To the older white guy in a Lexus who brandished a weapon at a blue hatchback yesterday:

I know that this is a scary time for you and yours. Society is steadily if clunkily moving away from your value system. The world order that held you comfortably at its center is dying and with a petulant whimper. Plus you’re getting older now, sliding toward a demographic whose vulnerability your white male privilege—even your wealth—can’t shield you from any longer. For the first real time, perhaps, you’re having to confront precariousness. Collapse. Inevitable erasure. Undeniably scary stuff, friend. But no matter how petrified and small you feel these days, you still don’t get to behave recklessly in public. Please seek therapy. Try to mend those no-contact relationships with your kids so that you have something of a support system. Call a friend, if you have one who isn’t in the maladjustive throes of his own existential crisis. Call an advocate. Call an agency. Call your congressperson. But leave the public out of your personal flailings, please. The public is not responsible for the consequences of your inability to manage big, difficult emotions. Because that’s what yesterday was about, right?—a make-believe game you played to briefly access that expiring sense of security and superiority. Certainly, it wasn’t about actually defending yourself from danger because no one threatened your safety...or even thought about you until suddenly there you were, gun and throbbing id exposed. And the public should not be placed at actual risk because you need to fictionalize a tough guy persona for yourself periodically to feel okay. Which, by the way—tough guys don’t need to lean on mech upgrades to achieve superiority…and grown, functional men don’t need to assert superiority at all. Man up, please. Pull yourself up by your emotional bootstraps the next time you can’t maintain an erection or learn that women (black and brown ones, too) are outpacing men in college completion. Because the rest of us have our own problems and don’t have the time or energy to help you with yours. We are simply too busy—mitigating the problems your generation has wrought and cheerfully dismantling the version of America you cherish.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.