Hispanic Fanatic

As of this writing, they still have not captured the person who murdered that fascist guy.

You may have noticed that I referred to the victim as a fascist because, well, that’s the truth. Getting assassinated does not convey sainthood.

This fact seems to have confused many Americans. We are being told to grieve for a man whose history of bigotry is undisputed. We are being ordered to show respect to a right-wing extremist who damaged many people’s lives and gloated about it. 

The media coverage refers to him as a conservative voice, as if he had the gravitas of a George Will rather than the calamitous impact of a smug racist whose views are straight out of the 1950s but with more animosity.

Listen, you can say he was wretched person without rejoicing in his death. You can denounce this killing, as all sane people should, without wallowing in crocodile tears.

The implication is that all Americans must refrain from badmouthing a man who despised everyone who was not a straight, white Christian male and who worked tirelessly to demean and dehumanize whole segments of American society. 

This demand for compassion is all the more jarring considering that much of it comes from conservatives, who have taken great delight in insisting that empathy is bad and kindness is for losers.

Yes, the modern conservative movement has nothing but contempt for empathy, unless they want it for themselves, in which case it must be given without delay or pause, and in huge heaping piles.

So what happens when all the eulogies from conservatives and weak-willed liberals fade away? Most  likely, there will be more political violence. It is obviously unavoidable at this point, and the fact that the Republican Party has amplified and intensified calls for political violence is something the GOP wants you to forget at the moment. But threats and bullying are the Republican brand now. The only surprise is that conservatives are shocked that their hyper-aggressive behavior and sociopathic mocking of victims has infected society. I mean, who could have called that?

Speaking of violence, it is indeed ironic that the victim in this case regarded gun deaths as no big deal because of, you know, freedom and stuff. Most likely, when he was rationalizing the deaths of thousands as necessary for the Second Amendment’s functioning, he was assuming that all that death would happen to someone else — probably some pagan immigrant who had it coming. Nobody who loves guns ever assumes that they will be the one who gets shot, the person who has to pay the price for this God-given right that is so essential that school kids have to wear bulletproof backpacks. Nope, it won’t them — until it is.

I also find it interesting that so many people assume that the killer had military training to make such a complicated shot. That’s certainly possible.

But it’s also possible that with millions of guns in the hands of millions of people, and with thousands of those gun owners spending lots of time at shooting ranges, at least one highly motivated lunatic would devote the effort to becoming an ace sniper.

Hell, there are probably hundreds of Americans who have never served in the military who could have fired that rifle. 

Does that make you feel safer?

As I’ve mentioned before, my family is from El Salvador. I’ve never been there, but I hear that it’s nice.

Actually, I don’t hear that at all. In fact, I hear the direct opposite.

My mom and aunt came to America decades ago, and they have surprisingly little positive to say about their childhoods in El Salvador. One of my cousins came to the United States when he was a kid. He has vowed never to set foot in El Salvador the rest of his life, because the place holds such dark memories for him. And my brother has lived in that country for years now, and he has told me about the struggles of raising a family there.

So no, this isn’t going to be an up-with-the-motherland kind of article.

Because in addition to my family’s subjective experiences, there is also the fact that El Salvador is arguably “the murder capital of world.”

And that is definitely not a phrase to put on the travel brochure.

You see, the legacy of U.S. intervention, a horrific civil war, and a stagnant economy are all major reasons for the country’s problems. And of course, “violence by so-called maras – gangs that originated in the United States and spread to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – is thought to be the major push factor” in propelling the tiny nation into “a lethal cycle that the government’s current rhetoric and strategy will not be able to break.”

In short, it’s a messed-up place.

What’s interesting is that, as bad as El Salvador would be under most circumstances, a couple of stray variables have turned a horrific situation into a pure cataclysm.

Back in 1999, the government thought the best way to fight the skyrocketing crime rate was to arm its citizens. It was that whole fantastical scenario of a good guy with a gun coming in to save the day. Well, that didn’t exactly work out.

The laws “permitted the private possession of heavy weapons. Instead of reducing violence,” however, these laws “fuelled its escalation.”

Another factor in El Salvador’s demise is its hyper-religious culture. The Catholic Church has such sway over the inhabitants that abortion is “illegal in all circumstances, without exception, punishable by up to eight years in prison. Sentences of up to 30 years have been handed down when a judge determined that ‘homicide’ rather than abortion had occurred.”

When women are denied basic rights over their own bodies, the culture notices. And today, “El Salvador is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women,” with “the highest rate of femicide in the entire world.”

Now, you might say that this is all very depressing, but that’s life in the third world — right?

Well, look at some of those factors again: a country where citizens are heavily armed, religion is all-powerful, abortion is illegal, and strongmen run the place.

This is the dream of everyone who voted for Roy Moore yesterday. Fortunately for America, they were outnumbered… this time.

For all the fear and paranoia that white right-wingers have about Latinos, they seem absolutely hell-bent to adopt the very worst ideas of Hispanic culture.

Perhaps El Salvador has bottomed out, and can only improve.

But the United States, if handed over to zealots, can get a lot, lot worse.

So I just got back from a conference in amazing New Orleans (always one of my favorite cities). The conference featured lots of breakout sessions where the presenters encouraged us to seize the day and live our passions and grab the bull by both horns while seizing your passion every day and so on and so on.

In any case, I noticed something odd about the breakout sessions. For the most part, during the short Q&A portion at the end of each presentation, the women would raise their hands and ask questions. In contrast, the men pretended that they were asking questions, but most of them just made statements.

During session after session, the women seemed more interested in having an expert answer their inquiries and/or engage in a conversation. The men seemed more interested in asserting their expertise, contradicting the moderator, and in general just declaring how super fucking awesome they were to a room full of captive strangers.

On the penultimate day of the conference, some lunatic shot at several congressmen in Washington D.C. Much has been made of the fact that the shooter wasn’t a right-wing nut job. He was ardently anti-Trump.

Sadly, I wasn’t too surprised at this. You see, a pro-Trump man with anger issues has less reason to open up on Congress, because his guy is in charge right now. Oh, he might consider taking a shot at a leading Democrat or a pesky journalist, but ultimately, he will likely decide that it’s not worth it. After all, Trump will have all those traitors thrown in jail soon enough, right?

Now, if Hilary Clinton had won… well, let’s just say that one of the few pluses of Trump’s appalling victory is that we may have been spared from even more violence than we see now, most prevalent in the form of surging hate crimes. Yes, it could have been even worse if Trump’s fans felt robbed and ignored, rather than smug and empowered.

This brings us back to the loser who opened fire on people playing softball. You see, he was a guy who felt victimized, and like many men, he decided that violence was the obvious solution.

The only difference between him and many of his peers is that he correctly identified the people who were fucking with him. He knew it wasn’t immigrants or gays. It was the rich guys who rigged the game.

But other than this insight, he had the exact same reaction as do so many other old guys with access to firearms. He didn’t believe in looking at his own life decisions, or working to improve the system, or helping out his community. No, he believed in punishment and fear and hatred and searing rage. He insisted that, as a white man in America, people were going to listen to him, damn it. He was going to make people pay, and everyone would know how great he was.

That’s what he was thinking. That’s what many men are thinking.

And the objects of their scorn may vary, but their solution is consistent. And that is fucking terrifying.