The recent mass shooting in Texas really is the perfect crime — perfect in the sense that it brings together virtually every reason to believe that our nation isn’t confused but in fact possessed, galloping toward the cliff like one of the Gadarene swine.

It’s an embarrassment of riches for the sober commentator, with so many flowers of evil you’re tempted to pick them all and weave a funeral wreath for America and the Church. But let’s resist that impulse, and see what we can learn, and what good we can dig out from it all. God writes straight with crooked people.

Learning begins with questions. So here are some questions I have, which aren’t being answered by what I can find through our media:

Why Was This Lunatic Ever in the U.S.?

Are we surprised that this shooter, who targeted innocent civilians and tried to hide behind her helpless child, had “Palestine” written on her gun? The “intersectional” ideology of our woke elites encourages everyone who feels like a victim to see himself as allied to all other so-called victims, all entitled to attack those whom they see as oppressors. That’s why “Queer Palestine” flags pass muster among students at Harvard, who really don’t bother to think through what Muslim fundamentalists do to “queers.” (Spoiler: They throw them off buildings.)

Why was Genesse Moreno in America in the first place? Was she here legally? How did she get in? Was it a fake asylum claim — since there was no political persecution in her home country El Salvador at the time?

Does she have some special advanced skills such that the U.S. simply needed her, so a company interceded and got her a visa? Did she come in illegally, and simply avoid removal (which isn’t hard)? Was her child, whom she dragged along to the shooting and apparently used as a human shield, in addition an “anchor baby,” entitling her to stay here?

Weaponizing Her Own Child

Is this yet another example of an immigrant weaponizing a child — as they do when they trust them to cartels to smuggle into America, as a means to later get in themselves? Nobody’s reporting these details, so we’re left to wonder.

Does America need millions more Genesse Morenos flooding in across our border, unscreened for criminal records, mental illness, or links to terrorist groups? Then why is the Biden regime admitting them, and why are churches supporting this mass influx? Why did Senate Republicans try to baptize Biden’s invasion, and link it to massive funding to defend Ukraine’s borders instead?

Was Genesse Moreno indeed someone who called herself “transgender,” as media reports suggest? The Stream ran a news piece looking into this. Apparently, Moreno has used male aliases and pronouns in the past, so it seems that the answer is yes. If so, this shooting is yet another instance of someone with severe mental illness who has grabbed the transgender flag, and been encouraged by the hysterical pressure campaign of the LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION movement to think of herself as a persecuted victim. Someone who has the right to wreak vengeance, like the Nashville trans church shooter.

Transgenderism Is Violence

Revolver News published a brilliant, blistering commentary on why violence is an intrinsic part of the transgender movement. Yes first, because it does violence to the very nature of human reality, both biological and psychological, demanding that the whole world abandon its inherited and scientifically confirmed categories for the human species: Male and female. But that initial violence ripples out into real world savagery. As Revolver notes:

[T]he most elite, tip-of-the-spear troopers for modern leftism are America’s growing pool of transgender people. Or, as the pun goes, “trannissaries.”

Why is the transgender movement so “successful?” In no small part, it’s because of how fanatically committed its members are to defending and advancing their ascended fetish. Why is transvestite content so successful online? Because transsexual radicals make up a very disproportionate share of moderators and power users on sites like Reddit or Wikipedia, and will harass or ban all who stand against them. Why is drag queen story hour everywhere? Because it turns out there are a whole lot of creepy autogynephiles eagerly volunteering to hang out with young children.

And the trans movement encourages those whom it can recruit to cut off more than their private parts — to sever all connection to anyone who doesn’t brainwash himself to accept their “transition” from their biological sex to one of the other 47 (and counting) genders:

[T]here is an entire cottage industry of articles, TikTok videos, and forum posts encouraging trans people to cut off contact with family members who do not “accept” their delusions. In the case of minors, thousands of teachers, psychologists, and social workers are practically chomping at the bit to snatch “trans” children away from their parents and put them in more “affirming” foster care situations. The ideal trannissary lives in a digital “barracks,” shorn of real-life contact and instead residing almost totally online, ever-ready to ride into battle against the gender binary and civilization as we know it.

Sounds like a good incubator for mass shooters, doesn’t it?

Shut Up and Do the Pedicures

But we Christians aren’t supposed to ask pesky questions like that, or to have our guns with us at church to defend ourselves, our kids, and our neighbors against … sex deviant pro-Hamas immigrant mass shooters, among other threats. No, we’re being trained to think that faith demands we abandon reason, that being a Christian means becoming a non-judgmental, servile, apolitical doormat who never resists the demands of Caesar, Mammon, and Sodom. If we do, then Rob Reiner and his court Christian patsies will smear us as “Christian Nationalists.”

Instead, we must ask ourselves “What Would Jesus Do?” But the “Jesus” evoked in this swindle isn’t the creator of the universe; Who made us male and female and prohibited sodomy in both testaments of the Bible; Who demanded full repentance and conversion of life from sinners; Who will come to judge the nations and shovel the unrepentant into “the fire that does not die.”

No, Jesus is the one who welcomes us, reassures us, praises us and consoles us, whatever we choose to do — I guess even if we use our kid as a human shield when shooting up a church.

That saccharine, marzipan Jesus-shaped thing was what was on sale in the now widely ridiculed “He Gets Us Video” shown at the Superbowl. The Stream has already published a fine theological analysis of what was wrong with that manipulative video, whose impact is not to attract unbelievers to Christ, but to dog-train Christian believers into docile compliance and Gandhi-style “non-resistance.” This video is the carrot. Rob Reiner’s is the stick.

Don’t miss the great Steve Deace, who issued an epic rant about “He Gets Us.”

That #HeGetsUs commercial is demonic. Spread the word. pic.twitter.com/r7udrseC8s

— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) February 12, 2024

Perhaps even more useful here is this alternative Superbowl ad, which actually teaches us what Christ really does for and demands of us.

My man, @j_bambrick, took me up on the #OneMinuteGospel challenge. This is the ad that should have aired during the Super Bowl. Let’s blast this all over social media.
pic.twitter.com/eHYO8BX0rK

— Josh Daws (@JoshDaws) February 13, 2024

But here’s a sober warning: If the Church ever starts preaching that Jesus, the real one, on any large scale again, Caesar really will start shooting at us. The demons now driving our country over the cliff have strong feelings about that Jesus. They made that clear when they met him:

‘What do you want with us, Son of God?’ they shouted. ‘Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?’ (Matt: 8:29)

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His upcoming book is No Second Amendment, No First.