Probably a Mentally Ill Lone Wolf Since He's a White Guy

As we are frequently being reminded, we “don’t yet know the motivation” behind the mass murder at the PP clinic in Colorado Springs. But you know what? There’s a long, sickening, tiresome history of violent attacks on abortion providers. There’s been a pronounced uptick of arson/vandalism and general threats toward abortion providers, especially Planned Parenthood clinics, since the doctored videos came out a few months ago, complete with overheated political rhetoric and politically-motivated witch hunts in the aftermath. And given the LITERAL CHEERING that this human shitstain is getting from the rightwing sewersphere for having committed coldblooded murder of several people including a police officer, forgive me if I’m going to assume this is terrorist attack motivated by religious extremism. If I wind up being proven wrong eventually, so be it. But I think for now recent history gives me some basis for making this assumption.

When I got home yesterday, my husband was in good spirits because he was making Thanksgiving dinner and because my mom had just arrived for a visit. But he was also angry and upset. He said it’s not bad enough that he has to worry about his kids getting shot up at school or a movie theater. He also has to worry about his wife getting murdered because she’s going to work, and listening to people cheer about it later. It’s really pretty disgusting if you think about it.

On one level, it doesn’t matter what the motives of the shooter are. Whether he’s a religious extremist who thinks he’s entitled to murder people because God told him to, or whether he’s an angry white dude whose wife left him or he lost his job or whatever and his pain is so epic that he’s entitled to inflict it on multiple innocent people, either way an armed asshole has taken his sense of rage and entitlement to the streets. But on another level, it does matter what his motivations are. I work at an abortion clinic a few days a week, and this does not mean that my or my co-workers’ kids deserve to lose their parents, or our spouses deserve to lose their partners, or our parents deserve to lose their children. I would like for the people who count to start calling these things terrorist attacks because that’s what they are. It’s about time we started treating them like terrorist attacks.

Also, fuck that guy.