Hispanic Fanatic

I live in California, where Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday, and you can’t walk a mile without glimpsing a sign of the region’s strong Latino history and culture.

But most states are not California. 

For example, I grew up in Wisconsin, and at the time, there were so few Hispanics around that my family supplied most of the Latino culture, and whatever I did on the weekend instantly became the state’s Latino history (hey, at least it felt that way).

The point is that despite the many contributions that Hispanics have made to America, and our current status as the largest ethnic minority in the nation, running into public displays of our heritage is about as common as meeting a bilingual Trump supporter who listens to NPR.

In fact, a report last year by the University of California, Los Angeles “concluded that not enough is being done to recognize and include Hispanic contributions, with the report going as far as labeling it ‘a pattern of willful neglect’ toward the Latino population in the United States.”

Hopefully, that is about to change. You see, this month, a group of bipartisan legislators reintroduced a bill in Congress to create a national Latino museum in Washington, D.C.

The building would be located near Smithsonian museums devoted to the history of African Americans and Native Americans. This, of course, would give us a tightly packed trifecta of museums about ethnic groups that this country has just loved, loved, loved nonstop.

In any case, legislation to create a national Latino museum has been introduced in the past, but the bills have died in Congress. One congressman has said that the proposal “is not a partisan issue, and it shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” which would be cute in its naivety if it weren’t so sad. 

Because the truth is that everything is partisan in Trump’s government. These are the same people who see glaciers melting as a partisan issue.

So will we live long enough to see a national Latino museum? Well, America’s attitude toward Hispanic history has not been encouraging thus far.

Many historians say that the few sites marking Latino history are often “shabby, largely unknown and at risk of disappearing.”

In addition, many of the historical sites dedicated to Hispanic influence “usually center around the Spanish exploration era, colonial times and Old West settlement periods” because these are regarded as “safe” sites that downplay the racism and segregation Latinos had to overcome.

Yeah — who wants to learn about all that icky racism and segregation? Talk about a buzzkill.

But if you despair that there may never be a national museum dedicated to the history of Latinos in this country, cheer up.

Because you can always road trip to the National Mustard Museum. It’s right there in my home state of Wisconsin.

Wait… I can’t tell if you’re laughing or crying.

Last week, I wrote about wealth inequality in this country, which has reached levels not seen since just before the Great Depression and which is largely unique to America among industrialized nations.

Basically, over the last few decades, the “richest Americans have reaped a disproportional amount of economic growth while worker wages have failed to keep pace.” And for some unknown, truly bizarre reason, millions of working-class Americans keep voting for people who only make this situation worse.

Now, at the risk of generating class warfare, let me point out that this situation is — in the words of leading economists — completely fucked up.

We simply cannot go on shoveling money to rich people, hoping that they will magically invest in dying factory towns and crumbling inner cities, when all they do, in actuality, is horde more shit for themselves.

Disbelieve me at your own peril, because there are historical precedents for powerful nations that adopted hero-worship of the rich, and it did not turn out well for them.

For an example close to my heart, let’s take a look at the Maya. Hundreds of years ago, their mighty empire covered parts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and my family’s homeland of El Salvador. Hey, there is at least a slight chance that I am descended from Mayan royalty.

Yes, let’s go with that idea.

In any case, between about 300 and 900 A.D., “the Maya were responsible for a number of remarkable scientific achievements— in astronomy, agriculture, engineering, and communications.” These were the people who were “producing rubber products about 3,000 years” before Americans figured out how to do it.

So yeah, they were the powerhouse of the era — the most advanced civilization on Earth at the time.

And then they were gone — just like that. 

The Mayan empire “went from bustling cities to abandoned ruins over the course of roughly a hundred years,” creating “one of ancient history’s most intriguing mysteries: Why did the Maya, a remarkably sophisticated civilization made up of more than 19 million people, suddenly collapse?”

Well, historians have pinpointed two chief reasons for the Mayan’s abrupt demise.

The first is — you guessed it — the “increasingly parasitic role of the elite” in rotting the empire from the inside out. In essence, the richest Mayans were obsessed with building wealth, and their insatiable appetites “forced peasants and craftsmen into making a critical choice, perhaps necessary to escape starvation,” which was to abandon their farms and towns.

As a result, the rich people weren’t rich for much longer, because everybody who had knocked themselves out to serve the wealthy finally said, “To hell with this,” and took off, causing the cities to crumble.

