NEWSLETTER: THEY JUST CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES, CAN THEY?
You know,
For a brief, shining moment, I thought maybe—just MAYBE—we could go a full twenty-four hours without someone proving humanity was a failed experiment.
I was wrong. I am always wrong. It is my curse.
I go online today. Big mistake. Huge mistake. You'd think after all these years I'd learn. Nope. I mainline this garbage directly into my withered, cynical heart.
And what do I see? A school shooting. Children. Dead. Parents getting phone calls, no parent should ever get. That feeling in your chest like someone parked a Buick on it.
And the radical right?
Oh, they're busy.
They are BUSY, folks. They are typing. They are hunting. They are SO excited. Because they THINK they found one. A trans person. Maybe connected. Probably not. DEFINITELY not. But who cares about "definitely?" Who cares about "maybe?" Who cares about "waiting for the bodies to cool?"
The machine is already running.
"SEE?" they scream into the void. "SEE? THIS is who they are. THIS is the agenda. THIS is why we must ERASE them."
What the FUCK is wrong with you?
No. I am not being rhetorical. I am not being clever. I am asking you, directly, you absolute ghouls: What. The. FUCK. Is. Wrong. With. You?
Children are dead.
Let me say that again, because you clearly missed it the first three thousand times.
CHILDREN. ARE. DEAD.
Somewhere, right now, a mother is trying to figure out how she walks into her child's bedroom, and it doesn't smell like them anymore. A father is staring at a baseball glove that will never be used again. A sibling is realizing they don't get to grow up with their best friend.
And you are typing.
You are crafting the PERFECT tweet. You are finding the PERFECT angle. You are so CLOSE to owning the libs this time. This is it. This is the big one.
DO YOU HEAR YOURSELVES????
Do you ever just... STOP? Sit in a dark room? Listen to the sound of your own breathing? And think: “Maybe I am the bad thing.”
No. Of course not. Bad things don't know they're bad things. Bad things think they're the hero. Bad things think they're fighting the good fight.
But here's the thing about your fight: You don't care about victims. You never have. You care about USING victims. Victims are currency to you. Victims are ammunition. A dead child is not a tragedy to you. It's an OPENER. It's a SEGUE. It's a chance to say "Ah-HA! SEE? We were RIGHT to be afraid!"
You are not protecting children. You are waiting for children to die so you can weaponize their bodies against the people you already decided to hate.
And for WHAT?
So you can pass a law? So you can win an election? So you can feel superior for five minutes before the next tragedy hits and you do it ALL OVER AGAIN?
I look at you people, and I think: This is it. This is the bottom. This is the lowest humanity can go.
And then tomorrow, you find a new shovel.
So here is my question. And I want an answer. I want you to type it in the comments. I want you to scream it into your pillow tonight.
When you saw those families grieving, and your first instinct was to LIE—to make up a story about a trans shooter that didn't exist—what exactly did you think you were accomplishing?
Was it worth it?
DID YOU GET WHAT YOU WANTED?!
Does the dopamine hit from a retweet fill the hole where your soul used to be?
I'm asking because I genuinely don't understand anymore. I used to think there was a line. I used to think there were things you just DIDN'T do. I was naive. I was Will Adams. I was always the stupid one.
But you. YOU are supposed to be the smart ones. The strategists. The "truth-tellers."
And you just... make things up. About dead children. To hurt people you don't know.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
No, seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you?
— Will Adams
Editor, The Provincial Times
