Thoughts on the Florida Massacre.

Thoughts on the Florida Massacre...And as the vigil begins in Florida I hear the rigjt wing white men begin to beat that the shooter was a 'nut job'. They close their eyes and look the other way when it us pointed out that he was a white supremacist who claimed adherence to being a Nationalist. Yet had the shooter been brown skinned or Islamic then it would have been the first thing they would mention.

It is so hard for me as a white heterosexual muddle class male to be aware of my own prejudices and of the blind spots tbat I have little perception of. I have spent a life time trying to understand the assumptions that I make. Yet it is even harder for these right wing white men who surrounded by others like them to appreciate the prejudices and blind spots that a social system has told them through the Mail and the Sun what common sense is. Farage fed them; Trump inspires them, the bluekippers preserve them and denial obscures the reality.

They will tell me that I should be proud of my race ..yet they won't see we are who we are because of our class, our culture and our ethnicity and conditioning. They will assume that male behaviour is biologically determined not culturally constructed. They will assume that the behaviour at Presidents Gate is normal. It's hard enough for men like myself to understand patriarchy and power. They will talk about witchi hunts because their power is threatened . They will use words like 'cackling' and condemn powerful women at the BAFTAs. Their words could have come from the Witch hunters of the 17th century yet they are totally unaware if the origins if their words and discourse.
I see Welsh Assembly members like Niel McEvoy make assumptions that male or female is determined purely by genetalia.. these assumptions of the right wing white males are so entrenched so ingrained that it's miasma effects progressive; socialist and reflective males.
It's no accident that slavery, the domestication animals icvured at the same time that patriarchy emerged.

Nicolas Cruse the shooter in the Florida Massacre grew up in this society. How many female shooters have there been who have massacred others? I guess some little male libertarian will spend the morning anally searching out female shooters and will parade it proudly at the end of my post. He will be the same character who only sees the brown skinned male as a terrorist. He won't reflect upon his assumptions and it's hard enough for me to spot my own blind spots. Yet it something we all should do..its uncomfortable and disturbing and with Trump in the White House and with the economic consequences of late capitalism then the white right men of the Rust Belt and of the non metropolitan areas of the UK will find it more so. Patriarchy predates capitalism as does our attitude to other cultures and sexualities. Capitalism makes it worse and uses these preconditions to divide us from one another. I often feel that it works unconsciously within both within the individual psyche and the collective one. Let us all face the shadow within and face up to our assumptions, hotspots and prejudices..its hard and it's frightening..but we must do it to shake off the collective hypnosis..even as I write I hear an American student wounded by grief deny that this is a gun issue...its like saying we should abolish schools to prevent massacres there..what does it take for the cultural scales to fall from our eyes...what dies it take?