Even as the pandemic has handcuffed so much of our activity, think for a moment of all the shit you still have planned for the next several days. A virtual yoga class you wish to take. A book you need to finish. A show you want to binge. A recipe you’re anxious to try. A bedroom you need to reconfigure. A car that needs repair. A work thing that needs work thing-ing. A back that needs broken. A Peloton that needs ignored.
Now, imagine how many things you’d have to cancel in order to have enough time to put as much effort into racism and, most importantly, the performance of being a racist, as the hooligans who stormed the Capitol yesterday do. You’d have to take off work; you’d have to opt-out of that weird Zoom happy hour you really don’t want to attend but planned to anyway because friendships require maintenance; you’d have to miss the next three Warriors games, and you might even have to table a fuck buddy.
“Hey, you coming through tomorrow night? I bought some new lotions and some bagels.”
“I’ll have to take a raincheck. Maybe next week.”
“Why? Everything okay?”
“Yeah! Just gonna caravan to D.C. for a few days, dress like William Wallace meets Papa Smurf, attempt to overthrow democracy, and....wait. What was that noise?”
“That was the sound of me drying up in real time. I think I literally just made sand.”
“Ok.”
Along with all of the hate and the ignorance and the psychosis and the criminality and the stupidity and the unhygienic-ness displayed yesterday, the sheer boredom was just as conspicuous. And it’s not that they were bored yesterday. They were having the time of their lives, and that’s the point. These are people who have nothing else to do but conjure opportunities to dress up, gear up, and be racist with other racists. Being racist ain’t just a characteristic for them. It’s a vocation. A vacation. A motherfucking hobby.
Just take a look, for instance, at the Twitter timeline of Traphouse Lannister.
It’s just racist dog whistle after racist dog whistle.
So many dog whistles you’d think she...had all the dogs.
No “Tenet makes more sense if you watch it while sleep.” Or “Honeycrisps are the Maserati Ghiblis of apples.” Or “Yeah, Willard Fillmore could get it.” Just an unrelenting torrent of racist bile from Tarantula Lobotomy.
As well-intentioned-ish as last summer’s antiracist book lists were, a better use of time, money, and bandwidth would’ve been to help white people find activities other than racism, racism preparation, and racism performance. This is one of the reasons why so many of them have weddings at plantations and are so compelled to don blackface at Halloween parties and holiday potlucks. They just can’t think of things to do other than racism—when other people ask “Who’s all going to be there?” they ask “Will racism be there?”—-and these niggas need to fly some fucking kites. Or bake some bread. Or grow some coke. My two-year-old son is really into bubbles right now. He likes to blow them. He likes to catch them. He likes to swallow them and scare the shit out of us. And bubble-blowing would be a perfect hobby for these dull motherfuckers. The world needs more bubbles and less...whatever the hell this is:
