So, here’s an article published on PolitiFact last week that made me want to smash head-first
through a series of walls in a manner not unlike a giant robot with Homer Simpson’s brain after
having detected donuts, or Marvel Comics’ the Juggernaut after having . . . realized
he wanted to . . . go somewhere — I dunno, maybe he wants a donut, too. Anyway, here’s the article:
Headline: “ ‘False flag’ claims about the shooting in Buffalo are baseless”.
And then the body of the article talks about how there is an overwhelming amount of evidence,
in the form of physical evidence and eyewitness testimony, establishing that
the mass-shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, did, in fact, take place.
Obviously, I’m not mad at Gabrielle Settles, the author of this article, or anyone else
at PolitiFact — they do good work, so far as I’ve ever seen. I’m mad because an article like this
is even necessary. And, it’s necessary because of tweets like this one, referenced by the article:
“Absolutely NOTHING about the ‘mass shooting’ in Buffalo, NY adds
up to anything but a total false flag event. I'm calling bullshit.
#psyop #buffaloshooting #falseflag #massshooting
#antigun #psychologicaloperation #2A #gunrights #ar15”
And it’s not just tweets from rando gun nuts with a few dozen followers. There’s also this
article, headline: “Alex Jones Predicted The White Supremacist False Flag Shooting
At The Grocery Store”. That article is from InfoWars, the website run by Alex Jones — the
same Alex Jones who previously claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 was
faked — the same Alex Jones who recently declared bankruptcy in an attempt to
thwart defamation suits brought against him by families of Sandy Hook victims.
Alex Jones is a piece of shit — there are bigger ones out there,
but you really need to go on a hunt to find one — but does he not know how money works?
Specifically, how he loses a whole bunch of it when he accuses shooting victims and
their families of being liars and actors in a hoax? He obviously has no use in his life
for honesty, dignity, or basic human decency, but the motherfucker loves money — I know this!
Anyway. The PolitiFact article summarizes what we know about the Buffalo shooting: that it took
place at a Tops grocery store on May 14; that thirteen people were shot, ten of whom died;
that the shooting was carried out by an 18-year-old self-described white supremacist
who targeted Black people — eleven of the thirteen people shot were
Black — and who livestreamed the massacre as he was doing it.
It happened. We know it happened. We know who did it, and why.
We know who the dead are. And yet, there are those — including Alex Jones,
apparently, or at least someone whose work he is happy to host on his website — who
would have us believe that none of it happened, that it was all a hoax, a false flag operation
carried out to create a justification for stricter gun control regulations.
That certainly seems to be the foremost concern of whoever posted that tweeted
I quoted earlier. Dig those hashtags: #antigun, #2A, #gunrights, #ar15.
By the way, if you hear about a mass-shooting and your first thought is “Oh no, I hope they don’t
try to take my guns” — fuck you. I hope they do take your guns, and I hope somebody livestreams
that — I might find it momentarily amusing to watch you sobbing like a parent who’s just
lost custody of their child as the ATF agents cart away your beloved collection of would-be
murder weapons, you living embodiment of this country at its absolute fucking worst.
The funny, and sad, and exhausting thing about the idea that mass-shootings are faked by
agents of the government in order to allow them to push through stricter gun
laws is that we never pass stricter gun laws! Certainly not at the federal level! That never
happens! And on the rare occasions when it does happen,
when Congress does pass a law imposing stricter gun control, they still manage to fuck it up.
Remember there used to be a federal assault weapons ban? Know why I have to refer to it
in the past tense? Because it’s no longer in effect. Why is it no longer in effect?
Did the Republicans repeal it under the Bush or the Trump administration? Nope — it expired!
When the Democrats passed it in 1994, they included a sunset provision that meant it
would only be good for ten years. Why would you pass a gun ban with an expiration date?
“This is a serious problem, we need to get this deadly weapons off the streets — but,
ya know, just for a little while — let’s not get carried away!”
What are people like Alex Jones or the firearm fetishizing fuckwit who posted that tweet worried
about? Even if mass shootings like Sandy Hook or Buffalo or any of the others — and there have been
a lot — are hoaxes designed to bring about more draconian gun laws, it’s not exactly working!
Think about this. In 2012, in the Sandy Hook shooting, twenty-six people were murdered
at an elementary school — twenty of them children between six and seven years old.
Most of us did not believe Alex Jones when he said it was a hoax — most of us accepted,
and still accept, that it was real, that it happened. And what did we do about it?
Nothing. This December makes ten years since Sandy Hook. Have we banned any guns at the
federal level? Nope. Has the federal government conducted any large-scale
gun confiscations? Nope. Has Congress passed any gun control legislation? Nope — in fact,
Congress hasn’t passed any significant gun control legislation since the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act — the one with the temporary assault weapons ban — in 1994!
If I were a conspiracy theorist, and I thought Sandy Hook was a hoax to justify gun control,
but then I saw that the response to it — to twenty murdered children — was absolutely
nothing . . . I dunno, I’d probably figure my guns were safe, and relax.
But, that all assumes these conspiracy types are sincerely concerned about policy. And
I don’t think they are. It’s not about policy with them — it’s about identity. Being the person who
sees the man behind the curtain when most of us don’t is who they are — or who they’d like to be.
They like the feeling of being smarter than the rest of us, the feeling of being able
to see a deep, dark truth that most people are too ignorant or afraid to acknowledge.
I have the same question for them that I have for religious folks who insist that
a given occurrence is an act of god: how can you tell?
How can you distinguish between a mass shooting that is a hoax, and a genuine mass shooting?
That tweet I quoted earlier says that the Buffalo shooting is “obviously a false flag”
because “nothing about it adds up.” So, what would a mass shooting where things do add up look like?
And, if you can’t provide a coherent, useful answer to that question,
or — as is probably the case — if that question has never even occurred to you, I would consider
it a personal favor if you could shut the fuck up and go away so the folks at PolitiFact could
spend their time writing about other stuff, stuff that matters, because that ain’t you.