It was predictable, if also pathetic.
Already. “There’s no need to classify this as a hate crime.”
Yes, there is. Because it was one. Read the shooter’s own incoherent manifesto. He killed ten people and wanted to kill many more simply because he was filled with racial hatred and nothing else. He traveled 200 miles to hunt Black people.
For a while, I thought we were simply in a national state of denial about the depths of American racism. But I was wrong. It’s much more sinister than that. What we’re seeing now is active and enthusiastic promotion of escalating racism, and the more deadly the better.
“The Great Replacement Theory” is no longer the Sole Province of Whack Jobs. It is now being mainstreamed, even as Whack Jobs in general are being mainstreamed.
The Whack Jobs tell us that America is not a nation of white extremists, even as their every utterance reflects white extremism.
The Whack Jobs want to portray themselves as defenders of free speech, even as they ban books and outlaw any classroom discussion of race in America.
Simply teaching documented American history is now hysterically and inaccurately condemned as Critical Race Theory, not that the shriekers could accurately define CRT to save their sullen souls.
The Whack Jobs groundlessly assert that an election was stolen from them, even as they attempted to steal it, and came very close to succeeding.
The Whack Jobs tell us we didn’t see what we all saw—a premeditated, armed insurrection at our nation’s Capitol whose intent was to overthrow the government of the United States.
And now on this Monday morning they are telling us we didn’t see what we clearly saw on Saturday in Buffalo—a hate crime. Make that, “yet another hate crime.”
The distinction for me is less a legal one than it is simply a matter of honest categorization. That was a hate crime.
We have a right and a pressing need to honestly come to grips with who we are as a nation right now.
We are a racist society, and becoming increasingly so.
We coddle domestic terrorism.
The dominant strain of domestic terrorism is White Supremacy.