Sunday, June 21, 2015

Let's Talk. Maybe for the Last Time. But Let's Talk.

Before I begin, thanks so much for sharing the details of your Saturdays with me. You guys are an amazing bunch of folks. If you ever find yourselves in my neck of the woods, drinks are on me.

This is objectively the cutest picture in the universe.
Now let's talk about scumbag and bearer of an incredibly bad haircut Dylann Roof, aka the Charleston Church Murderer.

Evil should not look this dorky and insignificant, somehow.
Actually, let's not talk about him, because fuck him. He's a racist and a murderer and a cold-hearted asshole who prayed in a church with his victims before gunning them down. Let's put him away for life and then erase him from the annals of notoreity, please.

Instead, let's talk about the lengths to which certain people will go to distance themselves from the hatred and irrational ideology they patently share with this killer.

Let's talk about GOP Presidential candidate and perpetual embarrassment Dick Perry, who called the racially-motivated assassination of a state legislator and eight other people "an accident." At least until his high-octane spin machine was forced to derpsplain that "from the context of his comments, it is clear Gov. Perry meant incident," even though from the context, it is clear that Gov. Perry remains a tone-deaf idiot.

Let's talk about A.J. Delgado, the hateful columnist from Florida who, along with others of similar loathsome character, want us to believe Roof's violence wasn't racially motivated because "he doesn't look white".

Shown here: The poster boy for "white" as a bad thing.

Let's talk about douchebag-from-the-ground-up Chuck Todd, who aired a piece about gun violence on NBC's "Meet the Press" that claimed to be "color-blind" and then showed clips exclusively of black men who had committed murders with firearms, just a few days after the lily-white Roof unleashed unspeakable violence on peaceful black churchgoers.

Let's talk about another joke of a GOP candidate Lindsey Graham, who says the Confederate flag is "part of who we are [in South Carolina]," simultaneously embracing and distancing himself from people who continue to conflate "Southern pride" with institutionalized racism. 

Let's talk about the National Rifle Association's head mouthpiece/dilettante Charles Cotton, who wants us to know that the nine innocent victims were responsible for their own deaths because they didn't carry guns into a house of worship.

Let's talk about those - up to and including yet another GOP candidate, Rick Santorum - who want people to think the actions of a self-professed white supremacist against an historic African-American institution constituted "an assault on religious liberty" rather than a statement of hatred against people of color.

Let's talk about the fact that nine people are dead at the hands of someone who believed he was doing the world a favor by eliminating humans who were deemed inferior because the color of their skin was different from his.

Let's talk about what might have happened if this idiot hadn't been able to buy a gun as easily as a can of Coke.

Let's talk about an American state that still uses a racist, secessionist flag as an official symbol of its government and then feigns amazement that some of its citizens feel entitled to remain racist and secessionist.

Above all, let's talk.

Because this is never going to end until one side converts the other.

I'm asking you to pick a side. 

Unfollow me if you're not on my side.

Share this post if you agree with me.

Let's talk.

5 comments:

  1. Because MSNBC turns into the prison channel on the weekend, I had my TV on Fox briefly today. The (African American) anchor was pointing out that the Confederate flag was not at the SC Capital but rather "at a war memorial that just happens to be on the capital grounds."

    So there was that. Followed by a guy who was almost crying about how the Confederate flag gets a bad rap because he "lost family members in that war!"

    It was like some sort of surrealistic parallel universe I'd stumbled into, and I changed the channel.

    This kid was brainwashed by an ugly culture and ugly politics. And it will happen again. Period.

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  2. I'm not sure I want to talk about any of those people, but I'm afraid not talking about them just allows them to fester. Or it creates the impression that I agree that the Confederate flag is just a benign piece of history or that carrying a gun everywhere is the only way to be safe and that therefore everyone should be able to get one or that this was an attack on religious liberty that had nothing to do with race.

    It's exhausting feeling the need to push back against all of this, and also fearing that the pushback will add to, rather than dissipating, the climate of hostility.

    Is it too early for that drink?

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  3. Let's talk about the family friends whose son shot and killed himself. But first, he shot both parents. Him in the head (grazed his temple, he's fine) her in the arm (she had surgery but is fine). And before he shot them, he shot two people in a liquor store and killed them. And let's talk about why someone with a history of mental illness had access to an AR-15. Nobody NEEDS an assault rifle. Nobody. Except maybe the police that responded to the frantic 911 of my friends whose mentally ill son SHOT THEM. And yeah, they put those calls on the news, so I now know what it's like to hear a mother beg her son for her life. Let's talk about it.

    I'm on your side. But you knew that.

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  4. (Shrugs) I'm just glad he wasn't a brown man with a Muslim name or a name that could be mistaken for Muslim - like mine, for example. Because then another bombing campaign of some innocent Asian nation would probably be underway by now.

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  5. Though I've only commented a couple of times on your blog, I always read your posts. I want you to know that I agree with everything you said here, and pretty much just everything you say. Period. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete

You're thinking it, you may as well type it. The only comments you'll regret are the ones you don't leave. Also, replies to threads make puppies grow big and strong.