I've been struggling to find the proper words to talk about the massacre in Pittsburgh. Mostly because most of the words I have are ugly ones. But what kind of words should be used in the face of such an ugly act?
There was never any shock, and the sorrow has faded to just a harmony note to my rage. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Jew that's surprised that this could happen. It's been less than a lifetime since the last effort to wipe us out commenced, and that was far from the first. We are a people an identity not of a shared land, but of a shared flight. From bondage in Egypt, the crusades in the holy Land, the pogroms of Russia and the Slavic states. When people ask me where my family is from, I think "Somewhere that hated us."
So it doesn't come as a surprise there is hatred waiting for us here in America. It's always been here. I was called a Christ killer for the first time in the 2nd grade. I laughed off the Jew jokes of my friends to show I wasn't too sensitive. When I first went to school in Pittsburgh, I took it amicably when people told me in awed tones that I was the first Jew they had met, like they couldn't wait to see my horns
I still remember the way my family was stared at walking into a small restaurant in the South: a mixture of curiosity and hate. Like particularly beautiful cockroach.
So the events in Pittsburgh aren't surprising, and neither is the response. How can we be surprised that a man who as governor opposed
the very notion of charging somehow with a hate crime, brought out a Messianic Jew to pay tribute to our dead? How can we be surprised when the man who stocks his White House with avowed White Nationalist comes out on stage to a rally the very night we were slaughtered to "Happy"? But somehow they're still a rude awakening. The Jewish people have to lull themselves into thinking they're safe. How else could you live?
To complicate it all, we mostly present as White with a capital W. Not an Other to the supremacy of America. We have used it for so long as a weapon to fight for justice for our minority brothers and sisters that we have forgotten we are part of them. We are church goers in the pews of Charleston, we are the children of refugees in cages in Texas, we are grandparents shot dead shopping for groceries, we just forgot. And that remembering is so much of the pain we've been going through.
But the rage is a more simple thing. It's in response to our helplessness. If things are still the same as they've always been, then what's to stop it from continuing? I've seen so many people respond to this with the familiar refrain of "Vote" as if having Democrats back in power will put this genie back in the bottle. The same politicians that equate confronting people in diners to mailing them pipe bombs. The same "When they go low, we go high" that let Trump ascend.
Don't get me wrong, Trump is responsible for bringing this hate to a boil and then letting it free. Those that voted him need to live with that blood on their hands. Those that support the rise of totalitarian fascism anywhere, whether it be here, Brazil, or Israel are responsible. I can not and will not separate people from their politics any longer. Because politics are "just politics" to those that they do not affect. To everyone else they are life and death.
And maybe it is pure nihilism, but Love won't save us either. An attempted rapist will command women what to do with their bodies for the next 40 years. A man who said he would rather his son be dead than gay will rule Brazil until he decides he's done. The man who has incited the rise of every kind of "ism" and "phobia" here at home will be re-elected in 2 years. Hate wins. Hate wins because it doesn't care about the rules. Hate wins because it doesn't stop and consider the root of the problem. Hate wins because it resides in the hearts of everyone.
The time for hand wringing over Antifa is over. They're fighting fascist and we should applaud them for it. They're meeting violence with violence. Do we send troops around the world with pithy protest signs? Do police organize parades against hostage takers?
If I see a proud boy walking the streets of my city, I will show him my pride. It's time we Make Racists Afraid Again.
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