UPDATED: Alex Jones, his Lawyers, Treatment of Victims in American Courts, the Way of Absolute Candor, and if We’re Perfectly Frank We Know We Won’t Stop the Hate Mobs

The death of a child.

My 27-year old sister died around 9pm on September 6, 1983. She was pulling out of her health club’s parking lot when two teenagers, in separate cars, plowed into her. They were drag racing down a fairly busy road, lights off to avoid police interference. She probably didn’t see them. She never had a chance.

In the days, months and years that followed, I watched my parents deal with the worst thing that can happen to parents. I learned a lot.

I learned that Americans are strictly focused on the flavor of the month. Victims of drag racing weren’t considered interesting when the attention was on MADD and drunk drivers. The state’s attorney wasn’t particularly interested in the criminal trial for reckless homicide. The perps were sentenced to a couple of weekends in county jail, and the judge wished them well. My mom was particularly offended by the judge’s sympathetic comments to the defendants. At the time of the trial, the court had no procedure allowing my parents to give victim impact statements. That law hadn’t passed yet, but it would pass a few years later.

So, I have some small idea how the parents of the children brutally murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School may have felt, and maybe some small idea what it must have been like for them when gun fetishist Americans had only a few thoughts and prayers for them, compassionate Christian conservatism on the cheap. The shooting was not only not the flavor of the month, Americans actively didn’t and still don’t want to deal with guns. About 40% of Americans are actively okay with school shootings, so long as they can bring AR-15s to Walmart and Starbucks. The rest don’t want to think about it beyond the now almost perverse thoughts and prayers. Democrats prefer to fight on identity politics issues.

While I have some experience with grieving parents and American indifference, I have no idea what it must have been like for the parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary grade schoolers to have a guy like Alex Jones pound away at them, denying their kids’ existence and denying their kids’ deaths, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and inciting a mob to continually harass the parents. Not even the smug drag racers…