So It’s Come to This

Screen Shot 2018-06-07 at 1.33.07 PM — Now I know my ABCs

What do you even say when you see something like this in a kindergarten classroom? I mean, really, what do you say? Given its placement, the way we read left to right, the Lockdown Song is apparently even more important than learning the alphabet.

How has it come to this?

How have we reached the point where school shootings are such a part of the fabric of our national life that someone decided it was better to start preparing children for the worst than to try and preserve their innocence awhile longer, and provide an environment where what’s best in them might flower and grow?

These questions are rhetorical, obviously. We all know how. A powerful manufacturing lobby made a Faustian bargain with a political party (and possibly, even probably, Russian oligarchs) to sell as much of their product as possible, consequences be damned. For them, from their position and perspective, it’s actually a virtuous circle. Scientific studies have shown that fear makes people more conservative, makes them buy more guns. Once the market reaches a certain saturation (like, idk, one gun per person in the freest, most prosperous nation in modern history), the feedback loop reinforces itself. There are too many guns, and it’s too easy to get them, to make it harder for upright, responsible citizens (or, really, anyone) to buy guns to defend themselves from all the other people with guns. Never mind how your chances of dying from gun violence vastly increase when you purchase a gun.

But that’s just science talking. And science, despite its dedication to reflecting and clarifying actuality, can’t hold a candle to narrative when it comes to getting people to do (or not do) stuff.

But back to the virtuous circle, which is not really virtuous unless it’s in your interest to make people frightened so you can sell them guns and get them to vote for conservative politicians whose policies are generally terrifically unpopular. I mean, does anyone who isn’t rich really think the rich need more money while the rest of us scrabble and scrape? Does anyone really want to live in a world two steps removed from a battle royale where it’s all against all and fuck everybody who ain’t me and mine? Some people might, but fuck them.

So, the circle. How does it work?

Well, what you need is to cultivate an atmosphere of threat, fear, and scarcity. Which isn’t hard, because people are wired to respond to threats. It’s how we survived, evolutionarily, and though we’ve created a situation in which most of our instincts aren’t really optimal, evolution takes a while to catch up. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say that when things get scary, or scarce, people’s circle of concern tends to tighten up. They start looking out for them and theirs. They also look for targets, because fear and scarcity take their toll on a person. And because fear produces anger and anxiety — which, let’s be honest, don’t exactly lead to clear thinking — it’s easy to divert that fear and anger away from their actual sources, so the underlying causes and problems never get addressed.

Which brings us back to the Lockdown Song. I mean, just think how many guns a whole generation suffering from a lifetime of fear will buy. Long term, school shootings are going to be great for business.

Sympathy for the Terrorist: Some Thoughts on Mark Conditt

You know what? I don’t give a single solitary fuck how smart or sensitive or deep or broken or sad Mark fucking Conditt was. I mean, I would have, because I’m an empathetic sort of person, right up until he decided to MURDER RANDOM PEOPLE WITH BOMBS. Far as I’m concerned, that makes him a TERRORIST and a PREMEDITATED MURDERER. And not only that, he was a fucking COWARD, too. He was a coward when he made his bombs. He was a coward when he mailed them. And he was a coward right up to the very end, when he decided to become a SUICIDE BOMBER rather than face the consequences of his actions.

Why’d he do it? I don’t know. Maybe cuz he’s just another over-entitled mediocre white boy whose brilliance and inherent awesomeness the world failed to recognize and reward. Maybe cuz he was homeschooled and so he didn’t know how to make friends. Maybe cuz he was raised conservative, which for all its many merits too often comes down to an ideology based on an all against all mentality and violence in the face of fear. Maybe he was just a fucking asshole.

What I do know is that half the fucking country is bending over backwards to find reasons to forgive this poor kid/fucking asshole for murdering people because he’s white, cisgendered, and male. And you know what, I’d almost applaud that if we did it for literally ANY OTHER KIND OF PERSON. But we don’t, do we? We don’t show that kind of compassion for people with darker skin, or different faith traditions, or vaginas, or who feel like they were born in the wrong body and want to make changes so the flesh they wear matches their self-conception. Mexicans are rapists. Muslims are terrorists. Women are hysterical and shrill. Trans people are abominations in the sight of the Lord who made them that way.

So spare me the crocodile tears for poor, misunderstood Mark Conditt, who decided the right way to deal with his issues was to murder people better than he was with bombs, and who took the easy way out when the bill for his actions came due.

Or, you know what? I take it back. I will join you in sympathizing with this lost soul. We can, together, explore the culture and history that might have led him to make the terrible choices he made, to snuff out the promise of his own life and the lives of his victims. We can, together, mourn for him and for them. All I ask in return is you join me in offering the same compassion, the same grace, the same sympathy and understanding to everyone else in the world who is not young, white, cisgendered, and male.

What do you say? Do we have a deal?

An Open Letter to Don’t-Be-That-Guy Guy

The other day a woman I know posted about narrowly escaping being snatched off the street by a man who intended her harm. The vast majority of comments were what a decent person would expect, things along the line of “OMG I hope you are okay” and “Did you report it?” and “WTF?!?” You know, the kinds of things you say when someone you know tells you they were almost kidnapped and raped and who the fuck knows what else.

