The Beast

I grew up in the deep south of the United States, and the neighborhoods were de facto segregated. I was never taught racism, however, so in elementary school when I invited a black kid over to my house, he asked: "Will your parents mind?" I seriously didn't know what he was talking about. "Why would they mind?" He replied: "Because I'm black."

Well, I brought him over anyway, and we had a good time. Here in California, when people learn I'm from Louisiana, they assume I'm a bigoted redneck. The irony is that I've found the wealthy suburbs of the Bay Area to be far more racist than I ever knew in Louisiana. The zillionaires in Atherton are perfectly supportive of the coloreds, as long as they stay in East Palo Alto, as God intended.

Anyway, this whole shooting business down in South Carolina brought all this to mind for me. I was particularly shocked by the fact that Dylann (and right there, the spelling shows something is off with this kid) killed not just people at a church, but people with whom he had spent an hour at Bible study. How in the hell can you be sitting there with fellow humans, particularly reading from the Bible, and still push yourself into killing them? The amount of hate crawling through his soul must be mind-numbing.

 

Slope's patron saint, though, saw all of this coming, just like just about everything else he's ever said:

Naturally, though, the chatter on the airwaves is about the need for "a national conversation about race." Ummm, no, that isn't it. Here, let me save you some time. Let's have a conversation about race:

Person A: "There are some people that hate others based on the color of their skin."

Person B: "Really?"

Person A: "Yeah. I'm totally serious."

Person B: "Hmm. They sound like real assholes."

And............scene.

There's no "conversation" that would have stopped Dylannnnnnn from slaughtering these innocents. And as for the calls for him to face the death penalty - - - no. You really want to level the playing field against this person's soul? Have him spend the rest of his days on earth having to face one stranger - a different one each day - for half an hour to talk about what he did. A lifetime of staring bald-faced into this act of evil is more appropriate than just filling him full of chemicals and giving him eternal rest.

Comments

[Element]

There is nothing to be 'solved', you demand a solution where solutions are inapplicable. Are you going to 'solve' natural variability of human beings? Engineer and clone a 'perfected' humanity of zero diversity from your cookie-cutter template? Or are you just going to narrowly try to ignore that natural variability is actually involved in Dylan's actions?

What do you want to do about the >100,000 people George W Bush murdered and destroyed due to ordering the invasion of Iraq???

Nothing, at all.

There's the society's and culture's 'morality' and 'values' being expressed in your own self's denial, inaction and avoidance of doing anything about that example.

(I could have used a thousand other examples of people who were never punished for murderous acts and harm, so don't get hung-up on the name used there).

[Earl Slaughter-...]

Yeah, the kid missed his calling-- he should have been a drone pilot for Uncle Scam: he coulda got a pat on the back and a paycheck for killing brown people.

Or have become a cop, where you can pretty much do the same thing.

[Sturm und Drang]

Lights are on, but ...