Washington & Nashville

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Content Warning: Violence, racism, transphobia

I remember January 6 because it was Three Kings' Day. I was home for Winter break. Although I'd usually spend time off visiting my partner or going out with her or my friends somewhere, I try to make an effort to be like proximal to my family on holidays. But, wouldn't you know it—they're storming the Capitol! We crowded around the TV watching the news for hours, sort of bemused and entertained. The whole thing was spectacular, both in the sense of it being an event, and in the sense of it feeling unreal: it was an artifice of culture industry and political fantasy (these things are 1:1, thanks Debord) brought to life.

My mom said something funny: "They wouldn't get away with this if they weren't white." Back in 1954, some Puerto Rican nationalists stormed the Capitol to assassinate representatives during the height of the independence movement. Well, that's slightly inaccurate; it was after the US military had already bombed some cities, so maybe this was more of a Hail Mary. Anyway, they were arrested and sentenced to jail for 50-75 years, before President Carter ended up commuting their sentences.

Maybe that's a little extreme, so a better point of comparison might be the BLM protests in summer 2020 which police departments around the US cracked down on violently with tear gas and rubber bullets. I remember watching livestreams of the Washington protests in particular, where some people tried and failed to push over the barricades in front of the Capitol, but the riot police put an actual effort into holding the line. That didn't happen the next January, for whatever reason. Business as usual.

A couple days ago, a 28-year-old trans man named Aiden Hale killed six at a Catholic elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. This is one out of 376 school shootings since Columbine in 1999, or one out of 17 just this year (thanks WaPo—although, no thanks for misidentifying the shooter as a trans woman). Hale is not even the first trans male school shooter, with then-17-year-old Alec McKinney claiming that title in Denver, Colorado in 2019. But no one cared in 2019, it seems like.

Now there's a culture war. Conservatives have been blamed for enabling school shootings albeit usually as a matter of gun rights, less so to do with the people predisposed or socialized towards shooting schools and churches and synagogues and mosques and so on. Now ("now") there's a trans school shooter, at the height of anti-trans sentiment and legislation across the US. Whereas the conservative message before was to blame the individual rather than the weapon or the ideology, now they're blaming "transgenderism" for radicalizing youth (although Hale was 28 years old), blaming trans women for being essentially 'male' (although Hale was a trans man), and blaming testosterone for turning innocent 'female' people into violent killers (although Hale was not on hormonal treatment). Law enforcers haven't yet released Hale's manifesto; doubtlessly, commentators say, because it is a left-extremist diatribe against Christians. Though I have certain doubts.

What I do think, to echo my mom, is that Hale would've gotten away with it if he were cis. It would've just been another day of reading about kids dying, another day of second amendment culture war, another day of The Onion posting that article about mass shootings. It's terrifying that, within a day, reactionaries have happily changed their tune on guns and trans people. Instead of "Second amendment rights!", it's "Some people shouldn't have guns." Instead of "Trans people are sexual predators", it's "Trans people are violent conspirators." It's like they combined anti-gay and anti-Muslim messaging from the 2000s. Maybe I'm just cynical and scared, but I suspect the liberals are going to let them run with it: the first because it might lead to bipartisan firearm regulation, and the second because violent conspiracies are more palatable to them than sexual ones.

I'm supposed to be an atheist, but I hope Aiden Hale is suffering for what he did. I'm also scared. I don't know.

Comments

  1. Jon L.March 31, 2023 at 1:39 AM

    The reaction to these recent events has been particularly interesting after having watched Bojack Horseman (spoilers). There's an episode where women start carrying guns, and to make a long story short, guns are banned entirely rather than letting women have guns. As Diane says, "I can't believe America hates women more than it loves guns" to which another character responds, "Can't you?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Marcia B.April 2, 2023 at 8:05 PM

      that sounds pretty apt, specifically wrt this and more generally! really need to watch bojack haha

      Delete
  2. HudsonApril 2, 2023 at 1:00 AM

    I'd like to offer my deepest solidarity. It has sometimes been hard not to despair. It's not just in the US, of course... in the countries where I come from and where I live, there is also this palpable feeling that the culture war is the sinister prelude of something even more terrible... and it feels so hopeless, like there's nothing we can do but watch these things unfold. It's hard. Please accept my sincere comradeship from far away.

    P.S.: before reading this post, I came here to compliment you on your Frontier Scum review on Bones of Contention - of your articles that i read, i think that review is the one i like the most. I liked parts of Frontier Scum, but the setting didn't sit well with me and your review was spot-on as to why: "some texts posture themselves as anti-capitalist or anti-colonialist or anti-this or anti-that, but a superficial understanding of what constitutes those things results in works that are yet stamped by capitalism and Eurocentrism and so on". I can't think of another RPG review that looked as seriously as the underlying assumptions of a game. Thank you for that

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    Replies
    1. HudsonApril 2, 2023 at 7:35 AM

      *that looked as seriously AT the : )

      Delete
    2. Marcia B.April 2, 2023 at 8:09 PM

      hey hudson, thank you so much for your kind words and expression of solidarity :) that really means a lot and helps to not feel so alone. it is really terrifying that this sort of thing is happening all over the world, and like it is only intensifying and being made more 'real' over time. i hope you and yours keep safe during all this 💕

      also, thank you wrt the review!! i'm really glad you found it interesting, had been worried that it was overkill but also you know -- it seemed like interesting enough to think about, so it makes me happy that it was the same for others as well. FS feels like a wasted opportunity because there is so much room to explore the western as a political genre if that was really one's goal! a friend of mine has been working on something in a similar vein that i'm really excited for: https://failforwardblog.blogspot.com/2022/12/working-on-wild-inspirations-initial.html

      thank you again 😊 hope you have a nice week!!

      Delete

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