Does this setup sound remotely familiar to anybody who has spent time in Manhattan or San Francisco — places that are so far beyond the means of the middle class that they have become enclaves of pure wealth? And all while the homeless population has surged, and working-class wages have stagnated?

Do you really have to think about the answer?

By the way, the other chief reason for the Mayan empire’s implosion is climate change.Even though “the Maya were no fools” in that they “knew their environment and how to survive within it,” they still “continued deforesting at a rapid pace, until the local environment was unable to sustain their society.”

Well, it’s a good thing nobody in a position of power today denies the severity of climate change— nope.

Historians point out that these twin factors caused the Mayan civilization to shatter, and that “the results are the ornate ruins that stretch across” Latin America today.

So let’s ask ourselves the following: Are these among the last ornate ruins that this hemisphere will see, or will another mighty civilization soon destroy itself?

Humans are social animals. Yes, even you sullen loners, shy introverts, and lone-wolf bad boys out there — deep down, all of you need to connect with other people, at least on occasion.

One aspect of our social nature is that we take cues from one another. Although we want to believe that we think for ourselves 100 percent of the time, and are not subject either to the overt influences or the subtle hints of our peers, the truth is that we are constantly looking at, listening to, and measuring ourselves against others. Deny it all you want — science backs upthe idea.

By the way, if you bend too easilyto the will of others, you may end up a Nazi, and if you don’t bend at all, you may end up a sociopathic killer.

So once again, moderation is key.

However, it’s not just basic concepts such as personal space, small talk, and sarcasm that we learn from our fellow humans. We also learn how to be aggressive.

For proof of this, let’s look at the famous Bobo experimentsof the 1960s, which were held at Stanford University.

In addition to having the most adorable name ever for a psychological study, the Bobo experiments showed that children learn through the observation of adult behavior. 

The study used inflatable plastic toys called Bobo dolls, which are basically large cartoon clowns bottom-weighted so that they return to an upright position when knocked down. 

You’ve probably seen one, or at the very least, had a terrifying nightmare involving them.

The researchers divided preschoolers into one group that observed aggressive adult behavior, another group that saw nonaggressive adult behavior, and a third group that didn’t watch any adult behavior.

The kids in the first group saw adults punch, kick, and generally pummel the Bobo dolls. And you guessed it —  children in that group later modeled the adults’ behavior by attacking the doll in the same fashion.

In sum, if kids saw a grownup kick the shit out of the Bobo doll, they were more likely to be violent too.

The researchers said that the kids had, more or less, gotten permission to be aggressive little jerks because they saw an authority figure do it first.

OK, that’s all very interesting, you say. But certainly it’s not the case that grownup, voting American citizens “get permission” from authority figures to, for example, be racist — right?

Ahem.

Well, it may intrigue you to know that researchers have “found empirical evidencethat Trump’s rhetoric has indeed lead whites to express more bigoted views of ‘the other.’”

After analyzing white people’s attitudes toward race and individuals of different ethnicities, researchers found that since Trump began his campaign in 2016, many white Americans have expressed more bigoted views about Latinos, blacks, and other groups, and as a bonus, they are more comfortable saying these statements out loud.

The researchers conclude that “Trump is giving respondents tacit permissionto be bigots.”

You see, Americans heard a major party nominee for president begin his campaign by slurring Mexicans, and as a result, years later, we discover that “Trump’s language [about Mexicans] doesn’t just embolden people to say more negative and more offensive things about the group he’s talking about, but it actually leads them to say more offensive thingsabout all groups.” 

For these Americans, Trump has been an authority figure punching Bobo dolls. They think that if the president “is using this language, then it must be acceptablefor me.”

They have, psychologically speaking, been given permission to be racist.

By the way, the original Bobo study found that the effects of modeling violent behavior lingered in children for months after witnessing aggressive actions. The researchers believed that once people have deemed a behavior to be acceptable, it is difficult for them to regain their previous mindset. So the kids had their personality altered in the long term.

Feel free to draw your own analogies to that.

If you’re anything like me (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), then you are starved for the tiniest semblance of good news from the White House of Horrors.

Well, in what can only be called a Christmas miracle, or just a fluke happenstance that statistically was bound to happen, we have our first significant positive political development in the two years since Trump began wrenching America from its moral moorings and started flaying the Constitution.

