Nothing New Under the Sun

There has been some discussion about whether there is a post-Rittenhouse embrace of violence on the right, as evidenced by the folks who want to now claim that Club Q patrons got something they deserved. I note that Trump attorney and sometime fart-snuffer, Jenna Ellis, wants to let us know that the real tragedy isn't so much that they were murdered, but that they probably died without the grace of Jesus entering into their hearts. They are just burning away in hell, and you know what?

Jenna Ellis does not mind that. She is sure enough of her own salvation that she doesn't think judging is a bad look for her--even if she has born false witness regarding an election. She wouldn't know how to start the day if she didn't know who she wanted to watch burn if she was given an all-access seat up yonder, to you know. Watch folks burn.

What other reward is there? 

Tim Pool was accusing everyone at Club Q as being "groomers" because that word is nearly as beat to hell as "woke". Instead of meaning a single individual who courts and isolates victims for their own gratification, it in his usage is "anybody who lets kids know queer people exist" which is really weird, because queer people do exist and knowing that isn't harmful. 

Sure--why don't you go storm a Southern Baptist church, tough guy Tim?  Go talk to some folks at the Vatican. Speak out about why the words "GOP politico" and "child porn" go together like peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. (Look, you go search some links yourself and get as sick as you need to be. But let me suggest Ruben Verastegui, Ralph Shorty, Charles Young, and Dennis Hastert for a start.) 

And the idea that Anderson Lee Aldrich is nonbinary, as posed by his lawyers, is a laugh and a half. I remember the fuckery around the identities of the killers of Matthew Shepard. I remember Ted Cruz pretending he thought Richard Dear identified as a woman.  It's sort on the order of Kanye claiming he can't be anti-Semitic because he's an Israelite.  It's every movie villain trying to creep into the skull of the victim by telling them:

"We're the same." To reverse victim and abuser, or at least drag them to the same level by muddying the relationship.

We should be well and truly over it--the gaslighting, the DARVO. But there's nothing new under the sun, and I see parallels with the excusing of what the Colorado Springs shooter has done and the lionization of shooters before. People easily point to Kyle Rittenhouse, who was lionized for shooting no-good BLM/antifa folks.  But you could look to people who thought George Zimmerman did nothing wrong and considered him an upright citizen. I think you could go even further, and look at the NRA and Bernie Goetz. 

You don't go too far from Bernie Goetz shooting four guys to Donald Trump wanting the death penalty for five guys, 

 

Is it the Religion of the Gun and the vision of a crusader purging the landscape with his righteous boomstick? Is it the spirit of Eric Rudolph? Is it the grotesque concatenation of guns and the specifically American Christian version of history? 

It's all that--the United States is uniquely bullshitted into thinking guns are a sacrament. Take of them and shoot. When in sober-minded, not religiously-deluded hands, they are just a tool. We think of moral differences as the start of holy war because we are way too promiscuous with war metaphors. And the religious right, in particular, thinks it has license to mind their neighbors' business, not having sorted out what the mote in one's neighbor's eye and the beam in one's own truly means. Nor "judge not lest ye be judged."

But in any event, when Republicans say suffer the little children to come unto them, I might be more worried for their tender experience amongst them than I am at any drag show. Because they preach hate. And that, plus fear, is the mindkiller. The invitation to the dark side. The beginning of a life-long scapegoating of others.  

It's not great.