Brief Words On The Minneapolis Tragedy

With utmost condolences and wishes for peace to the families of the victims.

Words don't quite do much anymore, if they ever did. So, for whatever they're worth . . .

It turns out that people generally have equal capacity of being either wonderful and sincere individuals, or downright awful in every way, shape and form.

No immutable characteristic of any person (i.e., ethnicity, origin, gender) is the deciding force behind anyone's being the caliber of horrible person that this person has proved to be.

Each and every one of us is capable of great kindness and equally so of great malevolence. If we were to give equal analysis of majorities and fringes in this kind of phenomena in America, we would have a far clearer picture. The problems of this society would be far more boldly distinguishable from the imagined problems that zealots impose on those they demonize.

But that doesn't give the networks and pundits ratings.

That doesn't throw red meat to the lot of opportunists who, in truth, are quite thrilled that children died this way. They have their opportunity to pretend that they care about the lives taken — as they openly care far, far more about slandering people like me. About doing collective punishment. About taking away rights. About actively dumbing down the population to be blind to all nuance that upsets their sense of black-and-white "reality."

The perpetrator was a 23 year-old trans woman. That apparently matters a lot to the likes of Jesse Waters, a known stalker and creep, peddling bottom-of-the-barrel outrage slop over trans people existing more than children dying at school.

She was also very vocally a far-right conspiracy theorist who made liberal use of slurs and hateful delusions in her ramblings before the atrocity took place. That well-documented part wasn't convenient for Fox's narrative, or the narratives of so many who spend more time obsessing about trans people (while magically never taking proven, vetted data about my people to heart) than they do obsessing with what makes people break in such an outwardly devastating way.

I cannot stress this enough: No average trans person claims this piece of shit.

We never feel any urge for restraint in disavowing a bad person who happens to be gender non-conforming. Being trans does not excuse malicious behavior. And being trans is in no way itself a malicious behavior. Nazism did this, not "gender ideology." (The only ones peddling ideology are the ones scapegoating and slandering my people. In the exploration of trans existence, we have only facts, history and dialog. Not ideologies.)

I as an individual trans woman have zero difficulty in saying that this person was a monster, a scum bag and a hideous stain on my community, who also unequivocally denounces this kind of deranged violence. It should go without emphasis that this person would be swiftly ejected from any gathering of average, everyday trans people if she entered into any fold of individuals and expressed this nonsense in front of those who face hatred and violence for existing in the sincerity of their being.

She, at the end of the day, was not any different from those that hurt trans people. And she certainly has, in ways we can only dread for the time being.

To the perpetrator: there is no pit deep enough to bury the ashes of your name, your face, your ilk. All you and your cisgender equivalents embody is self-destruction facing outward. An empty vehicle for conviction without substance. A permanent, unresolvable panic over nothing that only ends in the deaths of others and yourselves.

At least you followed your leader. Let's hope more do the same without ruining anyone else's lives.

Peace be to everyone who endeavors to sustain reason and kindness.