Flaw Salad

A bad man died today. We all know who he was. I won’t say his name because he doesn’t deserve that. I am not in the habit of granting more humanity to people than they would give me. He hated women. He would have seen me as one and hated me, and he would have hated me especially for not looking like a woman should. He would have hated me for the disdain I would have been unable to hide in a world in which I would have tried to hide it. I would not have tried. I would have looked at his soulless eyes, crammed as they were into the center of his bloated head, and I would have seen nothing to value, nothing to respect. That man was beneath me, and he would have seen me knowing that. He would have hated me for knowing that. 

I will not offer sympathy. He deserves none. He demanded a world of guns, and he got his wish. We live in a country that kills. He helped make it that way. 

Since I’m in the habit of writing about the ethics of fascism, I guess it’s time to make a bold ethical claim: you do not owe kindness to people who actively harm you. Spouting hatred against my kind is active harm. I owe nothing to this man or to anyone who has feelings about him. I hate the world he has helped create. I want one without guns, in which children are not getting shot at the same time as this demon, one state away, because men like him have made existence unsafe for our most vulnerable people: kids at school. Fuck him. 

Sometimes people equate their positions of power with divinity and believe they are owed worship. A famous political commentator would have power over me, were he alive, in that he could sic an angry mob on me. Internet dogpiling, doxxing, swatting, etc. These people have tools to make life miserable, and I do not possess their power. In a confrontation of force, he would win every time. I mean, if he were alive. Which he is not. Because someone shot him dead. 

But here’s the kicker: men like him believe that somehow people like me are oppressing them. I would have looked down my nose at his squished-up face, and that profound disinterest would have read to him as an oppression because they think they are due respect. They are not. They may be able to overpower me, and they will, but they can never make me respect them. Not in life, not in death. And they know it. 

Some hand-wringers on the internet want calls for peace. They want civility. Some are understandably frightened of further escalation. They fear what violence the other side is capable of, and it is right to fear that. We don’t have the guns on our side, and we don’t have the bloodlust either. There are angry people, sure, but what fight we can muster pales in comparison to the hell their obscenely-armed contingent can unleash. I have been living in fear of this for many months. But feigning sympathy for this detestable cretin will not stop it. FOX News was trying to blame trans people for this shooting within the hour. We can’t respect our way out of their hatred. They will come for us anyway.

Protect yourself on the internet if you want. Be smart. But remember that there is no safety. When they decide to come for you, they will — no matter how much you publicly grieve your enemies.