That's right, folks. We find ourselves once again at the foot of the giant, steaming mountain of horseshit that is violence against innocent, unarmed people. Will it slam the wedge of mistrust even deeper between us? Almost certainly. Will sensible, elevated and honest discussions about the proper course of action to prevent things like this capture our national attention for a millisecond? Unlikely. Will politicians use it to convert greif and sorrow for the victims into fuel for their bullshit-spewing campaigns? I'd imagine so. The prospects for a productive reaction to fifty peoples' deaths that properly honors their memories are not good. The fact that most if not all of the people killed were homosexual makes things vastly more complicated, because this is America and gay people are and always have been looked at as second-class citizens here. You can bet your sweet behind that there will be plenty of right-wing "Christian" assholes awkwardly applauding the actions of a man who (from what has been gathered by the news folks thus far) aligned himself with Islamic extremist groups. Gay people have the singular pleasure of being aggresively hated by most major faiths and social ideologies in America. I suspect there are very few places where they feel completely safe, and even fewer after today. I won't get into the psychological implications of homophobia, because it is not my field. I can only speak for what I see and hear from "normal" people about their feelings towards gay people, which usually involves a giant scoop of hypocrisy and at least a dash of latent homosexuality.
I guess it is fair to start by saying that Muslims are no longer "coming" to America because they're already here. Fun Fact: Henry Ford, the most American of Americans, was born in a city called Dearborn, Michigan. A few years ago, Dearborn became the largest city in the country to have a majority of Arab-Americans as part of its city council. That's right: four of the people running Henry Ford's home town are of Arab decent, and two of them are Shiite Muslims. In fact, 40% of Dearborn's 100,000 residents are of Arab decent. Go head and google "Dearborn, Michigan." The second suggested search is "dearborn michigan sharia law." Muslims: they are here, they are pretty normal, and a lot of Americans think they want all women to wear burquas. This bastard who shot up a club full of unarmed people was confused, angry and scared, in no particular order. Those attributes were the driving forces in his life, perhaps followed distantly by Islam. He aligned himself with the Islamic State because they are some hardcore evil pieces of shit who have achieved what he really wanted, which was international attention. If you want to understand Islam, open a Koran and see how many times you read the word "compassion" before you see a word even alluding to violence. We are dealing with a vocal, angry minority who are counting on our pedjudices for their survival. That's it.
As easy as it can be to blame "The Media" for violence like this, I honestly can't bring myself to do so. To my knowledge, no one has ever been forced to watch Fox News or CNN or The 700 Club against their will. My hippy heart hurts to say so, but it's a shallow argument. Fox will dive right into the Islamaphobic, homophobic cesspool created by this event and wallow in it until it finally dries up and they are forced to move to another. As I know the sun will rise tomorrow, I know that is going to happen. HOWEVER. Fox would not spend every moment of their "news" coverage pushing their warped take on reality if they didn't know that there a whole bunch of people who will eat that shit right up. This includes people who actually agree with them and those who can't seem to look away from the TV (because they think Fox is doing the work of satan). Fox doesn't care. It's a dirty, cheap, soulless way to go about making a buck. If there exists any moral obligation to reach for something higher than profits and ratings, Fox and every other major media outlet ignores it. But then whose fault is it?! Yours, mine and everybody's. Every time we turn on the TV, or open a magazine, or read an online article, we cast a vote for what we want to immerse our minds in. I don't think we've collectively accepted our responsibility to interact peacefully and respectfully with each other, and blaming media outlets for taking advantage of that just means we don't want that kind of responsibility. But that's just my take on that.
I am not gay. I don't do nightclubs. I sort of abhor city life in general. I do not assume so, but I would wager that I don't have a whole lot in common with most of the people who died in Orlando yesterday. Yet somehow I manage to keep myself from shooting them. Or even contemplate shooting them. Or even having any discernable urge to harm them. I don't pretend to know what it's like to be homosexual in the United States, but I know what it is like to feel hated and completely powerless for reasons I cannot control, which I suppose on some level is similar. Conversely, I don't pretend to know what it's like to have experienced an environment that would condition me to hate people for any reason, let alone ones that don't really affect me. For terrorists, we all threaten their way of life simply by living. We are all combatants in wars that they have created in their minds, and the only way to make their war real is to harm us. That is a difficult weight to carry regardless of how we feel about it. All that we, the sensible inhabitants of earth must do to stop this nonsense from happening again is this: don't shoot each other. Time will wash away the blood and the tears, and the hatred too. Trust me on that. It's just going to take a lot of two things most of us don't have a ton of: patience and self-control.
