On the Orlando massacre

Been listening, and considering my response all day.

I was called an LGBT Ally for my writing on dignity and respect before I knew what LGBT was. I don’t give a shit who you love. That’s your business, and I appreciate people staying out of mine.

What I do care about is security and the general well-being. For much of my career I lived among populations where going out after dark invites rape, kidnapping, or murder. Where families do NOT lie down at night in confidence they’ll be safe until the morning.

Where “I got lucky at the club” meant escaping a massacre, not “getting laid”….

In my years abroad I’ve tried hard to help those societies become more like ours in the domain of security. Now, however, we see an instance of ours becoming like “theirs.” And that’s precisely what the hate-driven followers of jihad want. They believe violence is the path to power, and they do want power. Don’t be fooled by talk of God. They want fear, because fear is the easy way to influence. They want to use fear because inside they’re twisted, squirming, fearful, impotent little worms. They have nothing legitimate to use. They depend on “terrorizing” victims of their power grab, and so we call them terrorists.

Want to know how we can help them? By calling gays fags. Or blacks niggers. Or whites crackers. If there was any doubt in your mind that all of our society is in the crosshairs of these fearful little impotent worms, I hope last night woke your ass up. 

DIVISION is the best thing we  can practice to help jihadis spread their spectacle and build toward the attainment of actual power. You’re free to keep celebrating it, if you like. Keep putting advertising dollars into the TV talk shows where guests’ fists fly and the host pretends to try and stop the fight while he mentally converts ratings to profits. Keep calling the “other side” traitors, and idiots, and whatever inaccurate small insults you can dream up to avoid confronting and discussing the real issues like real adults.

As long as we do what the jihadis want and divide among ourselves, we’re guaranteed to not invest our material and mental capital into legitimate, practical solutions to problems we all see. What we don’t see is that we’re part of the problem when we don’t focus on the fixes. Here’s a spoiler: the fixes do not involve banning all Muslims OR all guns. We’re morons for entertaining either notion.

You’ll have to try to forget that our country has the word “United” right there in its name. We could talk to each other with civility, and disagree with respect. We could each sacrifice a little of what we want in service to what We Need. We could work toward actual national security without exaggerations of policy that work against our national safety. But I wonder when we will.