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Key points
- Mass shootings, as demonstrated by the recent killings in Buffalo, must be discussed but do not have to be sanctified by respectful rhetoric.
- The murders are not about mental health but about guns, race, anti-Semitism, misogyny, ignorance, and social media.
- Shooters choose to express their dissatisfaction in the same way an angry toddler chooses to soil his diaper.
Let’s make mass murder less attractive, shall we? For starters, let’s stop calling them “lone wolf” killers. Let's start calling them something less sharp, like “deformed possum” killers. Calling them "lone wolves" makes these individuals sound like they’re independent, intriguing predators.
They’re not. They’re angry, bored, frustrated loser guys (for the most part; they can, on rare occasions, also be women married or attached to loser guys) who are more petulant, ignorant, and brainwashed than passionate.
They didn’t get to be the heroes they thought they’d be growing up and, in defiance, they choose a path to express their dissatisfaction in pretty much the same way a toddler chooses to soil his diaper.
It isn’t noble. It’s disgusting.
Deformed possums have only two attributes: the ability to obtain weapons (as if that’s hard to do; in certain states, you’re given a choice between a gun and an iced tea when you purchase more than $40 worth of goods in a single transaction) and the willingness to make an irrevocable mess.
I don’t believe those who commit these kinds of crimes are responding to the call of the wild; what they are responding to is a call from their humiliated and distorted innards.
Nor do I believe that deformed possums are getting calls from any Deity approved by the Better Deity Bureau.
Mass shootings, as demonstrated by the recent killings in Buffalo, must be discussed but do not have to be sanctified by respectful rhetoric.
This is not about mental health; this is about guns, race, anti-Semitism, misogyny, ignorance, and social media. They get onto distorted and deforming social media platforms and then—whoosh, they are gone—down the drain of cults, 4Chan, and conspiracy theories.
While we’re at it, let’s stop using such declarations as “Worst Shooting in American History: 49 Dead” for headlines, because you know as well as I do that there is a deformed possum out there thinking, “I can do better than that.” You know there’s somebody out there considering this as nothing more than a high score that he can beat.
And let’s not use their names—or else let’s mispronounce them. If newscasters could have referred to the Oklahoma City terrorist as “Timmy-Tim-Woo M.V.”, for example, it would have robbed him of the dignity of being treated as part of the real world. If the Columbine possums had become known in everyday conversation as “Strawberry Muffin and Lemon Cake,” maybe the mythology surrounding them wouldn’t have appealed to the next generation of disaffected youth.
The Buffalo Boy might be known as WinkySmallDink. Or SavedHisOwnNeckIncelPosterchild.
Why am I making fun of this horrible situation? Because the chilling voice of fear whispers for us to place distance between ourselves and any approach of the real subjects underlying these attacks, and we can’t let that happen. Because with humor we can talk about taboo subjects, including death, violence, terror, hatred and loathing, without permitting those subjects to overwhelm us; mockery keeps them visible but still at a distance, the better for us to examine, interrogate and undermine their power over us.
Ill-informed incels. Cowards. Disgraces. They don't actually deserve to be in the same category as the possum, given that possums are harmless creatures. These misogynist anti-Semites, these self-declared "white supremacists" are far less human.
