There is a Swahili proverb: “The world is a field of chaos.” With my eyes I see it is so, and with all my heart I wish it wasn’t the case.
Shocked, saddened, hurt, mad, incredulous: words that are ultimately hollow when I try to describe how I feel, and when I realize I’ll never grasp the trauma and tragedy endured by those in Orlando who fell victim to an act of egregious hatred and violence. What was their crime?
I awoke Sunday and saw the news on Facebook, at once squinting my eyes and thinking, “Really, again?” Then the numbers came in: 20 people dead, 40 wounded. Fifty people dead, even more wounded: Millions of heartbeats, hopes and dreams extinguished in a moment. So many others left with a scar they will bear for the rest of their lives.
All of it is senseless and painful, yet still numbing. I sought to numb myself and drank a bottle of Malbec and put my music on loud. “Promessas do sol” by the angelic Milton Nascimento came on, with its tragic and beautiful refrain: “Que tragédia é essa que cai sobre todos nós?” What is this tragedy that befalls us all?
Alas, alcohol doesn’t numb you, it opens your eyes and pulls open the parts of your heart you’ve tried to close off. It exposes you to your innermost being you sought to forget.
I sat there listening to my music, burning way too much sage, and thought, “How could this happen? Where did we go wrong? Why did those poor souls have to die?”
I return to social media, and the entire feed is an outpouring of cyber love, solidarity, support, posturing, underneath it all the interminable sense of confusion and hurt. Why?
And this is where my sadness turns to anger. I’m tired, and I’m indignant, to see that many want to look at any mass shooting in the U.S. as an act of random violence. Such a thought is intellectually dishonest and morally unacceptable.
The popular narrative to which we’re subjected by the media is that acts of violence, even those against already marginalized groups, are random, and everything can be reduced to the mental illness of one individual. Society at large is always presumed to be an innocent bystander of sorts.
To me, that ideology is, as we say colloquially, a crock of shit. How can you tell me a country that has derided and mocked gay people and people of color since day one is not complicit in their dehumanization and murder?
The small minds in our midst pick up on the lessons and lies of the powerful. Having been the punch line of so many jokes, the subject of so many sermons, the source of shame for so many parents, how could gays, transgender people, queers and people of color have ever been expected to live a normal existence?
The inherent privilege of being cisgendered, straight and white is that you are by default the default. You don’t have to grapple with the abnormality of your being, You don’t have to publicly out yourself and suffer a lifetime of ostracism and otherness.
This incident will likely reignite the debate on the role of guns in the U.S., which is a much-needed discussion.
For all those who think weapons do not pose a distinct threat to human existence, I pray you will be delivered of your blindness and ignorance.
There is no point in engaging in dialogue with those who think guns are innocuous or, more dastardly, that our salvation lies in more guns.
What we witnessed in Orlando was a barbaric explosion of hatred, made much more efficient and deadly by firearms. We are thus left with two prime obstacles against which to struggle: queerphobia and the proliferation of guns in the U.S.
May the victims rest in eternal peace, and may their death not be in vain.
Jordan MacKenzie is a second-year UF linguistics master’s student. His column appears on Thursdays.
