We hear the malignment of our media constantly in the context of the effects of sex and violence. We completely ignore its most insidious attribute: delusion. We now see ourselves as bigger than life. We are the invincible movie badass. Handing out one punch kos, 1/

and winning one-sided gunfights to heroically save the day. Our streets are increasingly filled with inept cosplay-triots, imagining themselves as the hero in some Mel Gibson movie, cutting down swaths of evil freedom-hating caricatures. And in the end everything is going 2/

be amazing. The REAL PATRIOTS will have their country back. They just gotta kill some folks. But that's easy, they've seen lots of people die in movies and killed millions of pixilated bad guys themselves. Easy peasy, trigger squeezy. Except it's fucking not. 3/

They talk about this all in the abstract because that's all they know it as. They're going to kill "rioters", "looters", "the left". No, stupid. You're going to kill fathers, mothers, and children. They have no idea the real horror they're in store for. 4/

Nor do they realize that before they learn just how harmful their actions are going to be the pin will be pulled and the grenade thrown. They are going to push us to war far before they realize it's a bad idea. Before they realize life will never again be as good as it is now. 5/

Before they realize their family will get a ride in the meat grinder too. Before they realize that this isn't a movie. That the "bad guys" don't always miss, that the cavalry doesn't always save the day, and that sometimes the "hero" doesn't even make it out of the first act. 6/

Every day I wake up more fearful the streets are going to run red with blood. I have no delusions about the violence looming on the horizon. I know this isn't a movie. I just wish everyone else did too. 7/7