Firstly, I want to send my sincere condolences to the victims of the shooting in Pittsburgh yesterday. I don't mean to undermine their suffering with my comments, though I know some people will find this message crude. Regardless, it's important. We are like hamsters on this crazy wheel of racism and gun violence, constantly mourning the symptoms of the larger American problem. I'm not trying to go on a liberal anti-gun rampage here. I shot guns in Kentucky and fucking loved it. I felt powerful. I felt liberated. It terrified me and excited me at the same time. That's not what I want to talk about here.
I want to talk about the fact that we are an insane society, constantly repeating the same thing and expecting different results. I'm talking about the fact that we need to reform our behaviors and our attitudes, and most especially, our laws surrounding gun control.
Here's a photo of Pittsburgh, today, 1 day after 11 people died in a massacre in a synagogue:
We also need to reform our actions. We need to ask ourselves from crucial questions, on a profound level. Why do we continue to wait until people die to gather? Why does it take this to move people? Why is this guy able to publicly proclaim racist remarks on social media and in his every day life and still own a gun? The answers are in some cases, obvious. Our president is doing the same thing, every day, killing people will his policies on a larger scale than this racist ever could. However, it doesn't cease to be sad.
I am voting this year. First time in 12 years. I am in Pittsburgh, where I am registered to vote. Where I grew up, where I went to highschool just 10 minutes away from where this shooting took place. I'm feeling really tired of human beings as a race. I'm beyond tired of capitalism and I never wanted to vote for one capitalist over another. But this is just too much.
Wake up, America.
Wake up.
The problem is not the mental health of this one man. This is not an aberrant numeral in an otherwise perfectly algorithmic chain. This is the algorithm. Racism and gun violence. Fascism and hate. Panic and mental illness. This is our president and this is us. But we can change. Despite the underlying hopelessness, I still believe that we can change.