Yes, it looks like criminal justice reformis finally coming, not because Trump endorsed it or even understands it, but because for once he got out of the way of social progress and decided to not do the worst possible thing just because he could.

The legislation was championed by an oddball mix of social justice warriors, surly libertarians, religious types on both the right and left, and basically anyone who believes pot dealers shouldn’t get longer prison terms than rapists.

Of course, the impact of this on ethnic minorities cannot be overemphasized. After all, it is primarily Latinos and African Americans who have been the victimsof the misbegotten war on drugs and idiotic mandatory-minimum-sentencing laws.

And all it took was a couple of decades of ruined lives, destroyed communities, and gruesome injustices to convince America to be a little more civilized and get in line with just about every other industrialized nation in the world.

Hey, forgive us — sometimes we’re not the brightest. 

In any case, I am happy to report this sliver of good news at this most joyous time of the year.

So never let it be said that I am just a seething cauldron of cynicism, misanthropy, and bitter rage who focuses all his energy on the dark devastation that has befallen America.

Well, at least that’s not me all of the time, and that’s something.

Oh, in other news, the president’s moronic idea of building a wall on the Mexican border appears to finally be dead, dead, dead.

Merry Christmas.

There is a persistent myth that depression and suicide increase during the holidays.

It was even a memorable line in When Harry Met Sally(yeah, I’m a straight guy who loves that movie — deal with it).

In any case, there is no doubt that suicide — whether related to the holidays or not — is an American crisis. In fact, “nationwide, suicides have increased nearly 30 percent since the turn of the century.”

Clearly, this is grim news.

However, a weird paradox has developed within this surge in self-harm. You see, “even though Latinos face economic disadvantages and other stress in their lives, their suicide rate is about one-third that of non-Hispanic whites.”

It’s odd that Hispanics are much less likely to take their own lives than other demographics. After all, Latinos “earn less than non-Hispanic whites, and are more likely to lack health insurance coverage.”

And if that is not enough, “Latino immigrants contend with the challenges of moving to a new country, sometimes after leaving violence and other traumatic conditionsat home.”

So why are Latinos less likely to want to end it all?

Well, “experts attribute the relatively low suicide rate among Latinos to the culture’s strong family and community support systems, which appear to provide some degree of protection.”

Yes, the legendary Hispanic emphasis on the familyseems to give us a boost when it comes to psychological health. I’ve written beforeabout how obsessed Latinos are when it comes to blood relations. There are some negative elementsto this cultural trend, but the positives overwhelm them, and to this lengthy list of benefits can be added the results of this latest study on suicide.

As for community bonds, well, I’ve always found it freaky that so many Americans don’t talk to their neighbors, don’t partake in any group activities, and often maintain an aloof presence.

And I say that as an introvert (but a Latino one). Trust me — it’s good to socialize.

Of course, there are other reasons for the Hispanic tendency to avoid suicidal actions.

For starters, there is the strong Catholic foundationthat underpins so much of Latino culture. The religion’s teaching that suicide is a sin may have a preventative effect on some Hispanics.

In addition, numerous studies show that Latinos are more optimisticthan other groups, which can only help. And there is a theory that Hispanics may even be more genetically predisposedto being happy.

Put it all together, and Latinos may have “relative immunityto suicide” compared to other demographics.

In any case, if you are having difficulty this holiday season, reach out for help at the National Suicide Prevention Lifelineor another organization.

Take care of yourself.

As our illustrious leader has informed us, these are dangerous times for men… particularly white ones… particularly straight, rich, conservative ones…

Yeah, that’s right. It’s an absolute horror show for privileged males today.

Of course, common sense and a basic understanding of math reveals that the odds that an American women will be raped in her lifetime is about 1 in 6, while the odds that an American man will be accused of rape is way, way, way lower. And the odds that an American man will be falsely accused is lower still.

So why — besides Trump’s nauseating predilection for misogyny — is the president advocating for the plight of men?

Well, there is a long history of the most powerful among us presenting themselves as the real victims. It is an effective method for retaining control, even if the hypocrisy and blatant mendacity of the tactic make it apparent to anyone who is the slightest bit non-partisan and/or has the cognitive ability of a ten-year-old.

In any case, this approach goes beyond simple sexism. It is at the core of the whole battle against the nefarious forces of political correctness, which an overwhelming 80 percent of Americans think is a problem in our country.

