Out of Empathy
In the collective insanity that is Post Trump America, it is almost impossible to be a reasonable person.
Today is the one year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando.
To mark this occasion, the New York Times publishes an OpEd A Night of Terror, a Year of Racism. It was written by a gay recent college graduate.
I remember being amazed by the swift and empathetic response from the city and much of the country… As a gay person of color, I found something truly comforting about this response. Part of me felt accepted, understood and even coddled in the midst of this harrowing event.
People came together after this tragedy to support their fellow Americans. How beautiful.
Another part felt more targeted than ever.
And victim.
This stereotyping has gotten much worse since the Pulse shooting, because despite the outpouring of support for L.G.B.T. and Latino people, the tragedy became an excuse to vilify Muslims before the 2016 presidential election.
And ISIS throwing gay men off buildings, or in the “Moderate” Muslim nation of Indonesia where gay men are caned.
From that moment on, it was clear that the tragedy would not become a reason to champion noble or productive causes like gun reform.
Never mind that the shooter was a self identified “soldier of Islam,” the real problem is guns.
Instead, it would become Exhibit A in Mr. Trump’s justification for a ban on Muslims entering the country — despite the fact that the shooter was an American and Muslim refugees have not killed anyone in the United States.
He’s right. It seems that the leading killers in the US and UK are the children of refugees. If we don’t let in the refugees, they won’t have radical kids. It’s a long term strategy.
The national coverage linking Islam to the massacre was inescapable.
Yep. Just like 9/11.
And you could feel it in Orlando. In July, a month after the tragedy, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Muslim bias had spiked in our area: A Mason-Dixon poll found that 21 percent of Central Floridians held views on Muslims that were “more negative than before the shooting.”
Pretty sure killing 49 people and wounding 50 more in the name of Allah will do that.
The Pulse nightclub shooting was a terrible act of violence against a marginalized group of people. Attacking another marginalized group is not the way to prevent more shootings, or to help survivors heal.
The real victims of the Pulse shooting were Muslims. Yeah, 50 members of the LGBT community were dead and just as many were wounded. But being gay is almost passe at this point. It hasn’t been cutting edge since the late 90’s. Will and Grace made it almost mainstream. Muslims are the new “in” victims. Not that a gay man ever opened fire in a Mosque as retaliation or anything. Fifty dead gays is nothing compared to the sideways glances Muslims in the US get.
Over to The Washington Post, the article de jour was A year ago, 49 people died at Pulse nightclub. Today, Orlando remembers.
Oh no, 49 people died at a nightclub in Orlando? Was it a bad batch of fuzzy navels? Did they they dub step themselves to death? What happened?
It had been a year since the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history stole 49 lives there and scarred countless others; a year since Pulse, a safe space for Orlando’s gay community, fundamentally changed.
So less died and more murdered?
We are then treated to an extended history of the club, then this.
For 12 years, the club grew into an integral space for the gay community, one shattered within a matter of minutes by a madman with a gun.
A madman.
In the entire article, the words “terrorism,” “Islamic,” or “ISIS” didn’t appear once.
The responses by the political elite on social media were just as vapid.
The slogan of the onePulse Foundation, founded in the memory of the victims, is “we will not let hate win.”
Guess what. Hate fucking won.
A man, motivated by an ideology that hates gays, pledged allegiance to an army that murders gays, murdered 49 people in the name of his ideology, an nobody seems to want to confront that thought crime about that.
Instead, the June 11 Gay Pride day was as a tribute to the Pulse victims, and rapidly turned into an anti-Trump #Resist march.
Welcome to 2017. A radicalized Muslim, son of refugees, murders 49 people in a gay club in the name of Allah, and a year later the LGBT community honors the victims of the largest terrorist attack in the US since 9/11 by protesting the President of the US that wants to combat radical Islamic ideology.
Hate really fucking won. First Islamic hate of gays scored a high body count. Then Progressive LGBT hate of Conservatives won at the memorial for the victims.
If the LGBT community can’t address the real enemy they are facing and instead want to bash their political opponents than there is nothing I can do to help them.
Fuck it. My well of empathy is empty.
