These idiots resisting masks, these idiots screaming I WANT A HAIRCUT, these idiots just generally:
“FREEDOM AIN’T FREE! THESE COLORS DON’T RUN! RESPECT LAW AND ORDER!”
“Sir, could you not go to Pizza Hut for a bit so your parents don’t die? You can still take it home and eat it there.”
“I AM HISTORY’S GREATEST VICTIM! NOW I KNOW TRUE PAIN.”
— Jason McGrath (@JasonMMcGrath) May 3, 2020
They were promised an end of the world they could shoot their way out of. They were promised an end of the world in which they were kings because they had guns, not because they knew how to do or make stuff or were in any way useful.
I could take it if these were like, the hunters and fishermen out here saying look, we need to get food for our families, can you let us have permits you’re denying us, or something. I could take it if these people were asking to actually perform vital functions. They’re not, though. They’re just being obstinate because obstinacy feels like strength, because spite feels like courage, because anger always feels better than sorrow.
And that obstinacy is what they were promised, in their fantasies and video games and movies — that they could gather some white men around them with guns, and they could take. They’ve been taught a false history from the start, about the men who sat on the verandas and fanned themselves, instead of about the ones who plowed the fields.
They thought the revolution happened overnight. They think one battle is all it should take, and so they’ll stage that battle anywhere, over anything, no matter how ridiculous. Their stories all end with victory that’s a waving flag on the horizon, cheering as the villains leave the field. The cameras don’t stick around for the dressing of wounds and the digging of graves.
They also don’t stick around for the hard grinding work of building a society that way one is always built, by people sharing what they have and figuring out what they can do together. That’s the saddest thing: They can be heroes anytime they want. They just have to let go of the fantasy that the only apocalypse you get is the one where you strap on the Kevlar.
A.
All the movies and video games portray it as a heroic shoot-em up action. It’s not about building a society that works, what’s the fun in that?
Saw a tweet the other day that said, “Hell hath no fury like a white person mildly inconvenienced.”
This fits, too: “The clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings and still isn’t as sensitive as a white man on the Internet”