I’ve written before about how calling something PC is usually shorthand for dismissing the concerns of marginalized groups, and how there is nothing the slightest bit edgy about being non-PC, an ambiguous standard that often signifies a high level of fear and loathing about our changing society.

But is PC a legitimate concern, or is it just an overblown attempt by conservatives to claim victimhood and, in this way, their own political “safe spaces”?

Well, I don’t know of any scientific studies that have analyzed the toxic effects of political correctness. So we’re reduced to looking at anecdotal evidence.

For example, many white people have been caught on tape accosting black people who are minding their own business and posing no threat. Some of these paranoid individuals have been fired or publicly shamed for their actions. Now, let’s assume that it is mere political correctness to call out a white person for, say, calling the copson an African American who is watching his kid play soccer.

I would call it being a bigoted asshole, but let’s go with the right-wing definition, and say that it’s PC to fire someone for preventing a black man from entering his own apartment.

In that case, yes, I guess you could say that PC has harmed a handful of Americans. But for the most part, this is only when aggressive jerks display extremely prejudicial behavior that happens to be caught on video. Otherwise, they can just go around chanting, “Jews will not replace us” and cracking racist jokes with impunity.

Clearly, PC is a bit toothless if that is the extent of its cultural power.

Now let’s look at the other side.

Have there been examples of liberals — you know, the PC people — who have been bullied into submission?

Well, there is theblack Vermont lawmaker who “first suspended her re-election campaign before resigning altogether from her post following racist attacks against her and her family.” That’s correct — bigoted trolls attacked an elected representative, and PC did not come to her rescue. In fact, the alt-right abusers got their way.

And then there iswriter Chuck Wendig, who has been the object of many online attacks from conservatives. Wendig was fired from Marvel “after posting a number of explicit tweets attacking Republicans and the GOP over the confirmation of Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”

Once again, the alt-right suffered no consequences for their fusillade on Wendig, who said that his firing “is really quite chilling,” leaving him “very sad, and worried for the country I live in, and the world.”

Why didn’t PC, with its monumental powers, prevent Wendig from losing his job? And why are his alt-right attackers, rather than being chastened, now overjoyed with yet another victory?

That’s because it is the alt-right that is punishing people for their language and opinions, not the so-called PC police. And it is the Republican Party that is cultivating this surrealistic environment, in that they cry about their oppression and issue a “call for civility as the PA GOP candidate threatens [his opponent] with a golf cleat stomping.”

No, a black lawmaker can lose her job due to alt-right attacks. But a white man who may have committed a felony can get belligerent and still nab a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Clearly, it doesn’t sound like privileged white men are suffering too much under the hideous yoke of political correctness.

In fact, I’m tempted to say that much of the whining about America being too PC is just another pathetic, knee-jerk reaction from unimaginative, self-righteous hypocrites.

But I don’t want to offend anyone.

“Why are those helicopters circling?”

Our five-year-old son asked us that as we drove toward the grocery store. I answered that I didn’t know why all those helicopters were hovering overhead.

The reason became apparent a moment later as we turned the corner and saw the police closing off the street. A dozen or so cop cars, with lights flashing, were parked in front of our neighborhood Trader Joe’s. Bystanders milled about, and I recognized a few employees of the store who sat on the curb, heads in their hands or just sobbing.

Yes, it was that Trader Joe’s, the one where a deranged gunman crashed his car, exchanged gunfire with the police, and then ran inside to take people hostage.

My wife and I have been going to this particular Trader Joe’s ever since our son was an infant, and the place has earned a spot as a neighborhood hub. We’ve gotten to know many of the employees, and one of the cashiers even became our son’s babysitter. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s part of our little environs.

But on this Saturday, a young man who was pissed off at the world, and who had easy access to a gun, decided that his problems were everyone’s problems. And he did what so many American males do, which is shoot the women who are making them angry, then unleash violence on random strangers.

And at the end of it all, one of the Trader Joe’s employees — a woman my wife and I knew, although not well — was dead. A cop’s bullet caught her as she tried to flee the crossfire.

Some will say that a fabled “good guy with a gun” would have stopped the carnage. But of course, more people firing more bullets means, logically, more people getting hit, not fewer. In fact, the woman who died was killed by the ultimate good guy with a gun: a police officer. If a trained cop who has received untold hours of marksmanship, and who works full-time at stopping bad guys, wound up shooting an innocent civilian, it defies belief that a regular dude with a conceal-and-carry permit could bring down a running, armed madman without even grazing anybody else.

