Even as the phrase “thoughts and prayers” has been used as post-tragedy condolences after mass shootings, many have criticized it as a form of cowardly slacktivism. Jonathan Foiles, in Psychology Today, compared the phrase to an infantile response, and explained that “thoughts and prayers” is the equivalent of a child yelling for something when they have the power to get it themselves.
Garry Wills, of the New York Review of Books, compares America’s relationship with guns to a perverted religion based on a mindless worship. The high priests of this perverted religion are the Republican legislators and their cowardly followers, both state and national, who refuse to do anything about the mass killings of innocent children.
To make the point, Wills uses the Old Testament pagan god Moloch, whose worship is portrayed in the Christian Bible as representing the depths of depravity to which humans could sink.
