The aftermath of the Nashville shooting has become a brambled quagmire of quicksand and thorns, a maze of tiresome paradoxes through which reason and empathy slog in concrete sneakers, sinking waist-deep in the muck as soon as their feet touch the ground.  Is this a queer call to arms?  Or an opportunity to promote gun control as immediately as possible?  Shall we vilify the shooter, refer to her as "it," and deny her even a half-interested attempt at understanding, because she is a killer?

Or shall we call on our fellow wannabe victims to "unite," and "fight back," because there's nothing to lose if "they lock you up for identifying as a woman?"  Which, y'know, happens all the time.

Whatever we do, let's agree on one thing right away.  Let's make sure to never actually ask whether or not Audrey Hale was actually a man trapped in a woman's body.  Especially if we hold to that particular denomination of religious orthodoxy ourselves.  Let's make sure we never consider the possibility that Audrey Hale was merely in search of validation, but, not actually being a man, wasn't going to find it in a masculine alter ego.  Let's never even consider the possibility.  The main thing, the only thing that matters, is that Audrey Hale "identified" as Trans.  Which automatically means she was Trans.  There is no possibility she was deluded, deceived, or simply mistaken; for this heretical possibility to exist, it would stand to reason that I might actually share this delusion myself.  Which is an impossibility.  To ask difficult questions of the priests is not allowed.  No denomination of manmade religion has ever allowed it.  To entertain such heretical drivel, even for a minute, would undermine the foundations of our false, idolatrous faith.

That's how strong our faith is, incidentally.  It is so strong, it must never be assailed, least of all by us.  We are too powerful to be bothered by questions that force us to actually test and prove our proclamations of power.  Even at the risk of a possibly-false convert actually being gunned down by police after committing a multiple homicide.  Not even that can be allowed to sway our unyielding devotion to the impossibility that we might, even only slightly, just this once, be, y'know.....

Wrong.

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”
Matthew 7:7

Note the use of the word "seek" in Matthew 7:7, which is Jesus talking, incidentally.  I have never read anything in which Jesus says to "blindly believe and ye shall find;" it's pretty clear that Jesus is telling us to seek.  Which means, to ask questions.  Seeking is the opposite of blindly believing the traditions of the priests, rainbow or otherwise, because your parents or a bearded dragon in a dress told you to.  Seeking means.... asking.  Ask the question.  Ask it.  Jesus can handle your rage, if you have it.  If you're mad at some rich kids at a private school who pretend to be Christians but who bully and mock you in private, tell Him about it.  He wants you to tell Him.  He understands your pain.  He's waiting for you to ask.  Just ask!

Am I a man trapped in a woman's body?  Or is that a delusion?  Is Jesus Christ actually God, the Creator of the universe, or a self-aggrandizing madman high on Robitussin and moldy bread?

Like the priests, is Jesus intimidating me against asking the question?  Or is He telling me to ask it?

The answer is obvious.  

“For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth;
and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”
Matthew 7:8

Of course, nowhere does it say you can't discard what you find, once you find it.  But He does promise that you will find it, if you look for it.  So, for the love of all things potentially true and maybe even false, look for it!  Unlike many people, Jesus is not afraid of the question.  He cares about us more than we even care about ourselves.  Incidentally, He loves innocence too.  He understands our broken hearts.  He's the only one who does!

So, even though Audrey Hale's acts yesterday were pure evil, I'm neither going to malign her, nor piggyback on her confusion, pain, and rage as a way to promote a political agenda.

I'm going to mourn her. 

Yep, that's right.  I'm going to mourn her.  I'm going to mourn the loss of a talented artist and beautiful soul who wanted acceptance, validation, and innocence, but who was deceived into committing mass homicide by none other than Satan himself.  I'm going to mourn her.  If you're one of the many who either "hopes she suffered a lot in her final moments," as Matt Walsh states in the video below, or who are using this tragic event as a means to promote gun control and your own self-obsessed sense of entitlement and victimhood, you're in the wrong place.  I might not be the writer for you.  You're certainly welcome to stick around, and I'm not telling you to leave, but perhaps you should stick to Ted Nugent and Madonna.  Whether they're right or wrong, their message has been pre-validated by their audience.

This isn't going to be that.  I'm going to mourn Audrey Hale, because her pictures fill me with sadness.  I don't see a monster.  I see someone who was in search of validation, and didn't have the strength or perspective to peacefully disregard a world that didn't give it to her.  I don't see a monster, and I don't see a victim of society.  I see a lost kid who put her faith in a false ideology, and took her rage and frustration out on the world in the most violent, hateful, and evil conceivable way.

