Asymmetrical Warfare

December 1, 2022

     It has been almost two weeks since the horrific mass shooting in Colorado Springs, where the body armor-clad 22 year old grandchild of a MAGA Republican legislator barged into Club Q, killing 5 people and injuring 25 more. Only the quick thinking of Richard Fierro, a battle-scarred Latino veteran, and a trans woman patron kept the death toll from being higher.  Richard Fierro was out with his wife, daughter and daughter’s boyfriend, seeking nothing more than a fun Saturday night watching one of his daughter’s friends perform in Club Q’s drag show (Source:  “Army Veteran Went Into ‘Combat Mode’ to Disarm the Club Q Shooter,” by Dave Phillips, The New York Times, 11/21/22).

    Fierro’s wife and daughter were injured and his daughter’s longtime boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, was killed.  When police arrived at the scene, they handcuffed Fierro and held him in the back of a squad car for an hour, rather than apprehend the battered white perpetrator on the floor, (Source: ibid).

     The right wing response to the carnage bypassed the hollow “thoughts and prayers” invocation and doubled down on homophobia and transphobia, (Source: “Right-wing media and influencers double down on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in wake of the Colorado shooting,”  by Ben Goggin and Kat Tenbarge, NBCNews.com, 11/23/22).  There were those who wondered what a straight man and his family were doing in a LGBTQ bar and those who cynically cited the killer’s assertion that they were nonbinary as proof that this wasn’t a hate crime. The vilest Christofascists heaped scorn on the victims,claiming that murders would continue unless trans affirming healthcare was stopped!

    We barely had time to catch our breath from the Colorado Springs mass shooting when we were rocked by the news of yet another.  Last Wednesday morning, as we awoke, hoping to concentrate on nothing more consequential than meal prep and travel logistics, we learned that a disgruntled Walmart manager had used a brand new 9mm handgun to execute six of his co-workers at a Chesapeake, Virginia Walmart the previous night, (Source:  “Walmart shooter left a ‘death note,’ bought gun the day of shooting,” by Ben Finley and Matthew Berakat, APnews.com, 11/26/22).

    The most striking thing about our response to these two shootings is how resigned we have become.  We treat mass shootings like inevitable acts of God (or the devil) that we are powerless to prevent.  It has become so disturbingly commonplace that a “new type of reporter” has emerged, “the ‘mass shooting correspondent’.” 

     The rhetorical response to mass shootings has normally followed a predictable rhythm of Democratic demand for gun control and Republican deflection.  Not this time. The right wing escalation after Colorado Springs shows that we have turned a dark corner.  In truth, we have known since January 6th that an aggrieved white supremacist minority seeks to impose its will through violence.  Republicans obdurately refuse to enact gun control legislation, not because of campaign donations from the NRA, but because they seek to empower that minority to menace or murder the majority of us who oppose them.  They gleefully feed their adherents hatred and lies and arm them with weapons of war to mow down those of us they have demonized.

      As a result, armed goons who believe the Second Amendment trumps the First are actively trying to silence and intimidate those of us simply trying to vote, or protest in favor of basic civil rights.  77% of those armed at protests are right wing (Source: “At Protests,Guns Are Doing the Talking,” by Mike McIntire, The New York Times, 11/26/22).  This is what makes Elon Musk’s blanket amnesty for racist, antisemitic and transphobic Twitter accounts and Trump’s cozy dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes so incredibly dangerous. The world’s wealthiest man and the former President of the United States are literally platforming Nazis, amplifying and mainstreaming their hateful messages.

      While it is hard to believe that antisemitism, racism and transphobia are being openly celebrated in 2022 by millions of mediocre men (and the women who love them) who have nothing but the myth of their superiority to hold onto, we don’t have the luxury of being shocked.  As long as we sit, mouths agape in disbelief, thinking that these people will wake up and recognize our humanity, we’ll be engaged in asymmetrical warfare.  There is no choice but to literally disarm them and to overpower them by standing up for each other.  We need to show up for trans lives, condemn antisemitism, no matter the mouthpiece and combat anti-Black racism, every single day.  Yes it will be hard, but face it, the other way lies madness.

#MomsDemandAction

#Banassaultweapons

#callen-lorde.org

#NAACPLDEF