McFly wrote that in a short reply below, and because the subject’s been on my mind, I want to expand on it.

“Nothing can be done” is a very characteristically conservative meme. It’s often, I think, shorthand for “trying to do something about it will only make things worse”. In its short or long forms, it’s defeatist. The message is hopelessness.

Time and again, when the country’s faced a serious problem, like we do today with gun violence, conservatives have tried to head off even a discussion of the problem with that argument. It’s so insidious, because if accepted, “Nothing can be done” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Nothing can be done” is also a weak and ultimately pointless argument. If conservatives prevent us from even trying to solve a problem, we’ll never know if it really was impossible to solve. “Nothing can be done” is a logical dead end. It’s a trap laid for the weak-minded.

“Nothing can be done” is usually a hypocritical argument as well. When the subject somehow involves making big piles of money or pounding another country into the ground, conservatives stoutly maintain that there’s nothing we can’t accomplish if we put our minds to it.

But if fixing a problem might cut into corporate profits, or threaten their delusions about the meaning of the Second Amendment and the evil government, or cut off the flow of money from the NRA to compliant politicians, then conservatives declare defeat and demand we all just move along. Nothing to see here.

I reject “Nothing can be done”. And if conservatives want to keep pushing that message of hopelessness, I demand that you prove that “Nothing can be done”.

Go ahead. Prove a negative.

Or shut up and get out of the way.