Short Entitled Fuse
… and in another precinct someone latches on to the idea of redemption — but in this rainy neighborhood, and specifically in this newly repointed brick building, a man (we’ll never learn his name) has confessed to his wife that he was seeing her estranged sister. It was he (nameless, but archetypal) who was most responsible for the estrangement — via streams of innuendo, and then the punctiliousness of his criticism.
It doesn’t matter that it’ll stop raining soon or that the savory smell of pot roast wafts up from the apartment below — no. Peace will be broken at 9:37 tonight, when they revisit the same recriminations for the third time. Her name we know. Rachel.
His short entitled fuse results in two shots to her head; and after ten minutes of considering his impulsiveness, he’ll call Rachel’s sister and blame her for what has befallen them.
As the rain tapers off and the L rumbles out of Wrigleyville station, precisely at 10 p.m., he’ll mutter, “there, there’s your white male privilege,” while squeezing his crotch, certain that his god given inalienable right is intact.
He plans his road trip west, well-armed, in the glow of his destiny manifest.
“One of the indigestible facts of this country is that most of its terrorism and nearly all its mass shootings are committed by mostly conservative-leaning white men, conservative here meaning those most earnestly committed to their white supremacist-misogynist identity politics, from the unending terrorism of the Klan and other racist groups and the anti-abortion murders of the 1990s to the present-day mayhem. Indigestible because those in power cannot quite bring themselves to call this problem what it is and treat it as it deserves.”
— Rebecca Solnit / “When the President of Mediocrity Incites an Insurrection White Identity Politics is Out of Control”
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