If there's a monster, it's the ideology that refuses to be questioned.  Any ideology.

Pick one.

If it can not be assailed, questioned, or slightly doubted even once,

It's a monster.

I am actually a Matt Walsh fan, and "enjoyed" his film What Is A Woman? as much as humanly possible, considering the unwatchable topic (I maybe got halfway through it, which was more than enough).  I salute anyone who can actually engage the rainbow priests without imploding from nausea.  I can't even stand being in the same language as those intolerant, wannabe victims.  But I don't share the self-righteous disgust for Audrey Hale on display here:

I

So, what do I share?

An appreciation of her art, which her instructors at Nossi College of Art certainly had.  Pretty good landscapes:

I was right about her being a children's book illustrator.  Nevermind that the cover of a book titled "Toys & Books" is displayed on the same desk as a drawing of a cartoon lion, in a picture I posted in the article I wrote yesterday.  The hints may have been glaring like the lights of an oncoming train, impossible not to see, but in an age that elevates denial and delusion to the position of a saintly virtue, I thought it was a pretty good observation.  Here's the cover of a book she wrote:

Some animals:

And her professional synopsis, in which she states that "there is a child-like part about me that loves to go run to the playground."  A broken, soft, sensitive heart, exploding in excruciating pain on the surface of a fiery sea.  I'm tellinya.

So, was her interest in things innocent and child-like a sign of regression?  Is her art "creepy," as an unsympathetic, judgmental article on The Howie Carr Show website states?  Or is it telling?  Telling, as in, of a broken, bleeding heart?

Is there anything creepy about depicting an idyllic, cozy scene in which the protagonist naps peacefully by the fire with her animal friends (including mice), with a cup of cocoa, milk & cookies, and in which even the germs are happy?

If that's creepy, I have forgotten the meaning of the word.  But that's what the invalidators do.  They invalidate.  They invalidate because they are themselves invalid.  Or, probably more likely, are afraid of being invalidated.  Because you are unique and are "the exception that proves the rule," the rule will go out of its way to uphold itself as the only valid arbiter of life.  The world makes you into an in-valid, housebound and dependent, so that it may prop up or defend its false sense of would-be validation.

That's what it does.

The author of the article on The Howie Carr Show website even accuses Audrey Hale of being hung up on "kidcore," yet another fetishized subculture of cartoon weirdos who dress like kids.   Or maybe it's just a fashion trend.  Whatever the case, while one could easily be forgiven for jumping to such a conclusion based on images like this:

I think it's inaccurate, incomplete, and unnecessarily invalidating to dismiss a person's interest in innocent scenes of cute animals, children's books, and a desire to "go run to the playground" as a fetishized fashion trend, or a regressive inability to "grow up."  Scroll back up to the ant, or the tick, or whatever it is clinging to the seed in the drawing above and tell me this person isn't deeply wounded, and has a probably-desperate desire to be loved, accepted, and validated by a world that revels in kink, sexual identity, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and violence.  Do you think she is a true adherent to the brightly-colored tenets of Kidcore, if she dresses like this?

Because, I'm sorry, I see a lot of pain in that face.  Nothing like these fetishized examples of the Kidcore aesthetic, posted on The Trendspotter:

Granted, yeah, they're models (I get it), but do they seem like the kind of girls who would have accepted an uncomfortable-looking social anomaly into their cool, exclusive group?  Especially if said social anomaly has actual artistic talent (a trait hated by all attractive, jealous normies), and who sports a shirt and tie?  Aren't these the kind of kids who drive the outcasts into the outer darkness, perhaps even into the arms of drug abuse and gender dysphoria?  Not because the drug abuse or gender dysphoria are legit, mind you, but because they're on the menu.

I've never been confused about my sexuality, but the disenfranchisement I still feel is such that I'm viscerally more comfortable in a foreign country surrounded by people with whom I share exactly ZERO cultural or familial heritage, than I do around "my own people," and I'm pushing 50.  I would never have gone into gender confusion back in my own late 20s, but I did venture into DRUG DYSPHORIA back then, repeatedly.  Every time I tried a new drug, I "found myself."  Do you know how many people wore "Junkies For Jesus" shirts to work in L.A. 20 years ago?  While excelling at their jobs, even?  That's right.

Just one.

