#800

Obviously Cloe – Untitled (2013)

This image was made as a result of the asinine ban of tampons and maxi pads in the state capitol building ahead of a vote in Texas that subsequently banned abortions after 20 weeks and shuttered 88% of the abortion providers in the state.

That was two years ago.

On November 27th, Robert L. Dear entered the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic with a high powered rifle and started shooting. Three people were killed, including one law enforcement agent.

Upon his arrest, Dear is alleged to have suggested he undertook this attack to ensure “no more baby parts.” He seems to have made similar claims during his arraignment. (’Baby parts’ is of course a reference to universally discredited claims that selectively edited video proves Planned Parenthood wrongdoing. However, Fox News and Carly Fiorina still assiduously claim their authenticity.)

Not even a full week later, their was yet another mass shooting in San Bernardino, CA.

There are a number of things worth noting about these events. Dear was taken alive, despite killing a cop. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were killed during efforts to apprehend them.

I can’t help but note that if you are white and male and you shoot a bunch of people, you are only at risk of not being taken alive if you commit suicide. However, if you are any shade of brown, you will be killed. Hell, if you’re black you can be murdered in cold blood on camera and the video tape won’t surface for a year so that a shithole Obama flunkie mayor can win re-election. Or you know, the cops can kill you in your cell and a grand jury will fail to indict anyone.

What I find most galling is the fact that although Dear’s intention was clearly terrorist. Folks hem and haw about calling a spade a space. Most inexcusable of which was Ted Cruz–who I hope to fucking Christ someone finds an opportunity to crucify later for his entirely irresponsible reaction to the Colorado Springs shooting. (Keep in mind that Cruz is polling second after Fuckface von Clownstick. And having come of age essentially cloistered in a terrifyingly conservative Evangelical environment, I recognize Cruz as the same sort of monster who tormented me growing up.)

At the same time, this country seems rip raring and ready to go when it comes to vilifying Muslims. Thus the San Benardino shootings were immediately labeled terrorism.

We can and should talk about common sense regulation of gun sales–the second amendment does specifically use the words ‘well regulated’. Keep in mind the NRA weren’t always the terrorist organization they are now. (Interestingly they were originally concerned with ensuring farmers would be able to hunt until racist fear of the Black Panthers transformed them into what they are today.) And as much as shortcomings in mental health care are myriad, we only ever want to address them as a way of dodging the catastrophic toxicity of normalized white cishet male hegemony.

The real issue is this entirely false consciousness with regard to so-called American Exceptionalism. The one thing unifying racism, sexism and homophobia from micro-aggressive to macro-oppressive is the ahistorical notion that America is a fundamentally just nation because we have the Xtian god on our side. This is rubbish. The phrase Under God didn’t emerge until the 1950s, and the conservatives in this country have been progressively backdating it ever since.

But the exceptionalism isn’t even the sickness so much as the symptom. People generally believe that they and their intentions are inherently good which I feel accurate fits within the description of what separates conservatives from liberals that someone much smarter than me once said: when things go the way a conservative doesn’t like, they want to kill someone; when things go the way a liberal doesn’t like, the liberal wants to kill themselves.

The question really is: are you a fundamentally good person? If you’d say yes, then no offense, but you aren’t someone I ever want to show my back. You’re dangerous and deluded.