The Aesthetics of Manslaughter

 

Look at him--the National Police Association bids, "Behold the man." His golden curls lit by the sun, his rugged jawline, without obvious benefit of mewing. His head held high, his shoulders back. The V of his swimmer's build, the likely fruitfulness of his Aryan loins. I have never seen a police Tweet so obviously eroticized. Choke me out too, Big Daddy, it practically cries. I'm bad and totally down and you're gooooooood. A Good Samaritan who mercy kills sad-ass mentally ill poors. Do that T4 shit, Big Daddy with the mustache. Go like a killing machine. 

I'm not exaggerating what I'm seeing online.  Holy shit, this is spank material. No, let me unveil this:

Yeah, they used AI to make this art about the guy who clapped down his socials and who probably would get more hotter for these weirdos if he was milkshake ducked. 

I guess these are the same kinds of people who make Trump look like he isn't a fat ass who needs a golf cart, but is some kind of real man of genius (tm).  And also really strong and not a soft handed manbaby. 

They want a hero. They want a weird and obvious lie. They want to be told that Neely was an obvious threat because of course he was and that killing a man saved the day. They don't want to wonder what could have been if real Good Samaritan options, like feeding the hungry, were employed. Where is the payoff there--in the idea of someone else being salvaged from a terrible place? What if someone just said, "Brother, at the next stop I will buy you some food and drink."

Because that was what the Good Samaritan would have done.

You damn dumb asshats--that's Christianity--you were supposed to see Him in the least of these. Not in the exulting godhood of the slayer, but in the moment of desperation in the slain. He was the Son of Man Penny crucified by the cross of his own hands and he and a multitude don't want to know it. 

But I choose to see it. And seeing the humanity of another, however wretched, is a choice. We don't have perfect souls down here, and we don't have perfect victims, but what we have is one another. And this imperfect man got killed because another man heard his cry that he had not food and no water, and decided he didn't need air either. 

And I find that inaesthetic. Actually, I find that appalling, and the gorgeous face of the killer doesn't tell me something other than we don't tell the truth about the poor among us, or so many other marginalized--we let people somehow not exist on our book of the living. And we let others off the hook so easily, for superficial reasons. 

How can that be ok?