12/06/2016
I am so fucking tired of a world where people are killed for not living up to an individual’s view of ‘morals’. I’m so tired of people using religion to justify death, I’m so done with wars where innocent people are bombed and a sense of mistrust towards anyone who doesn’t look like they’re part of the Hitler youth spreads as a result. I hate organised religion, it should be purely a source of hope not of hatred, things should not be taken at their source value. Why can’t we rewrite holy books to be more in keeping with today’s understanding of the world? Some nonce just wrote it ages ago why can’t we change it. Why is there such a lack of gun control, I’d like the NRA to fucking justify to me how this mass killing could have occurred without such a ready stream of easy access to military grade weapons. Why do the military even have these weapons? Why aren’t drones considered war crimes? Someone can hide behind a fucking remote and bomb civilians from miles and miles away on the hunch that some ‘terrorists’ live there. These terrorists that were once funded by western powers, they had to get their guns somewhere. A month that is supposed to be about pride to be who you are and the feeling of at least beginning to feel like there is a place for you in society has been turned into a time of mourning that will no doubt lead to more racism and retaliations. If he had been a white supremacist he wouldn’t be called a terrorist, why not – not all terrorists are brown. The word now has such strong Asian connotations its ridiculous. We also wouldn’t care what country his family are from; his poor bewildered family whose son has suddenly committed this act of extreme hate just because he witnessed a love he cannot understand. 50 people have lost their lives, 50 people whose names will be forgotten as the killer is spread across the world. 50 people whose families can never see them again, 50 people who would have been terrified in their last moments, 50 people who were once children. 50 people who will never reach old age or create families of their own, or if they had them will never get to witness the aging and growth of their families. Just because some extreme homophobic asshole didn’t see it as right, didn’t recognise the strength of their love and humanity as worthy, as beautiful. I am disgusted at a world that will keep turning and getting worst as more horrors fill the news pages. I am outraged at myself for not feeling such a strong sense of disgust and anger when I hear things about immigrants drowning on their way to try and escape a life of fear and hate. Only to die or be welcomed by racism and suspicion if they make it. Their lives are much easier to block out, their lives won’t be shared on social media. Their photographs won’t be plastering Instagram; a paragraph on a newspaper for a full boat of life drowned. Of desperate life, while we sit in our houses and debate just how many – if any we let in. I am so sick of this fucked up world and my place in it. My place on the safe side where I don’t have to escape from bigotry, or extremists or danger. I don’t want to talk about a piece of shit who murdered I want to talk about the victims who are forgotten, the victims of every kind of attack the world has to offer. I am angry. I have had enough and I haven’t even personally faced any of it. Something needs to change but nothing will. This world and its contents are drifting down river to a place of no return, if we haven’t already reached it. I don’t even know what I, a broke, privileged 18 year old can do about it. Today and all days are of sadness, of victims of senseless violence and hate. No one should stand for it.
- Emily Taithe
