The weekend came and went after Friday's gruesome Texas school shooting.
Ten more high school students and instructors are dead. Another 13 were injured.
But Americans seem to be talking very little about it this week. Even the president distracted himself and others with a dozen tweets about the Russia probe "witch hunt" over the ensuing 72 hours when he was trapped inside by rain. Rather than focusing on gun safety or even school safety, he raged about the FBI - demanding his own witch hunt by asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into whether the FBI infiltrated his campaign for political purposes.
It is all about him, after all. Now this cornered president wants the Russia-meddling and Russia-collusion investigators investigated. Never mind that those investigators are all Republicans - appointed by him. And never mind that four Republican judges, also appointed by Republicans, approved the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants, also known as FISA warrants, that built the cases of grand jury indictments (and some guilty pleas) against several of the president's aides and campaign advisers, as well as more than a dozen Russians involved in creating fake campaign news and ads to create distrust in our election system.
But aside from the fact that our country is in the hands of a man with far too many secrets, the thing that many of us worry most about is whether our children and grandchildren can go to school safely.
We worry about a 17-year-old classmate walking into school as one did at Santa Fe High School south of Houston. The teen was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with "Born to Kill" and a trench coat. Beneath the coat, he was hiding his father's shotgun and .38 revolver. He also brought explosive devices.
Like others who have terrorized our students, this 17-year-old planned to kill his peers and then himself, Texas authorities said. But after exchanging fire with law enforcement officials for an interminable 25 minutes, the young man surrendered, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas told news reporters. The young man admitted "he didn't have the courage to commit the suicide," the governor said.
The New York Times writes that one teacher thought the boy was quiet, but not "creepy" quiet. He was bright, made the honor roll, took advanced placement language classes, played defensive tackle on a school football team. His family was involved in the Greek Orthodox Church.
But at home, he kept a journal in which he detailed his plans for the attack and his suicide. He posted a photo of his "Born to Kill" T-shirt on his Facebook page, along with artwork seemingly inspired by music adopted by affiliates of neo-Nazi groups and the alt-right.
So much for red flag warnings. So much, too, for "active shooter" plans and drills.
Like the school in Parkland, Fla., rocked by a Valentine's Day assault when another young man brought a gun to school and killed 17, the Santa Fe school had an "active shooter" plan. Students there had practiced active shooter drills.
Still, 10 more people died in a mass shooting at a school.
Equally tragic is the normalization of days like Friday and mass school shootings like Sante Fe's.
Trump did make a brief thoughts-and-prayers statement, and he pledged his administration would do "everything in our power" to keep guns away from those who should not have them. Of course he said that last February after the Parkland shooting, too. Then he backed away. Earlier this month he told National Rifle Association members that their Second Amendment rights would "never ever be under siege as long as I am your president."
Over the weekend, he became consumed only with the "deep state" and the special counsel's Russia probe.
More tragic, however, is the fear weighing on our children.
When a reporter asked an on-camera, 17-year-old Santa Fe shooting survivor if she'd at some point thought "this isn't real ... this would not happen in my school," she was quick to say no.
"No, there wasn't. ... It's been happening everywhere. I felt - I've always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too."
How chilling. Our children apparently don't expect to be safe. Instead, they expect to be caught in a school shooting.