This is America. (Source: amreading.com)
Another school shooting means yet another young white man who has been radicalized by extremist right-wing thought and convinced that murder is the answer. Nearly every one of these domestic terrorists is white, male, and connected to the alt right, red pillers, Incel, MGTOW, MRA, or PUA, groups that specialize in wound collecting, in blaming women, people of color, Muslims, and LGBTQ people for every difficulty, real or imagined, urged on by the larger right wing that now thrives on hatred of these groups. Although the right wing at large is still pretending offense at being called “racist” or being called out for abandoning civil rights, their every decision belies that, their every decision is designed to marginalize anyone who is not white, male, cishet, Christian.
The right wing at large, having lost sight of its principles, having gorged itself on propagandistic media that labels any American to the left of Ted Cruz the enemy, feeds this wolf at their door, and we all see it– WE ALL SEE IT– yet they continue to pretend it’s not happening. They hold the highest positions of power in our government while they feed these wolves, they remove roadblocks to getting them weapons while they give the subsequent dead nothing but their “thoughts and prayers.” They, in short, are training and arming young men to fight a war against diversity.
This is America. (Source: Chicago Daily Herald)
They will not win. As desperately as they’re fighting, as bad as the gerrymandering that keeps them in power (for now) is, we outnumber them, and this rising generation, this beautiful, magnificent, historically diverse rising generation, is going to yank this nation forward. Is already yanking this nation forward.
This is America. (Source for top photo: outinsa.com; source for bottom photo: towelroad.com)
Angry white men: We are not your enemy. We are America. You cannot stop the rising generation from being browner, queerer, & more fierce than we were. No matter how many young white men you convince the world has wronged them & the answer is murder, YOU CANNOT STOP THE FUTURE. It’s already here.
This is America. (Source: Atlanta Black Star)
I’ll leave you with some poetry, because art heals. Here is Elisa Chavez‘s great poem, “Revenge,” written in November 2016.
Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.
I could’ve swung either way? But now I’m definitely spending
the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;
I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies.
With fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars,
my legion of multiracial babies will be intersectional as fuck
and your swastikas will not be enough to save you,
because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming.
You just delayed our coronation.
We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday;
we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business
because it’s still nobody’s business;
there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic
for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing,
and that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it:
we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name,
the buildings here are not on your side just because
you make them spray-painted accomplices.
These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck.
Even the earth found common cause with us
the way you trample us both,
oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles,
and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them
but I won’t, because they’re my family,
in that blood-of-the-covenant sense.
If you’ve never loved someone like that
you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway.
I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.
But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
We know everything we do is so the kids after us
will be able to follow something towards safety;
what can I call us but lighthouse,
of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud.
And of course it’s not fair but rest assured,
anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight.
This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw.
You cannot deport our minds; we won’t
hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
what makes America great.