Bountiful Words, Beautiful World

I have been sad all day. And that’s such a fucking lame understatement I could cry. What’s it coming to? All this hate and violence and meanness. Why are we here? This side will blame the victims. That side will blame the religion. This other side of the fucked up blame polyhedral wants to blame the guns and this one over here is using it to better his/her campaign platform by blaming their opponent.

The fact is, a man hated a group of his fellow humans — for whatever his reasons, for however he got there — his hate was so powerful that murder became an option in his mind. Plain and simple. His hate. His crime. I have no doubt that denied access to his weapon of choice that he’d found alternative means. He would have cornered a young gay man in an alley and beaten him to death. He’d have tracked and raped and beaten a lesbian woman. Somehow his hate would have manifest itself. Bombs, guns, words, fists, hate. All hate hate hate. 

Everyone wants to place the blame somewhere. It was this or that or them. Us versus them. That’s all I hear these days. With or against. Us versus them. The we defined by our shared ideology against the they defined by theirs. It’s breeding a black, slimy culture of victim blaming. Shamefully abused by politicians to further their gains. The media bathing in blood and lapping at the open wound that is this nation’s sense of togetherness.

It boils down to one man’s hate. He chose to do this horrible thing. No one made him. He lived in his culture of fear and hate. Do you hear me? What I am repeating to you over and over? Those men and women destroyed by one man’s hate. 

We can take away the guns. Ban the religions we don’t like. Close the gay bars. Criminalize love. It won’t take the hate out of the black disgusting souls of those who want to snuff out the different. And taking those lives never makes the hater whole. And the cycle continues. 

I’m sad today. That this world is one that I have to raise my child in. Reassuring her again and again that people are good and the world is full of light and potential. Even doing so when I am full of fear and sadness and a sense of not knowing how to fix things. Loving my tribe. My family. My friends. The good, wonderful people who would never turn a weapon on someone just because they were different. The strangers I love though I’ve never met because to methey all deserve my respect. I’ll  keep doing it. Telling her. Reminding myself that there’s a light. That the beacons may be dim, but hate cannot be allowed to consume me. Us. Them.