Christina Grimmie, the Pulse attacks, now this poor kid and family at Disney with the gator.
There's so much I feel like I want to say, yet the words fail me. I'm not gonna do what so many others have done, and jump on bandwagons. I wish I was there to help prevent these tragedies, or comfort the people going through it.
Imagine for a moment what idiotic outrage could be said about the Disney attack. The same weekend Disney donates $1 million to the survivors and offers accomodations to their families, people start assessing blame for the gator attack.
Disney let this happen, a sacrifice to the swamp gods for draining the wetlands to build theme parks on top of it. People wondering if the gator is a local breed, or imported. Because somehow, it's more important to find out if the attacker was a domestic, or foreign terrorist.
No one's asking the political, or religious motivations of the gator. Democrat? Republican? Gators are green, maybe he's with the Green party? Let's blame them.
What religion is the gator? Pentecostals handle snakes, gators eat snakes. Or maybe he was Baptist, they sure spend a lot of time in and around water. Ooo, maybe it follows nature, which makes it a Native American or Pagan practitioner. We haven't hated on them for a while, perfect scapegoat. It's not like their gods count anyway.
The gator shouldn't have been that close to people without being in an enclosure. How dare they come into an area that used to be their home! We don't recognize their claim to their homeland. Ban all alligator immigrants! Not forever, just until we fix the problem.
Alligator teeth have always been a weapon used since the time of dinosaurs, now all the dinosaurs are dead. We have to prevent the next mass extinction! We must regulate, if not completely ban alligator teeth altogether! Of course, teeth owners will rush out to buy as many gator teeth as possible before the government tries to take them all away.
What happened to that child is a damn tragedy, on a week of horrible tragedies. It's maddening. We try to put things in mind, to feel like we have a modicum of control. And when we can't find an answer, human nature tries to find someone to blame. Once again, to make us feel like we're in control.
And when finding someone or something to blame fails us, we then shift to assigning it to fate, or a higher power. Religious dickheads say the attack is their god's punishment for living an immoral lifestyle, so somehow, they deserve to be slaughtered. This of course, pisses me off beyond words. But if this pattern holds true, it'll just be a matter of time before someone says what happened to that kid was a deity's will.
Disney promotes belief in their own golden calf. Or in this case, a mouse. They tell stories rife with magic and evil. They bought Star Wars, so The Force is really code for Satanism. They bought Marvel, and make movies featuring gods that were supposed to be relegated to mythology centuries ago. They have Gay Days, so somehow accepting people that a 2000 year old book that also hates people who wears mixed fabric clothes, men who shaves their faces, eats shellfish and pork, means that an animal killing a two year old tourist boy while his father frantically fights to save his child's life and fails, is somehow justified.
It isn't.
A horrible thing happened. It happened on a weekend of other horrible things. Take steps to prevent it from happening again. But for fuck's sake, stop doing the all too human pattern of assigning useless blame or judgment, just so YOU can feel better about yourselves, while people mourn their losses! Support them, comfort each other. Be there for each other. Help where you can.
But please, PLEASE don't inflict your will or words, your rumors or beliefs into the matter. You're not helping, you're rubbing salt in the damn wounds. You're causing more harm than helping. And if you're not sure, just gather yourselves and your thoughts before smearing feces all over the open wounds of a bad situation.
That's all I have to say right now. Saying it makes me feel better. But I know it's little to no comfort to Christina Grimmie's brother, the LGBT community or that poor child's father.
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