SSRIs and confusion about his sexuality and White Basketball Player Guilt
I'm reminded of a sequence near the end of the 1960 version of
West Side Story. Just after Tony dies (who corresponds to Romeo in the Shakespeare play from which
West Side Story was derived), and Maria (who corresponds to Juliet) gets her hands on the gun.
How do you fire this thing, Chino? By pulling this little trigger?
How many bullets are left, Chino?
Enough for you? And you?
All of you! You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets, or guns, with hate. Well now I can kill, too, because now I have hate!
How many can I kill, Chino? How many? And still have one bullet left for me?
Well, OK, so now she has a gun, which would make it much more convenient for her to kill, than if she had no weapon. But she also has a point. It wasn't the gun in Chino's hands that was just now responsible for Tony's death. It wasn't the knife in the hands of her brother, Bernardo, that was responsible for killing Riff. It wasn't the knife in the hands of Tony that was responsible for killing Bernardo. And if she had gone on to kill several of the young men around her, it would not have been Chino's gun, now in her hands, that woudl have been responsible for that, either.
It was hate, it was madness, that caused these deaths.
And now, we have a society that actively promotes madness, and moral and social degradation, that leads to death; and we try to blame the weapons for it.