⚠️ SNARKY DISCLAIMER

This is satire. If you're allergic to facts, nuance, or moral consistency, stop reading now and go hug a tax cut. Everyone else, buckle up—we’re heading into the meat grinder of hypocrisy.

So let me get this straight.

A man with a documented history of mental illness walks into a Manhattan office tower, guns down four people, and dies trying to reach the NFL’s headquarters because he thought he had CTE.

And the real tragedy here—aside from the lives lost—is that he might not have been wrong.

He played high school football two decades ago. Never made it to the NFL. But he believed—believed—that football scrambled his brain, destroyed his life, and the NFL was responsible.

But guess what?

Even if he was wrong about the NFL causing his CTE—he wasn’t wrong about the NFL ignoring CTE.

Because the NFL has spent two decades gaslighting America about what they knew all along: that football breaks brains. Not sometimes. Not rarely. Frequently. Consistently. Permanently.

They knew.

They knew.

They formed a “Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee” that was about as scientific as a Magic 8-Ball in a concussion protocol. They called the early researchers alarmists. They attacked doctors. They downplayed suicides. They denied the 96% positive CTE diagnoses in the brains of dead players.

Until finally—after years of denial, settlements, and men literally shooting themselves in the chest so their brains could be studied—the NFL went, “Okay, fine. Maybe there’s some connection. But let’s not dwell.”

Not dwell? You made billions on broken minds! You turned gladiators into vegetables and called it “Monday Night Football!”

But they’re not alone in the gaslight brigade.

Because across the aisle of insanity, we’ve got the GOP.

America’s leading provider of thoughts, prayers, and bullets.

They’re the first to blame mental illness every time someone opens fire.

And the first to defund mental health care the second the cameras turn off.

They blame the “sick” when the guns go off, and then vote to make it easier for the “sick” to buy more guns.

They cut Medicaid.

They slash SAMHSA funding.

They kill youth mental health programs.

And just last month? They reclassified homelessness and mental illness as criminal threats.

What did they fund instead? More cages.

Detention centers. For the sick.

Not treatment. Not housing.

Incarceration. With fluorescent lights and zip ties.

And we’re supposed to believe they care about mental illness?

They weaponize it for talking points and then leave it to rot under an overpass or behind prison walls.

Meanwhile, your average paranoid schizophrenic has a better chance of getting a Glock than a therapy appointment.

And now they’re standing at a podium with tears in their eyes for Officer Islam—a man who gave his life trying to stop someone they enabled.

You can’t treat mental illness with bullets, cages, or denial.

You can’t address gun violence by shrinking access to care and inflating the arms race.

And you sure as hell can’t hide behind “free speech” while pushing executive orders that defund every harm reduction and housing program in the country and mandate forced hospitalizations like it’s McCarthyism for the mentally ill.

FINAL THOUGHT?

Maybe it’s time the NFL admits that CTE is real.

Maybe it’s time the GOP stops pretending they give a damn about mental illness when their policies make things worse.

But they won’t.

Because denial is profitable.

And cruelty is electable.

And for both of them, reality is just bad PR.

So the hits will keep coming.

The guns will keep selling.

The helmets will keep cracking.

And the mentally ill will keep dying—either by their own hand or under a cop’s boot.

And all we'll get is a moment of silence, a half-priced jersey, and a campaign email blaming the libs.