No, in a sickeningly repetitive scenario — virtually unique to America among all industrialized nations — an angry man grabbed a gun and started shooting.

They have angry young men in England and Japan and Denmark and all the other first-world nations. But those furious losers have trouble getting firearms and destroying strangers’ lives. This is only a serious, reoccurring problem in the United States.

But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

In any case, I’m feeling a little closer to this particular gun tragedy, not only because the sole fatality was an acquaintance and because it happened in my neighborhood.

You see, my wife and I were running late on Saturday. Our son, the master of the stall, had delayed us. So we got in the car to drive to Trader Joe’s later than usual.

We found out later that, if we had been just ten minutes earlier, we would have been trapped in the store when the gunman arrived. We would have been hostages. And my five-year-old would have had to duck gunfire.

That scenario should not be a concern when all you want to do is go shopping.

And it doesn’t happen anywhere else but America.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mom emigrated from El Salvador. She’s been a US citizen for decades now and has never regretted her decision to leave Central America.

We all know, of course, that the United States is a nation of immigrants (ok, not all of us know that).

Still, the only reason that this nation exists as a major world power is because, over the centuries, millions of people, originating from just about every country on Earth, took huge gambles and endured hardships to come here for a shot at a better life.

It’s the American Dream, right?

Well, maybe that’s no longer true.

You see, a recent article in Bloomberg asked the completely logical question “Why do Americans stay when their town has no future?”

Yes, the article is a look at our favorite fellow citizens — the white working class — and an examination of why they refuse to leave their dying small towns in search of better opportunities. After all, they are the descendents of hearty immigrants who crossed oceans for a new life. So why do they insist on sticking around decrepit mill towns and desolate farm communities, when in many cases, all they have to do is drive to another part of their home state?

The article, which makes for extremely depressing reading, quotes one low-income blue-collar worker as saying, “The American Dream is kind of to stay close to your family, do well, and let your kids grow up around your parents.”

Personally, I found that statement jarring. The article’s writers apparently agreed, calling the quote “a striking comment” because of the fact that “not that long ago, the American Dream more often meant something quite different, about achieving mobility — about moving up, even if that meant moving out.”

Let me mention here again that my seven cousins and I grew up together and were tighter than many nuclear families. That’s common among Latino families. In adulthood, we’re still close, but many of us have moved to other states to pursue the best lives for ourselves. Right now, we’re scattered around the country. In spite of having stronger bonds than most families (not a boast, just the truth), we also knew that all of us living in the same city for our entire lives was unlikely. Our parents came from other countries, so the concept of moving just wasn’t scary to us.

Contrast that to the residents of rural Ohio profiled in the Bloomberg article. They seem petrified of ever leaving their bleak environs. And this reluctance to move is “all the more confounding given how wide the opportunity gap has grown between the country’s most dynamic urban areas and its struggling small cities and towns.”

Economists are perplexed at this phenomenon. But keep in mind that these are the same people who wondered why so many Americans threw logic out the window during the Great Recession and held onto their underwater houses. One would think that economists would now have plenty of proof that Americans don’t make purely objective financial decisions and that emotions play a huge part in their behavior.

So I guess I’m saying that maybe it’s the economists who are clueless here.

In any case, “Americans have grown less likely to migrate for opportunity.” The statistics back this up. We see that “fewer Americans moved in 2017 than in any year in at least a half-century. This change has caused consternation among economists and pundits, who wonder why Americans, especially those lower on the income scale, lack their ancestors’ get-up-and-go.”

We would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that the situation has “a stark political dimension, too, given how much Trump outperformed past Republican candidates in those left-behind places.”

What many experts don’t want to admit is that the fear of moving is related to the fear of change, which in turn is related to the fear of immigrants, and so on down the scale of anxiety. The basic factor here is the terror that the white working class feels about a changing world, and its members’ strong sense of entitlement that they never have to change a damn thing in their lives because everything must to be altered to maintain their status.

Many people in these depressed areas feel that America owes it to them to make their towns boom again, regardless of the cost to the rest of the country. However, “it’s hard to argue that, say, a town that sprang up for a decade around a silver mine in Nevada in the 1870s needed to be sustained forever once the silver was gone.” That would be ludicrous. But “if all of southern Ohio is lagging behind an ever-more-vibrant Columbus, should people there be encouraged to seek their fortunes in the capital?”

