My Timeline is Full of Discussion on Senseless Murder Across the Nation and All I Want to do is Write About Game of Thrones

Since I have no idea what I’m doing, I spend most of my time LOOKING for what to write about rather than doing any actual writing. So, two weeks ago, after a particularly delightful season finale of Game of Thrones, FULL of payoffs and fan service, I thought, This. This is it. I can say something here, I can finally write something that my friends will want to read and talk about (And I still might!).

Excited to change the world through my sharp and original insight, I spent the next week at the office re-watching scenes on Youtube on one screen (I work in finance, I have two screens), while reading along with the episode scripts on the other screen (The accents can be tough, and Youtube closed-captioning is ass). The research got away from me, and one week of study turned into two, which I was fine with, because, again, this delayed doing any actually writing. So, as my email inbox became fuller and fuller with unread inquiries from coworkers asking why the hell I wasn’t doing any work, so did the pages my Moleskine notebook with quotes and underlines, arrows and asterisks.

Then the police shot a man named Alton Sterling to death on Tuesday morning just after midnight, with a video for us to watch it happen.

Then the next day the police shot a man named Philando Castile to death, and there was a video for us to watch it happen.

Then the next day a man shot and killed 5 police officers at a demonstration in Dallas, Texas (Lorne Ahrens, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, and Brent Thompson are the names according to CNN).

And just like that, all of the social medias I use were full of the voices of everyone I knew and everyone they knew providing critique, commentary, opinion, and analysis, on a pile of bodies still warm to the touch.

I spent a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter last week, WAY more time than I would like to, reading what my friends and connections had to say. I took screenshots of the best and the worst and discussed them with my friends. I swam around in this national dialogue for a while. Yet, what still took up the majority of my mind’s real estate, what I still found myself contemplating right after I woke up and right before I went to sleep, was Game of Thrones, and I found myself asking, “Well crap, how the hell am I going to post my opinion NOW?”

I didn’t feel good feeling this way. And I didn’t feel good not because I didn’t care. Because I did care. I cried when I watched those videos, as I’m sure you did too. I didn’t feel good because I didn’t care MORE, because I didn’t care as much as I thought I should.

Why?

I don’t know. Was it because I didn’t know the victims? No. I have the Internet. I can know them now more than I ever could have before. Oh, and I also watched them die.

Was it because I’m self-absorbed? That my precious article and precious opinion was going to be some gift to mankind that would transcend today’s tragedies that soon enough will be yesterday’s tragedies when tomorrow’s tragedies become today’s? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I’m not that smart, and things I have to say aren’t ever that great.

As I write this I still don’t know. But if I had to guess, it has something to do with distance. Distance from where I am and where they are. Not a geographical distance, although that’s true too, but a distance more general and fluid, existing in both physical and emotional space. A distance so far that even attempting to think about crossing it seems as impossible as the traverse itself.

I found out about Alton Sterling and Philando Castile when I read about them both on Twitter Wednesday night. I was in Rittenhouse Square, eating free-range boar mixed with organic quinoa (snapkitchen.com), drinking mojitos, and watching Orange is the New Black. For a long time all I could find was commentary on what happened in place of what actually happened. For a long time after that I thought #philadocastile and #altonsterling were referring to the same thing. For a long time after that I had the two tragedies mixed up, and thought Alton Sterling was in the car and Philando Castile was the one selling CDs on the street.

And while those 5 police officers were shot down on Thursday night I was in South Philadelphia drinking beers at a bar on the roof of what was Edward Bok Vocational High School, one of 23 schools in Philadelphia that shut down in 2013. I read about the shooting an hour or so later on my phone while eating a cheesesteak.

There is a distance here.

A distance between the black man who has to sell CDs to eat, and the white guy who threw away his CD collection 5 years ago because they were worthless and taking up space.

There is a distance here.

A distance between the mother who wears a shirt with her dead son on the front, and the white guy who sees that shirt as a “black person thing” because there is no one for him to put on a shirt because none of his friends or family have ever been murdered

And there is a distance here.

A distance between men at work who get shot and killed for the actions of a few men, hundreds of miles away, that they have never met, and a white guy at a desk, making better pay, whose toughest decision day in and day out is what to get for lunch.

Can this distance be bridged? I don’t know. How do I answer this question if the distance is so great that my life will be the same no matter the answer?

As a white guy, I find myself in this surreal state of protection. Like walking through a warzone surrounded by some barrier of vibrant light, allowing for a calm viewing of the explosions, of the shrapnel buzzing overhead. It’s a state that makes me feel comfortable, and grateful, but it’s also a state that makes me feel numb, detached, lazy, and always a little sad.

Sad that I can drink to excess and scream like a mad man in the street without consequences, and others cannot. Sad that no matter who is elected president of our country my life will be the same, while others’ lives will not. And sad that some people spend their time thinking about how they will eat, where they will sleep, and if today is the day they may be shot and killed, while I spend my time thinking about Game of Thrones.