The Buffalo Terrorist Didn’t Shoot Alone
The white supremacy industry in America with a healthy fundraising and publishing arm stood right beside him giving him talking points and a twisted history to justify his rage...
When the Buffalo Terrorist murdered 10 people with a semi-automatic rifle, he didn’t act alone.
The weapons industry in the United States stood right beside him, making sure he had easy and legal access to highly profitable weapons of war that are banned or heavily regulated in every other developed country in the world.
The Republican Party stood right beside him, taking money from that industry in exchange for blocking legislation the majority of Americans support that would regulate guns in America.
Republican appointees on the Supreme Court stood right beside him, taking gifts, junkets, and speaking fees from groups associated with the weapons industry that got them on the court and lobbied their votes in the corrupt Heller decision.
America’s media stood right beside him, normalizing the terrorism of mass shootings by never using the word “terrorist” to describe white people like him and never, ever informing people about how the rest of the world, like Norway and Australia, have reacted to gun atrocities.
The billionaires who fund the Republican Party stood right beside him, watching without a word as the same politicians they’d initially corrupted with their dark money contributions to keep taxes and regulation low, prostituted themselves to the gun industry.
When the Buffalo Terrorist murdered 10 people to “stop the replacement” of white people, he didn’t act alone.
The white supremacy industry — yes, it’s an industry in America with a healthy fundraising and publishing arm — stood right beside him giving him talking points and a twisted history to justify his rage.
Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott stood right beside him, pushing through laws to prevent the next generation of potential white terrorists he hoped to influence with his “manifesto” from learning the true racial history of America in public schools.
Fox “News” and their crew of hosts, producers, executives, and the Murdoch family stood right beside him, amplifying white people’s fear that if they end up the minority in this country, they may be treated the same as white people treated minorities for centuries.
Social media stood right beside him, spoon-feeding him rage, fear, and hate because those emotions flying through their cesspools of private groups tickle their algorithms and increase profits.
The massive monopolistic corporations that fund the Republican Party stood right beside him, continuing to shovel money to “Replacement Theory” politicians like Elise Stefanik and Matt Gaetz.
The Republican Party itself stood right beside him, having quietly invited white supremacists into their ranks in the 1970s with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”; doubled down on it in 1980 when Reagan’s first official campaign speech was in Mississippi where 3 civil rights workers were murdered; and approved of racism as an overt political strategy when they refused to ostracize Trump for his primary announcement that Mexicans were rapists and murderers.
In the end, white people all stand right beside the Buffalo Terrorist if those of us with that white privelige don’t push with everything we have to rid America of the scourge of racism and the power of big money and death-dealing industries that support it.
It simply isn’t enough to say we have to “rid America of the scourge.” The individual has to end his complicity with the collective, withdraw from the context of patriarchal tribalism, and re-create himself as a founding member of collaborative holism.
Morning in America! In a crimson red state. The restaurant is abuzz; the line is long; the unavoidable murmur of conversation both strangely cheery and happily delusional, as one would imagine in the cafeteria of the local looney bin. A curious study of subhuman behavior in the wild. Bite your tongue. Too early for this shit...
The average, indigestible Republican voter/hater/liar persisting in power, clogging the pipes of representative democracy despite repeated flushing, is wrong on: the fundamental purpose of government; true history and the proper education of children; religion and morality; crony capitalism and wealth disparity; crime and punishment; war and peace; science and climate destruction; health and happiness; just about everything from sunup to sundown... even what to order for breakfast. (Try the veggie omelet with egg whites and nondairy cheese instead of the "meat lover's platter" loaded with lard and cholesterol.)