Um, yeah — they should.

In essence, “America was built on the idea of picking yourself up and striking out for more promising territory.”

What’s changed?

Only the specter of crippling fear.

Perhaps you are sinister.

No, I don’t mean you’re a vile person who is out to destroy the world. After all, you’re probably not a Republican.

Woops — just kidding, my GOP friends!

Ahem… yeah… anyway.

I’m talking about the original meaning of the word “sinister,” which was a Latin phrase (“sinistra”) that originally meant “left” or “left-handed” but took on the meaning of “evil.”

This trend is seen in many languages. For example,

“Left” in German (“linkisch”) also means “awkward”

“Left” in Russian (“levja”) is associated with being untrustworthy

Synonyms for “left” in Mandarin are things like “weird,” “incorrect,” and “wrong”

The truly French word “gauche” originally meant “left”

And the very word “left” comes from “lyft,” which meant “broken.”

You get the picture. Being a leftie has often been associated with myriad unfavorable traits. And in the olden days, left-handers were often coerced to use their right hand, in some cases even having the offending limb tied down to immobilize it.

Hell, never mind the olden days. Even here in 2018, about “two-thirds of the world still hates lefties.” You see, “in many Muslim parts of the world, in parts of Africa as well as in India, the left hand is considered the dirty hand, and it’s considered offensive to offer that hand to anyone, even to help.”

And of course, it’s tough for you southpaws to pick up a guitar, baseball glove, or pair of scissors without getting frustrated.

All of this comes despite the complete lack of scientific evidence that there is anything wrong with being left-handed, and with plenty of anecdotal evidence that we’ve had our fair share of high-achieving lefties.

So what does all this mean?

Well, it means that, on some level, humans actively look for reasons to hate one another. Yes, life is hard enough with natural obstacles and unforeseen bad breaks and outbreaks of cultural stupidity. We apparently have to make it even more difficult by honing in on the slightest deviance — like being left-handed — and piling on the fear and loathing for absolutely no good goddamn justification.

Which leads us back to the prevalence of racism.

Will it even be eradicated?

That is, of course, highly unlikely. And even if we did somehow achieve ethnic and racial nirvana, where differences were celebrated and never a cause for distrust or violence, we would find some way to fuck it up.

I don’t know — probably the small-nostriled people would oppress the large-nostriled people. Or people who like spicy food would get into fistfights with people who don’t. Or some other infinitesimal difference would become grounds for superiority and anger.

Hating on left-handers just proves that people will discriminate against any minority — for the smallest, oddest rationale, and for the tiniest infraction or deviance from the majority.

But then again, let’s just remember this:

According to the Bible, the angel who sat at God’s left-hand side was Lucifer.

Well, that settles it.

I’ve written before about gun control and our nation’s status as the shoot-em’-up capital of the industrialized world.

Seventeen people in Florida are dead because one angry man believed the AR-15 was the solution to all this problems. This uniquely American mindset apparently never manifests itself in the youth of, say, Belgium or Australia or Japan.

It’s a mystery — right?

Now, I’m certainly not going to get into all the defenses of the Second Amendment that we hear from conservatives every time there’s a mass shooting. These arguments range from the semi-principled to the clearly illogical to the completely bat-shit insane. So why put ourselves through it again?

I also don’t want to discuss the shooter. There are conflicting reports about whether he is a Latino, or a white supremacist, or some oddball combination of both. But ultimately, let’s skip it, because the less said about this pathetic loser, the better.

Instead, I want to dwell on the tiniest shred, the thinnest shard, of hope that this latest mass shooting might be a catalyst toward sanity.

Many of us feel that way, primarily because of the activism of teens and young people who are fed up with being viewed as target practice and/or acceptable losses in the fight for “freedom” or battle against “tyranny” or whatever vague, paranoid rationale gets tossed around as justification for allowing bloodbaths to occur with regularity on American soil.

Yes, there is already rumbling that “Hey, these kids aren’t as anti-gun as you think.” And even if every millennial demanded more gun control tomorrow, the political and cultural barriers to real, lasting change are daunting.

But we do know that one of the leaders of this youth drive is Emma Gonzalez, whose powerful speech has become both viral sensation and rallying cry.

This once again proves that if you want something done, turn to a Latina.

So maybe, possibly, we have turned a corner on this madness? Do we dare hope?