I was a one-man Christian heroin cult, entirely convinced of the "fact" that the God of the Bible blessed me with having discovered heroin, so that I could "be myself at last."  This is where broken-ness will lead you.  Most people don't understand it.  They think you're "playing," and, indeed, many douchebags are.  But really, the broken person truly is lost.  Truly, the broken person doesn't know.  The pain is honestly unbearable.  The people who malign the weirdos in their midst as "monsters," malicious anti-people unto whom the suffering of a thousand agonizing executions should be repaid without mercy in eternity, never understand this basic fact:

The people who say such smug, dismissive things are not educating or enlightening anybody, especially someone who has been led, drawn, or pushed to the point of actually planning a mass shooting, or a murder or violent crime of any kind.  That person is at least 20 steps ahead of you.  "Ahead" meaning, "past," like someone who is 5 car lengths ahead of you on the highway.  They've already passed through the infernal scenery, and have long-since stumbled over the obstacles upon which you are now losing footing.  They lost that same footing a long, long time ago.  Your opinion of who they are is not a mystery to them.  They know what you're going to call them; they know what you think of them, and they don't care anymore. 

They are aware you're never going to give them validation.  Maybe you're better than they are, and don't need it, but maybe some people simply "don't want to live" in a condition of perpetual rejection.  Maybe they hate themselves for still living at home, and can't walk to the mailbox without a crushing sense of self-condemnation that is perhaps genuinely paralyzing.  Or maybe they're just lazy.  It's possible you don't know.  If you think they should just "get over it," in all likelihood you have no idea.  It's possible you do; probably you don't.  Whatever the case, if their manufactured identity is an unassailable fantasy they can't question any more than your dismissive attitude about their adherence to a childish aesthetic, which may be a form of emotional regression that is way, way beyond anything that resembles "nostalgia for childhood or the past," or which may just be a phase, like heroin, or transgenderism,

It's possible they will feel cornered, and react like a strange, endangered animal.  Fangs and claws and assault rifles and all.

The pictures make me sick.  It's hard to say what's more deadly today, heroin or gender dysphoria.  The hard street drugs in my day were like vitamin supplements compared to what's out there now.  And I have never known a world w/o gay people or drag queens, but that has been weaponized as well, and is being offered in the shadowed alleys of our "culture" as a validating option to the broken and disenfranchised.  She seemed like a happy-enough person when she was still an obvious girl.  Even if she was only happy on the outside.

A far cry from the angry gender junkie in the first photo.  She was told she was a gender junkie, by somebody, at some point, and no one had the guts or fortitude or even basic honesty to suggest the possibility that perhaps it wasn't true (and maybe never is, but is rather a kink consciously chosen by people who find it stimulating).  For the idea of a Transgender identity to simply cross the mind is enough to validate the fantasy in perpetuity forever.

In testosterone therapy veritas, presumably.

Of course, her manifesto has yet to be revealed, and who knows.  Maybe my conjecture in this article will prove to be the most inaccurate, fantastically-unfounded piece of writing since Darwin's Theory of Evolution.  All I know is that when I look at pictures of Audrey Hale, and read her story, it feels like a loss.  I want to tell her, the world misses you.  Screw those douchebags over there; nevermind them.  The gay ones, the rich kids who pretend to be Christians so their parents will buy them a car, the hypocrites in the older generations.  Nevermind those pre-deflated balloons.  Let them spout and sputter to their stupid hearts' delight; they wouldn't know excellence if it walked through the halls of a private school with murderous intent.  It's beyond unfortunate, for everyone in every conceivable way, that you allowed it to go that far.  Regardless, the world misses you.  It was better when you were in it.  Not only because there would be 6 people who'd still be in it as well, which is true, but because you were beautiful, and had much, much more to offer.

You are missed.

If you're on the fence yourself, sit tight.  Don't move.  Remember, the invalidators aren't invalidating you.  They're invalidating themselves.  You don't need them.  Just don't fall off, one way or the other.  They want to push you off, this way or that; don't let them.  Sit still and take the licks.  As much as it sucks, hold on.  Hold on until it kills you.  It won't kill you, but even if it does, that would be alright, wouldn't it?  Whatever the idea is, the great and vengeful plan, don't do it.  That's exactly what the invalidators want.  It will give them everything they need to disregard you forever.  Don't give it to them.  Let the situation crush you.  Let the bad thoughts overwhelm you.  Weep about it, scream and rage and crash, but don't move.  Don't do anything stupid.  Anything you do under extreme emotional or existential duress has a strong likelihood of being very, very stupid, at best.  If you can't fend off the negativity, snarl at it as it surrounds you.  Let the wolves howl; tell the hyenas to come and get you, if they dare.  Don't be afraid of the waves.  Drown on them until you grow gills and learn to breathe underwater.  When you survive, you'll be stronger for it.

It gets better.  I'm tellinya.