They are winning.
The floodgates were opened and were systematically dismantled, piece by piece, with haste, in the cold light of day, for all to see.
“Here we are, taking it all apart”
Some wore hats and cheered. Others wore a scowl and held up posters. Most watched Netflix and drank wine.
We won’t live long enough to see the tide turned.
Jeremy Richman didn’t live long enough.
His daughter Avielle would have turned 13 this year.
He endured years of unimaginable grief, compounded by evil men working vigilantly to deny his pain. They mocked the pain. Somewhere, on the other side of computer screens, evil men are smiling. They are laughing. They are winning and they know it.
We are at war with these evil men. We are at war also with the channels allowing them to exhale. Yet we too use these same channels religiously. We are looking the other way, reporting, clicking, hiding, blocking, muting, but we continue using and feeding the channels all the same.
This is a war being waged against decency. And we are losing; we are bearing witness to the massacre of truth, the genocide of goodness, the death of a deeply flawed but great experiment. They are not even bothering to cloak it, the evil men. There is no misdirection. They know we twist the sun in knots so daylight doesn’t pose them a threat.
On the same day that Mr. Richman committed suicide, there were monkey chants directed at black footballers in eastern Europe. People on TV shake their heads, issue strong words of condemnation, and speak in unison that “something must be done”. They sing from the same hymn sheet while the church burns. The flames reach the heavens and we watch together, with hands in pockets and mouths agape.
Cops who have killed innocent black men on video walk about freely, cashing their paychecks every other Friday, while black men remain trapped behind bars for selling a bit of weed.
A woman was just assaulted. She’ll keep it to herself. She’s been conditioned to twist the narrative inside her mind to find fault within. It was something she was wearing — a bare mid-drift, one cold shoulder, an exposed thigh, some cleavage; it was the way she walked — too fast, too slow, too tempting; or it was something she said or didn’t say or should have said. “She was asking for it,” they will say so she will say nothing. The police station is fresh out of rape kits anyway. It’s been a busy week. The woman will reside with the shame and hurt and embarrassment forever; a hideous roommate she can never evict.
One can make a legitimate case for burying their head in sand; of deleting social media accounts and turning off the TV for good. Others will say that that is a sign of giving up the noble fight.
There’s no telling if anyone is right.
The sun is dying. It’s getting dark and bitter cold but I haven’t got a match to light a candle and the power’s out because a fuse blew.
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