\nA white man walked into a historic African-American church in Charleston and opened fire during a Bible study class, killing nine people<\/span> Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
The gunman was still at large early Thursday. And the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest AME church in the South, is being investigated as a hate crime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It is much too soon to speculate about the cause; the kid could have been spurned by a girl and snapped, he could have lost his job and his car and snapped, he could have been beat-up by a gang of black kids a few hours earlier and snapped. Who knows?<\/p>\n
But speculation is rampant, and not without reason, that this is yet another instance of the south’s (and spreading) sick fusion of fundamentalist religion, tribal racism, and extreme right-wing ideology. Recall the perverse imagery used by Promise Keepers to promote its conference:<\/p>\n
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Those armed and camoed guys advancing through a dystopian bleakscape are the good guys<\/i>, according to Promise Keepers. As I said then<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\nThat text, in combination with that imagery, is frightening stuff; these people are out of their minds, and it is only a matter of time before some ignorant yahoo, stoked on malice for a world he no longer understands, decides God wants him to go shoot-up a gay bar or who-knows-what.<\/p>\n
The recklessness is downright breathtaking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For the sake of all of us, I hope we learn that the killer is some mentally ill screw-up, like James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is there anything so shocking as random, summary executions? It has happened again, this time in Charleston, South Carolina, at a historically black church. A white man walked into a historic African-American church in Charleston and opened fire during a … Continue reading