[The Publisher wishes to commend the actions of our office intern Alfonso, who secured this column after a two-day chase through the woods. Despite the author having stripped naked and smeared himself in mud in an attempt to hide from contact with human life, Alfonso was commendably able to track him down, pry it from his hands, and transcribe the following handwritten pages, though they are incomplete. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.]
I am writing to you from a secret, undisclosed location somewhere in South-Central Ontario. I'm at a lake retreat, surrounded by forest. It's the sort of place a militia survivalist would seek out to await the ending of the world with a massive supply of beer and cigarettes, and so suits my purposes perfectly after the events of the last few days and my burning need to channel some dark energy.
Still, the situation here is admittedly precarious. The door to my cabin has no lock and can be blown open with little more force than a heavy cough, so the only thing that seems to be keeping the bears out is their own lack of opposable thumbs. It's folly to rely on that of course, but at least I'm armed to the teeth.
Perhaps more accurately, I'm as armed as I dare trust myself to be in these ghastly new circumstances: a Super Soaker Barrage 9800 is my primary line of defense. It may sound like a children's toy but anyone who says that hasn't taken a blast full force in the genitals - it packs enough pressure to shatter a human femur and is complimented by the 200 rounds of water balloons I have at my disposal which, with a little luck, will distract a large predator large enough for it to accidentally choke on the latex.
But I'm not here for the hunting or all of the convenient ways to be gruesomely killed. I'm here to escape - escape my work, escape the news, escape the internet, escape the city and people. If I am to have any hope of surviving the upcoming Republican National Convention I was always going to need some downtime to lower the blood pressure and detox the liver, but it's been a wretched and destructive week and now I want just the opposite; with any luck I can drink and smoke and sun my way to a massive stroke before I am forced to return to what we may now only generously call "civilization" and that infernal convention.
It's hard to describe the phenomenon that seems to be casting a shadow across the United States these days. For a few hours the other night I thought the country was literally going to rip itself apart and we were all going to watch it happen live on Twitter. That place as it exists now bears little resemblance to their great national mythos; it's hard to say Home of the Free and Land of the Brave about a society where an entire race of people effectively remain second class citizens, peaceful protests become ambushes and bloodbaths, and it's all still basically business as usual.
I would like to write about Black Lives Matters, and admit that every time I'm out late for a run in my hoodie, or whenever been pulled over for gratuitous speeding, I've always secretly been thankful that I'm not Black (or Trans, Muslim, or Camp, for that matter). There's a stark contrast between the reality I get to live in and the one African Americans are forced into every day, increasingly captured in horrifying videos of unarmed and innocent men being shot to death by police officers so irrationally terrified as to be rabid.
I would also like to write about the Dallas police force, and lament that it was members one of the most progressive and positively reformed police organization in the country who became victims, while they were standing amicably side-by-side with peaceful BLM protesters, tweeting pictures together until the shots began.
All of those thoughts are valid and worthy of their own piece but somehow I feel like this is the chill of something even bleaker than the systemic racism that haunts us. This Thing seems to go beyond Black Lives Matters or the Police, beyond Democrats or the GOP, beyond religious extremism. Beyond all of that. This is like entropy made manifest; it is a force of nature. As if the Republic has reached some critical mass and is now flying apart into chaos at the atomic level. What bonds of fellowship that have held it together so far are fraying, and whatever is left of the American Dream is distorted into something twisted, like the kind of American Dream you imagine springs from the imagination of the National Rifle Association.
Jesus, how big of a hard on do you think Wayne Lapierre was sporting, watching Dallas explode as if it was a new and particularly aggressive form of pornography? It was like his own personal fuck dungeon - Texas' open carry law meant many bystanders were carrying rifles out in public when the ambush started, which just added to the confusion and put even more lives at risk. So much for the "what if everyone just had a gun?" line of thinking, no? In fact the potential for a situation like this to become a complete mess is exactly why Texas police forces have always had problems with the open carry laws pushed by the NRA and their subby-gimps in the legislature.
Buy when you're bankrolled by the companies that make these things, suddenly every problem looks like something to be fired with a hair-trigger. Guns become your solution to every problem, even the ones caused by too many guns. Throw another SMG on the grill, dear. There's plenty more where that came from. So let's be honest with each other Wayne, Dallas was your little paradise isn't it? Guns (especially the insidiously vicious assault variety) for everyone! Except maybe blacks, of course - your silence after "he was openly carrying a gun" was the justification for the execution of Alton Sterling was just fucking deafening all the way out here in the forest.
There was a time not all that long ago when, like most men of a certain age, I loved guns. The noise, the action, the power, the precision. No more. It is now impossible for me to separate my personal affinity for the things from the gun lobby, which profits directly from sales and thinks the next justice on the Supreme Court should have "maximize proliferation of death and fear" added right into the oath of office.
The blood of the dead in Dallas and Baton Rouge and dozens of other places are on your hands, Wayne, and your hypocrisy over Alton Sterling makes your racist undertone plain. A massacre every now and then is just what the NRA wants: it stokes white fear and black suppression, furthers the discord on all fronts to drive everyone to the local hunting supply store to save them from having to confront the reality that is the United States today, and convinces cops that it's always better to shoot first and get acquitted later.
We are truly becoming a post-fact world where Boris Johnson can destroy Europe, Donald Trump can destroy the Presidency, and the combination of cheaply acquired weapons of mass destruction with a refusal to reconcile the American myth with the American reality can destroy countless lives on all sides, all because of feelings, and the prioritization of fear over information and compassion for fellow human beings.
Forget evidence and body cameras which show an overwhelming problem with the relationship between police and their communities, forget experts and studies which show non-violent and inclusive community policing and gun control make everyone safer, forget the golden rule and the fundamental tenet that we all deserve the same dignities...pass the ammunition and let's stomp someone who looks different than us or makes us feel strange or bad - we're scared, Goddammit.
[At this point the pages Alfonso was able to recover become illegible and smeared in mud, we apologize for the abrupt ending and promise normal service will resume shortly.]
