No matter how rational or irrational each or these despicable violent killers proves to be, they have to rationally recognize the TERROR that their heinous acts are about to inflict upon society.
Why This Time, Why This Way?
Motives are usually so inflated with supposition, that most people eventually buy into their own theory and discard the others as supposition. The death of the perpetrator typically leaves us to staring at each other and wondering where did we go wrong, supposing someone else is to blame.
Now that a few of these terrorist have survived, we've taken to the practice of pointing fingers even when the criminal tells us exactly why they behaved as they did. Not so long ago, it was Batman inspiring death and mayhem. In this case the killer wanted to incite a race war, so he inspired himself with the kinds of things you need to get fired up for a black church mass killing- white race hate rhetoric and symbols supporting his notion that a race war could soon follow a calculated attack at the underbelly of black life.
The fact that the confederate flag- a flag of the losing army that fought to destroy the union- is still flying in South Carolina, may not be added inspiration to the Roof's of America who honored that flag and not the US flag, but we know for certain that it stands for white purity and supremacy to a great deal of people in South Carolina and across the South. The fire that burns to hold on to that flag is enough evidence of the racial animus that still lingers more than it represents undying pride in an institution that should have died with the war. If ISIS gets to keep their flags raised even after the world defeats them, it might be hard to recognize the victory.
We all know that Roof, and the Klan and every other race hate killer are off track if they believe that a civil society would discard civility just to feed into the kind of hate we are trying to heal from. What we don't know is exactly how many other fiddler's like Roof' are waiting to join the war. Somehow it seems too easy to rest on the statistics of how infrequent these things tend to happen given the fact that the frequency is increasing at a rate so alarming, we barely have time to wash that colored dye out of the hair of the last terrorist, finish his trial and grieve before another terrorist comes along.
The bigger question of the day, is whether or not we can pass off this murderous racism as crazy like we might do with James Holmes (the Aurora theater shooter) and miss or dismiss the fact that race hatred is also on a dangerous rise? Even worse, might we be missing the impact of mental illness integrated within a nation that is polarized to the extent of arming ourselves? As we speak, churches across the land are considering undercover, armed guards to be able to address the kind of criminal that terrorized Mother Emmanuel AME Church in South Carolina.
Some of those churches will be catching up to the ones who've already armed themselves against the wiles of the devil and against a well armed America that buys more weapons every time one of these incidents occurs. Although mature and responsible human beings who understand the power and danger of a gun should always have access to them, they are they only ones qualified to endure the enticing power to pull, that the trigger of a gun possesses. Everyone else, even a few on our police forces across America, needs to be kept away from such life controlling power. Since this seems a near impossible dream, the counter solution has been to inundate the landscape with so many guns as to make criminals unsure exactly who has them. Peace by intimidation if you will. The results are both mixed and debated.
A similar approach was employed many moons ago when man discovered the powerful might of a nuclear/atomic warhead. Nothing can replace the value of real life testing, and Japan offered fertile hostility and landscape to put it to valuable use. We've been fighting to limit the access to this weapon ever since, but guns are different somehow. George Zimmerman might have purchased a gun because the state of Florida told him that more guns makes us safer than less guns, but he used it because having one without using it is the equivalent of keeping a stick in your pocket, or having a weapon but never being ready when the moment of "safety" demands. Weapons scream to be used because everything powerful has a voice. They also scream to be used with caution because life and death decisions lie in the hand of the beholder.
Trained officers make mistakes in this realm, and yet we've convinced ourselves that random citizens are just as capable of being calm, cool and collected decision makers when encountering random gun violence? How are normal people supposed to deal with rational or irrational terrorists? Regardless of their state of sanity, they are operating with a plan and 7 magazines of bullets or so to execute that plan. Whether the weapon of choice is a bullet or a plane, churches and schools and movie theaters and World Trade Center buildings would have to plan for the unthinkable to prepare for the unthinkable. In some ways, we are enslaved by this condition and need to look towards those who are familiar with the terror of enslavement.
The reason its called terror is because it disrupts our connection to normalcy. Car wrecks, train wrecks, plane wrecks and the like are sad, but not disrupting by nature nor terrorizing. We take trips in these transport mechanisms expecting to be safe, but realizing that dangers do exist. Going to church all day or eating greasy popcorn in a dark room are not supposed to be terribly risky behaviors, just as working in a sky scraper building should never make you afraid of incoming attack planes.
Tomorrow or next week we won't be afraid of church or movies or sky scrapers anymore because that's just not normal. Angry white people in the South are not still plotting to kill black church go'ers or to start a race riot, just as every Muslim who worships the Koran is not trying to join the Jihad and shoot up any part of America, even if Pam Geller is sponsoring the event. The people interested in doing such things are so predictable that the authorities targeted and met them at the last Geller event.
Segregation remains the truly crazy part about America's landscape, and the opportunity to get to know each other on a level beyond our skin and stereotypes is more elusive in places like South Carolina now that they have returned to segregation policies of the past that limit REAL interaction between races. Crazy is the necessity of 9 deaths to take away the daily hysteria over a white girl who dared become black, as if she painted her face and blackened her hair-do just to jump into a soup line exclusive to coloreds instead of advancing cause of coloreds (I hate that word NAACP). Blacks are such a terrorized people, even we can't understand the compulsion to endure terror forgetting that our moments of terror have created the very courage and charisma that have made more than one white girl copy our ways, and more than one white person challenge our backbone during church.
All terrorism is crazy if for no reason other than its trauma against humanity, yet its important that we compartmentalize it and not turn it into a wider reaching conspiracy that demands a wide reaching address that misses the mark. Terror must be compartmentalized or it works. If terror is an individual act that attempts to differentiate those who are terrorized, black people are perfectly equipped for this type of behavior, and we will never be intimidated. By the whip or a weapon. Blacks should continue conducting worship in the very way we have always done to overcome terror, from the middle passage until now. If we ever needed a gun to protect our worship, then we never needed faith.
Domestic terror of all sorts is here to stay, and America needs to understand how to endure and overcome this mess. Mother Emmanuel can now be an example that this is not an issue of race, but an opportunity for racial progress and for the hope of a better America. Blacks as a race in America made America possible from the beginning, and continue to shine the light of hope that only courage can provide. If Mike Brown Jr. died to expose a policing problem that needed exposing, these 9 deaths could very well address a nation flying under too many flags.
