Last week's school shooting in Parkland, Florida is the latest horrifying episode of this country's morbid insistence on paying in children's lives for a few moments of sober reflection on our long, self-destructive love affair with guns—an exercise that becomes even more heartbreaking when, thanks to a well-organized gun lobby and an army of spineless politicians who depend on their money and support, what should be a long-overdue conversation about gun safety in 21st-century America disintegrates into a loud, chaotic, and ultimately fruitless shouting match.

Or, if you're a senior member of Donald Trump's White House, Parkland is your big break. From the Washington Post:

Domestic abuse allegations against a senior aide were ignored, pointing to a potential high-level coverup. Two Cabinet secretaries were caught charging taxpayers for luxury travel. A Playboy centerfold alleged an extramarital affair with the president. And the special counsel’s Russia investigation was intensifying. The tumult was so intense that there was fervent speculation that President Trump might fire his chief of staff.

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But a gun massacre at a Florida high school last Wednesday, which left 17 dead, seemed to shift the media glare away from the Trump scandals and gave embattled aides an opportunity to re­focus on handling a crisis not of their own making. While the White House mourned the loss of life in Parkland, Fla., some aides privately acknowledged that the tragedy offered a breather from the political storm.

The fact that children murdered in their classrooms constitutes, as an unnamed official put it to the Post, a "reprieve" from the consequences their own incompetence is as cynical as politics gets. Never one to let slip an opportunity to tweet more about collusion, the president even insinuated that the FBI's devastating admission that it had failed follow up on tips about the Parkland shooter is related to its ongoing investigation into his campaign's alleged participation in Russian election interference. This administration's only moments of semi-stability occur when some unexpected tragedy reminds their constituents that malevolence and cruelty exist outside the four walls of the White House, too.

Fewer than 24 hours after the shooting, House Speaker and noted NRA donation recipient Paul Ryan was issuing solemn warnings about the dangers of jumping to conclusions, and among the Supreme Court's orders issued today, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a spectacularly tone-deaf 14-page invective arguing, incredibly, that the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in America today. The forces that quietly suffocate every renewed effort to enact sensible gun safety legislation are deeply engrained in American culture, and the people behind them are preparing for another battle already.

The one thing that might—might—be different about Parkland is that the survivors, aided by technology and social media, have been articulate and loud and unequivocal about their contempt for thoughts and prayers. And at least thus far, the din of legislative platitudes has proven insufficient to drown them out.

Legislators have failed these children in the worst imaginable way, and their president has proven capable of viewing this failure only through the lens of what's best for his approval rating. The next generation can't tear this country from their hands soon enough.