Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Today’s edition of my local rag had a very good editorial about the Charleston shootings. Here’s a bit:
And so nothing like this can happen in a place like South Carolina without stirring the memories of the racial violence that has torn the South for so long.
It was the kind of violence, both overt and psychic, that burned black churches and lynched black men and closed black schools and churches. It slaughtered black children. It attempted to turn black people into something less than people.
That historic persecution was systematic and organized, while Wednesday’s massacre appears the work of one entirely cowardly man whose history and mental state we know little about.
But the bloody consequences are a haunting reminder of the uncivilized horror that is a stain on this nation, and a signal of how far we still have to go to recognize that hate and terror serve only as a path to ruin.
Afterthought:
I’m still trying to wrap my head around Republican attempts to claim that the Charleston shootings had nothing to do with race, despite the shooter’s overt statements to the contrary. They lead me to wonder, are Republicans stupid, are they pandering to their followers, or both? (“Neither” is clearly not an option.)
I’m voting for the second choice. Nixon’s odious southern strategy was always about pandering to the basest of the base.
Ex Post Afterthought:
I reckon there’s some wishful thinking mixed in there too. There’s precedent, as the Republican Party’s economic policies are based solely on wishful thinking.