Your contribution?

“Would it have been a hot rape at least? Was the guy good looking, or short, fat, and ugly?”

You excused it as gallows humor. You were “trying to make light of [her] horrible situation.” You “meant absolutely no harm.” You told the original poster — the woman, I’ll remind you, writing about almost being kidnapped, raped, and who knows what else — “You obviously don’t like my crude gallows humor. And for that I apologize” which is about the weaselly-est non-apology I’ve ever read.

Then you blocked her, because despite making a show of how little the dogpile of her actual friends calling your sorry ass out affected you, it was clear that it did. So you took the coward’s way out. Because in addition to being a shit-heel of the lowest order, you aren’t man enough to face the consequences of your shitty action, just like you weren’t man enough to make a real apology.

Just like you weren’t man enough to take what happened to my friend seriously in the first place. Continue reading “An Open Letter to Don’t-Be-That-Guy Guy” →

A Year Ago, I Confessed Some of the Worst Things I’ve Ever Done to Women: Here’s What Happened

On October 8th of last year, in the wake of the Pussy Tape, and, more importantly, this twitter thread, I decided in a fit of conscience and madness to write and publish this.

[Serious trigger warning for survivors of sexual assault. You don’t need to read it. The important bits will be requoted in what follows.]

I didn’t want people to know. More than that, I didn’t want those things to have happened.

But they did happen. I did those things. And if it’s taken this long for me to human up and acknowledge them, well, that’s on me, too.

I could make excuses. I was young, dumb, and full of cum. I didn’t know any better. I came of age in the ’80s, when rape culture was just culture. Men were supposed to want sex, and anything shy of actual or threatened violence was on the table for getting it, be it deception, cajoling, or just getting her drunk enough to let you take her panties off and do what you wanted. I was a product of my environment.

Those excuses are bullshit. Basic human decency isn’t hard to grasp once you admit to yourself that other people are people.

[For the record, I still don’t want people to know, I still don’t want those things to have happened, those things did still happen, and I’m still sorry. Like then, I am still terrified of hitting ‘publish’ when I get to the end of this, because even though I don’t think of myself as a good person, I still prefer that other people do.]

Sadly, and sadly unsurprisingly, not all men took that watershed moment to reflect on rape culture and their place and participation in it, either personally or politically. Sadly, and sadly unsurprisingly, not all men are taking the opportunity now. But some are. Continue reading “A Year Ago, I Confessed Some of the Worst Things I’ve Ever Done to Women: Here’s What Happened” →

An Open Letter to Elected Democrats

Well, we’re two weeks in, and it’s as clear as it ought to have been all along that what we’re dealing with the Trump Administration and the Republican-dominated Congress is as far past normal as Alpha Centauri is past the corner convenience store. A blitzkrieg of bad policy and worse nominees is overrunning the nation’s institutional defenses, as between them the Administration and Congress try and push through every bad idea the right’s ever had. I’m sure you don’t need me to read you the laundry list.

So here’s what I and my fellow liberals, progressives, and sane Americans with functioning empathy, conscience, and reason want you to know:

You. Must. Resist.

At every turn, in every way you can. Throw up roadblocks. Boycott hearings. Present amendment after amendment until the docket is filled til 2018. Whatever you can do to fight them or gum up the works, we expect you to do it.

It’s time to stop bringing a strongly-worded letter to a knife fight. The America we love and put our faith in is on the line. History is watching.

And you know what? We’re watching, too. And we’re going to remember.

Here’s something that I think is worth thinking about, if the case on the merits isn’t enough motivation for you. In October 2002, then-Senator Hillary Clinton voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq. At the time, it looked like the politically-smart play, even though the Bush Administration’s case for war in Iraq had more holes in it than a paper bin Laden target at a West Texas shooting range. But the Bush Administration had a strong hand, politically, and made a disciplined push. In the wake of 9/11 there were few Democrats with the foresight and backbone to vote no.

That vote’s been an albatross around Hillary Clinton’s neck ever since. It cost her the nomination in 2008, and the Presidency in 2016. Because a lot of people never forgave her for that. Never forgot the calculation she made, for short-term political gain, and the tragedy, horror, and damage to our national soul that resulted from the war, and the bipartisan cover she and her fellow Congressional Democrats provided its justification.

Left unchecked, the present Administration and Congress are going to unwind a century’s progress. A lot of people are going to suffer and die unnecessarily. It’s up in the air whether we’ll have a trade or shooting war first. Up in the air whether we’ll still have a democracy.

The only option open to a person of conscience is vigorous, unflinching, disciplined opposition. At every turn. On every front. That’s what we want from you. That’s what history demands at this moment.

So show us what you’re made of. Give us a reason to believe in you, a reason to keep backing you. Do this thing, and we’ll do everything we can to get you re-elected and expand your caucus til we can do some good or at least unwind some of the bad.

If you don’t? Well, you’re already hearing from us, and seeing us everytime you go out in public. We’ll keep that up, month in and year out. And the next time you run for re-election? You can expect a primary challenge from the left.

And by then? We’re going to be really good at this organizing thing.