It isn’t just about cops killing black people. It isn’t just about cops being killed

.

It isn’t just all that which has gotten us all worried and concerned.
There is more.  We forget all the incidences of mass murders that have happened in this country. We forget the incidences of rape that have occurred that have had no punishment for the rapist.

The issue at hand is all the various examples of random and unexpected violence that have occurred in the past several years.  It doesn’t make any sense. It is violence that seems to come out of the blue. It is school shootings. It is shopping malls, it is movie theaters. It is anytime anyone out of the blue starts killing people who have done nothing to him. And that is the operative point.  It seems that all of these incidences have involved single men acting alone, and often young white men. They’re angry at something in general but not someone in particular and they don’t know how to express their anger, so they kill the person in front of them. The thing that is most frightening about all of this is that it could happen to any one of us at any time. It is nothing that we can control or prevent.

We feel helpless and constantly on guard, but even being on guard won’t do us any good. It is as if we can do all the right things and still be victims. We haven’t angered anyone. We’ve done all that society expects us to do and still someone, randomly, on their own, can decide to kill us. It isn’t personal at all – it is as impersonal as it could possibly be.

We were terrified by Ebola and then the Zika virus. These two things are seemingly random and they can forever affect your life (if not end it).  There was no way to avoid them. These incidents of random violence are the same.  There is no way to prepare or prevent them from happening.

This is why we feel so helpless.  We can’t legislate it away.  We can’t do anything.  Our “thoughts and prayers” seem to be falling on deaf ears.

To turn away from the newsfeed is to be accused of being indifferent.  It is to be accused of “white privilege”.  Tell us what we can do, and we will do it.  Otherwise, to continue to drown in these stories is to be psychically attacked over and over.