We are hard upon another arbitrary national holiday marked by a flag, and I am not feeling it. We are also only a few days out from the slaughter of grade schoolers and their teachers, and a little more than a week away from the wholesale killing of multiple Black people at a grocery store. A few days before that, several Asian women were killed for being Asian I guess, and Taiwanese church-goers were also killed by an idiot with a gun.
The two things these all too typical events seem to have in common are: 1. the crimes were commited by a young male, and 2. with a type of firearm developed for the theatre of war, in the hands of the aforementioned young men. Adding extra spice to these stories have been details about the abhorrent behavior of alleged law enforcement officers, who proved they are less brave than school teachers, children, and random parents, and yet will continue to enjoy the full support of every political, social and financial system this country has to offer.
I have read several suggestions that the gormless legislators who continue to allow military-grade weapons to proliferate based on the grossly misinterpreted opinions of long-dead men who owned people be confronted with photographs of the young victims of these crimes, their flesh torn apart by bullets fired at a velocity meant to utterly destroy life. Hell, I may have expressed that opinion once or twice. But here’s the dirty little secret:
Those legislators, the people in power, they don’t care. They absolutely don’t think the rest of us are people. They have no empathy. At the very best, they’ll shrug, looking at the pictures, the evidence, as I would look at an unattractively photographed dinner. They might say the photos are “distasteful”, in the same way that wearing socks with sandals is considered distasteful. And that’s the best case scenario.
The worst case scenario is that they’ll enjoy looking at the pictures of tiny bodies torn apart by hatred and evil.
Because in my nearly five decades on earth, I have come to realize that there are people out there who get a charge out of destruction, chaos, filth, decay. I won’t say it’s a sexual charge – that knowing they’ve ended life gives them a tiny boner – unless I’m going strictly for shock value. I think it’s more mundane than that. Imagine that feeling you get when you finish crocheting that shawl you’ve been working on. When you look at the cutting board, or cabinetry, or furniture you built. That sense of pride when you worked so hard learning the music and you performed it so well for your concert. How much you enjoy eating a salad you prepared from food you grew in your own garden. How your heart swells when you watch the child you nurtured and taught and cared for put on that robe and funny hat and walk to get their diploma.
Good people – decent people – are fulfilled by these acts of creation. They’re not always easy, but they are so satisfying. Other people don’t want to expend the effort. Because they are either incapable or unwilling to create, these people get very excited by the idea of destruction. How many times have you heard the excuse for buying multiple firearms, including high-capacity rifles with “I have to protect my family”. From what? My god, I am a woman in this world, living without a man. If anyone needs protection, I’m it. But while I am well familiar with feeling unsafe, I can’t think of any experience I have had that made me wish I had a tool that could permanently end someone. If you want to protect your family, make sure they are adequately nourished and loved. Make sure they have access to the doctor and the dentist, and can remain free of disease. Ensure that you have enough food and water supplies to get you through any minor disasters, that you have first aid training. That you wash your hands and wear a mask when there is a deadly disease circulating. But that’s not what they mean.
What they mean is they really want to kill someone. Deep down in their hearts, the only thing they can offer as human beings is the ability to end a life. They can’t create. They can’t care. All they can do is kick over the ant-hill, knock down the tower someone else built. Destroy, maim, befoul, defile.
Are they the majority in this country? No, they’re not. They’re a small, but unignorable minority. However, the tiny group of those with power has found these useful idiots helpful handmaidens of their agenda to remove as many rights and liberties from the rest of us as possible. What these disgusting destroyers don’t yet understand is that while the ostensible purpose of their overlord’s agenda is to make sure that women, non-white people, religious minorities and LGBTQIA folks are not deemed human, and will surely lose our civil rights in the next four years, those destructive minions will be next. Do they really think the fascists who have been gathering power all this time are going to let them in their club?
That is, of course, beside the point. These oxygen-thieves will let their overlords shit in their mouths as long as they think they can annoy one of us with the smell of their breath.
In a country that lets this happen – that encourages is – that considers fewer and fewer of its citizens Human for the purposes of a tiny group of people to amass power and wealth – how can anyone possibly be proud to live in it? As our Indigenous and Black friends have known for decades, the America we were taught about in school was a lie. And at this point, a lie that we are not even pretending to want to live up to. I am disgusted with this country, and I am deeply ashamed to be American.
nerdycellist 