“You just can’t think that things like this can happen in America. It’s obviously a crime of hate. Again, we don’t know the rationale, but what other rationale could there be? You’re sort of lost that somebody could walk into a Bible study in a church and indiscriminately kill people,” Santorum told radio host Joe Piscopo Thursday on AM 970, a New York radio station. “It’s something that, again, you think we’re beyond that in America and it’s sad to see.”
The former Pennsylvania senator pointed to what he described as anti-religious sentiment.
“All you can do is pray for those and pray for our country,” Santorum said. “This is one of those situations where you just have to take a step back and say we — you know, you talk about the importance of prayer in this time and we’re now seeing assaults on our religious liberty we’ve never seen before. It’s a time for deeper reflection beyond this horrible situation.”
-- from a "Post Politics" post yesterday by Jose A. DelReal
by Ken
In The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb wrote yesterday ("Death in Charleston"):
We have, quite likely, found at 110 Calhoun Street, in Charleston, South Carolina, the place where Columbine, Aurora, and Newtown cross with Baltimore, Ferguson, and Sanford. We periodically mourn the deaths of a group of Americans who die at the hands of another armed American. We periodically witness racial injustices that inspire anger in the streets. And sometimes we witness both. This is, quite simply, how we now live.Not, however, our our Ricky-Roo lives. "What other rationale could there be?" he wanted to know. True, he claimed to be talking about "a hate crime," and I think we can agree that it would be hard to deny the suitability of that designation. But the only hate the Ricky-Roo-ster seemed able to imagine was hatred of religion. And at this point surely we have to ask, "Could you really think of no other 'rationale' for the shooting-up of a Charleston AME church? Think hard now, Ricky-Roo."
Alas, Ricky-Roo doesn't think, so I guess "thinking hard" is out of the question. But apparently no, he couldn't imagine any other reason why a young white man might come into a black church and shoot the place up.
Which is why it would help him if he ever learned to keep his imbecilic yap shut.
I should clarify what I mean by "insane," because I expect that mental-health professionals would find many strange features to Ricky-Roo's mental processes but none that fit any of our definitions of insanity. No, although Ricky-Roo's behavior and speech are indistinguishable from clinical insanity, he isn't insane in the sense of a deficiency in mental capacity. He's one of those people who, perhaps inspired by his notion of "God," made the decision always to check his brain at the door. Right-wingers don't believe in checking their guns at the door, feeling a compulsive need to "carry" at all times, but their brains they never carry.
Which leaves the Roo-ster with no mental capacity for understanding that:
(1) Far from in any sanely imaginable way impinging on religious liberty, the U.S. displays an almost insane degree of tolerance for almost anyu wacko bullshit fobbed off in the name of religion
(2) What now passes for religious belief in the U.S. has crossed more widely and deeply across the line of sanity and decency -- as witness the ravings of a degraded beast like Ricky-Roo. Not only is he allowed to spew the poisonous ignorance that fills the space occupied by his brain, but he is actually listened to, and covered by TV and print media as if he had a working brain.
(3) If there is nevertheless a growing unease about religious tolerance in the U.S., the obvious first place to look is at the sociopaths and psychopaths who have so ruthlessly pushed the boundarires to see just how much insane behavior they can get away. In other words, Ricky-Roo, before you go wagging your necrotic finger of doom at others, take a good long look in the mirror.
Now, Ricky-Roo, if you had thought to raise the possibility -- in that fairly brief period before we knew anything about the shooter -- that he might have been racially motivated, you wouldn't be looking as much like an ideological psychopath, or just plain jackass. But of course you wouldn't have thought to raise that possibility, because you're a prisoner of your mental incapacity. And of course you wouldn't have thought about the whole issue of American gun violence. This is what it's like to live in as bizarre and unreal a space as your mind.
Saddest of all, it would never occur to you just to keep your fool mouth shut. That's all part of who you are.
OF COURSE THE NRA IS TARGETING THE SLAIN PASTOR
Because that's who they are.
NRA official blames slain South Carolina pastor for Charleston church shooting because he opposed concealed firearms
BY DAN FRIEDMAN, CORKY SIEMASZKO
Friday, June 19, 2015, 12:09 PM
One of the NRA’s top numbskulls responded to the Charleston church massacre by shooting off his mouth — and blaming the victims.
NRA board member Charles Cotton
Displaying all the sensitivity of an anvil, Charles Cotton said the slaughter was the fault of Clementa Pinckney, the murdered pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church who also was a South Carolina state senator.
“Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead,” Cotton declared. “Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue."
Cotton, who sits on the board of the National Rifle Association, wrote on an online forum for Texas gun advocates that Pinckney had “voted against concealed-carry.”
Nowhere did Cotton mention Dylann Roof, the white racist who used his 21st birthday money to buy the gun that police said he used to slaughter Pinckney and the others in the church basement Wednesday.
MEANWHILE IN CHARLESTON --
Officials: Suspect in church slayings unrepentant amid outcry over racial hatred
A 21-year-old white man accused of murdering nine people in a historic black South Carolina church makes his first court appearance.
By Jeremy Borden, Sari Horwitz and Jerry Markon
June 19 at 3:06 PM
CHARLESTON, S.C. — The gunman charged with killing nine people in an African American church was unrepentant during a confession to police, even after almost backing out of what he called his “mission” because church members were so nice to him, according to law enforcement officials and others briefed on the investigation.
Dylann Roof not only confessed to causing the Wednesday night carnage in Charleston, but said he wanted his actions known, said the law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is unfolding. They said Roof espoused strong anti-black views when questioned by officers.
But the 21-year-old also told police he had briefly reconsidered his plan during the time he spent quietly watching a Bible study group before opening fire, two people briefed on the investigation said. Roof “said he “almost didn’t go through with it because they were so nice to him” one of the people said, before concluding: “I had to complete my mission.”
As he methodically fired and reloaded several times, the person said, Roof called out: “You all are taking over our country. Y’all want something to pray about? I’ll give you something to pray about.”
Roof’s words added to an emerging portrait that suggests the 21-year-old was driven by runaway racial hatred in the attacks — unleashed after Roof spent nearly an hour watching the group before opening fire, authorities said. . . .
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