The news out of Charleston is horrifying: 9 people have been shot and killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, including state senator Clementa Pinckney, the pastor at the church. As I write this, police are still looking for the suspected shooter, described as “a clean-shaven white male about 21-years-old with sandy blond hair.”
It seems rather likely that the shooting was a racist hate crime.
Please use this thread to discuss the news as well as to post any updates or additional information you find.
I know some commenters here have also been discussing another horrifying story in the news: On Tuesday, as NJ.com reports, “a recently divorced … police officer shot and killed his former wife in broad daylight … in front of their daughter on an Asbury Park [New Jersey] street, authorities said.” Please use this thread to discuss this story as well.
I read that the FBI is treating this as domestic terrorism. Good.
“Just watch, a cult is going to grow up around this gunman once he’s identified…”
Evil is always going to champion filth, do you expect anything different? Let them idolise him — just so long as he’s either dead or safely behind the bars of a Supermax prison.
@Oliver:
I’m too drunk to get into a lengthy debate (and I’m sure I misread your meaning due to, you know, being drunk and all), but no, locking up/killing the piece of shit who did this will not solve anything (which I though the “let them idolise him” bit seems to imply).
The problem is not the outliers, but the culture; It’s the ideology that’s the problem, not the lone [insert ableist term here]. The toxic ideas absorbed from our bigoted, violence-worshipping macho culture combined with whatever other things we don’t know about was the the most likely cause. By “letting them idolise him” we are agreeing with the notion that it’s single individuals, not the ideas they embrace that are the problem. And that’s bullshit.
Again, I might be misreading things from what you wrote.
Oh, and btw, not disagreeing that he should be locked up. Of course he should. Just thought I’d clarify that.
Let me similarly clarify that the issues and causes indeed go far beyond this abhorrent attack.
Only yesterday I read an article pointing out that since 9/11 there have been more incidents of terrorism from right wing extremists in the U.S. than there have been Islamic extremist incidents. This latest tragedy just underlines that.
I hope they catch this fucker soon.
Yesterday I also read some crap written by Matt Forney where he stated that white privilege was a myth, I wonder if he’ll be tweeting about Charleston?
@Anarchonist
I kind of got that impression from reading Oliver’s comment too.
Just ignoring “evil” till it creates a problem that explodes in your face and then stomping on that individual problem and pretending you’ve resolved the issue isn’t going to make for a better world. I don’t feel comfortable just assuming “evil”‘s always gonna be there and there’s nothing we can do to diminish it, that we have to always be reactive rather than proactive.
– Spindrift
Agreed. But the problem is that proactively going after “bad people” is like opening a can of worms on a slippery slope made of good intentions. How do you differ between actual instigators of violence, and ppl who just have absolutely horrid opinions? Is it even possible to meaningfully differentiate? And what do you do to “diminish” their evil? Make their words illegal? Their opinions? Forced re-education? “Preemptive violence?”
I see what you want is good, but road to Heck and all that…
I just saw the movie Selma, my 12 year old daughter watched it too. After we watched it, of course we discussed it. She always expresses a lot of rage and shame when the subject comes up. In this case I remember saying something like: People were more blatant about their hate back then, but there is still tons of this type of reactionary crap going on under the surface. Well I guess we’re heading back to square one again. Fuck!
Police have released a detailed description, as well as CCTV images. Hopefully just a matter of time…
@Vanir
I meant more along the line of proactively going about changing the culture. Calling out the toxic elements within culture and educating people on how to avoid perpetuating them. You can’t really go around arresting everyone who says something you don’t agree with, that’d cause more problems than it solves for sure. It’s a complicated issue, don’t know how to best go about changing culture, but I don’t like the mentality of “evil’s always gonna do evil, so I might as well not bother till I need to clean the dead people off my lawn”. If you just accept that there’s absolutely nothing that can be done about evil, you’ve given up on the idea that things could ever get better.
Rest assured I believe (at the risk of cliche) in a better world, and the betterment of the world; I just don’t believe in a perfect one.
There’s ALWAYS the “too soon to talk about gun control” and “we shouldn’t politicise this.” Plus all the rest. You know as well as I do that they just don’t want people to talk about why tragedies like this happen because they don’t want anything to change.
And they’re willing to let people die unjustly so they can keep things the way they like. Mother fuckers.
The news doesn’t often make me cry. Pictures of ISIS throwing people off buildings? Horrible, but somehow it didn’t touch me the way this does. Just the idea of this guy sitting together with his victims for a hour while they prayed together, and then shooting them to death. How could anyone dehumanize their victims to such an extent? How…? I just can’t. Can’t.
– akestra
Yeah. That takes a special kind of cold bastard. A special kind of evil.
I’m an atheist, but today I hope I’m wrong. I hope there is a place of love and peace awaiting the murdered. I hope there is some cosmic kind of justice to be found beyond this world – even if I cannot believe in it.
@akestra well it does boggle the mind when they wont allow people to address these forms of bigotry with out the sjw label,yet they allow this asshole to do this and more without his bigotry being addressed.But when THEY say you should be outraged then it’s ok .This needs to stop.
And, predictably, Faux News is taking the opportunity to complain about atheists. Because, you know, being able to preach while you’re in your police uniform is way more important than the fact that 9 people are dead.
Re: the NJ shooting: the murderer was able to get off a second round of shots, in police presence. No responding officer fired a weapon. The other officers HUGGED and CONSOLED him afterwards.
How would that scene have gone had he not been a white, and a police officer?
All I could think was “Wayne LaPierre must be sporting a throbbing, priapic erection about now.”
Though it might be interesting to see what freak-outs there’d be among him and his regular supporter base if the NRA suddenly picked up a lot of African-American members.
Dammit, now I just want to go curl up in a ball for the rest of my life. Those poor people and their families. Nowhere is safe anymore.
I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, rugbyyogi. I get where you’re coming from, we have rot that goes really deep in our culture. But is a thread for discussing a hate crime committed against black people at a historically black church really the place to throw out an “it happens to white people, too” comment?
@WWTH:
That was the first thing I thought of, too.
Have a baby.
http://i.imgur.com/PAEnMoX.jpg
Have two babies.
http://i.imgur.com/mOzGrhC.jpg
(The second thing I thought of was, they shot George Tiller in church, too.)
@EJ:
I hope so, too.
I don’t understand people.
Here’s some more small child brain bleach:
http://i.imgur.com/FpEdNBf.jpg
I… Can you clarify what they’re saying? I can’t even with Faux right now, so I’d appreciate learning what they’re spewing from a non-vile source.
Every now and then there’s a crime that I can’t wrap my head around. The massacre at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple was one. Sandy Hook was another. I’m getting the feeling that this will be another one. As much as I read about these crimes I don’t think I’ll ever understand what could make someone hate his fellow human beings so much — based on skin color no less — that he’d walk into a church and open fire on people…
I hope they will caught him, alive (because those pathetic cowards sometime prefer to kill themselves rather than facing the consequences of their monstrosities) and I hope he will sentenced for a life behind the bars. All we can hope now is for justice, not vengeance.
Also my sympathy for the victims and their families.