the bodies pile higher and higher.

On January 17, 1989, almost ten years after the events at San Diego's Grover Cleveland Elementary, there was another shooting at a school named Grover Cleveland Elementary, this one in Stockton, California.

Five students were killed and thirty were injured. The victims were predominantly Southeast Asian refugees.

The gunman, Patrick Purdy, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head as first responders arrived.

I guess he was having a bad day.