The Ones Who Would Still Be BreathingWhen politics becomes more sacred than human life, the dead become collateral — and the living become inconvenient.The Last Wire EditorialThere’s a strange moment that happens when you read about homicide data long enough. At first, it’s one after another article filled with numbers, charts, spreadsheets, then the lines begin to pulse. Spikes become heartbeats. Drops become breaths. You can almost hear something inside them — a faint rhythm of lives continuing or stopping. And once you hear that, once the data begins to murmur to you, it becomes impossible to look away from what it’s really saying.
Because if the rate before August 8th — about 2.5 homicides a week — had kept rolling forward quietly, like a conveyor belt of funerals, DC would be on track for roughly 130 murders a year. That’s the “nothing changes” world. The world politicians seem to assume is normal, acceptable, inevitable.
Then the National Guard was deployed. Their presence was not symbolic; it had measurable impact. After the deployment, the weekly homicide rate dropped to roughly 1.5 — a small statistical dip, but a massive difference in actual lives saved.
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