You People Make Me Sick

I've worked really hard over the past year or so to find some semblance of inner peace. Anything to keep me from bursting with blind rage towards a world I view as being almost completely full of terrible people. I'm like you, I spend too much time on the Internet, and I read about the things that interest me. Of course, that's only after I wade through all the clickbait, and “satire”. Today I caught myself thinking “hey, none of this idiocy is bothering me at all”, and I thought for a moment that maybe I was actually making progress. Then, something horrific happened.

Someone went into a building, and started shooting, unfortunately this happens really often in America. This time the victims were attending church, last time they were in a mall... or maybe it was a parking lot? I don't know, it's honestly hard to keep track, there's just so many. Anyway, another white guy, (don't even think of saying “race-baiter”, it's a white guy 99.9% of the time) went into a historic black church, and opened fire. That's after he sat quietly with them for a moment during their bible study; it's pure evil, and it just doesn't make any sense.

So there I was, so glued to twitter that I might as well have been physically attached. It was honestly the only place to find any news on the shooting for a while there. I think it would've remained the only place if it weren't for so many people calling out every major news outlet on their lack of coverage. Eventually, a few major news sites started talking about it a little, but Fox remained silent. Fox actually ran a story about a Mexican BBQ restaurant having “White Appreciation Day”, that is, once they got done talking with king of the jackasses, Donald Trump.

I saw an article about the shooting on Facebook, that great bastion of thoughtful, intelligent conversation. By now, I should know better than to read comments sections, but I did it anyway. Since a church was involved, out came the ever-so-clever, heavy-handed atheists. The ones who hate religion because of how it gets shoved down your throat, and then shove their own lack of beliefs down yours. Fun people to have at parties, I'm sure. Never mind that human beings were dead, this was a prime chance to shout, “where's your God now, huh?! Yeah, that's right, he's not real, suck it!” and they damn sure weren't going to miss out on that opportunity. Because, you know... that's helpful.

I went back to twitter to hopefully find some updates on the story, becoming aware that I was probably spending way too much time reading about such a tragedy. It's not that I don't want to be informed, it's just that I'm aware of the effects too much bad news has on your mental health. (Mental health is one of my go-to topics for Internet reading, has been for a while.) There wasn't much new information to be had on the shooting, but oh boy were there jokes! Because apparently domestic terrorism is hilarious to some people.

I don't know if all the flippant attitudes were racially motivated or if we're just devolving into people who simply don't care about each other. Considering the fact that not a moment goes by in this country without someone being killed, I'm thinking it's the latter. People overseas like to say things like, “you Americans are savages, always shooting each other” and want us to ban guns altogether. Never mind the fact that we've tried banning alcohol, and drugs without success. And of course, pro-gun people make the point that home defense is necessary, and keeps us from being under fully tyrannical rule. I understand both sides of that argument, but that discussion is for another time. Whatever the answer is, it's not going to be easy, or pleasant because that's America.

I don't think this is an American problem, this is a human problem. Humans are generally awful, and for the most part, we don't care. We don't communicate with each other, we want you to shut up so we can tell you how wrong you are in the most hostile way possible. We want an audience to do it in front of too. We want to berate each other as brutally as possible, so people will click “like” on it, and we'll somehow feel validated as human beings. There's someone reading this right now (or rather, skimming through it) just waiting to jump in the comments, and say how stupid this whole blog is; they may even question my sexuality or bash me on the assumption I belong to a certain faith.

No amount of legislation, or restrictions are going to fix our problems. You could ban guns, knives, bats, hammers, pointy sticks, and anything else you'd like; we'll just go back to killing each other with rocks, or our bare hands. The problem is actually pretty simple: people are miserable. For whatever reason, people are upset with something in their life, they project that onto someone else, and fester on that anger until it boils over. There is no easy fix, people are just going to have to learn to stop being hateful, but that may be impossible. I don't have any answers, and even if I did, most of you wouldn't listen. You'd just wait until you had your chance to tell me how wrong I am, and how right you are.

I've been up all night reading about all manner of despicable behavior, and I'll likely wake up, and see even more. (If I even manage to sleep.) Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky, and some celebrity you all love will flick her hair just so, and say “hey, you guys, chill out” or something, and it'll finally click with you. I know that's a pipe dream though because most people don't change, or even grow up for that matter. They just become overgrown children, pointing, and laughing at the kid who fell down at recess, or the underprivileged kid with holes in their shoes. People are unnecessarily mean-spirited, and it's just plain nauseating. I have no hope for us as a species, and whatever our fate, it's our own damn fault.