I hate to do this. Nothing disgusts me more than to bring up this killer, who deserves no publicity and no recognition. He deserves to rot in prison, unknown and unloved, despised and reviled. I do not favor the death penalty, but he is not where I would take my stand against it.
But I have to state the saddest truth that I can, one that it pains beyond measure to recognize -
Dylann Roof Won
No, he did not get his blood in the streets race war like he wanted. But he won nonetheless.
At first, it seemed like the opposite may happen. The outpouring of revulsion over what he had done came from all sides and divisions in the country, political and ethnic. The forgiveness and love expressed by the Emanuel AME Church moved us all. The South Carolina legislature removed the vile and racist Confederate flag from their state grounds.
But the moment slowly dissipated. The defenders of the Confederate flag became louder and defiant. Racial attitudes resumed their terrible norm. Once again, on social media, I found myself being assaulted by a barrage of hate.
But because everyone was not instantly transformed into a better person was not an immediate cause for despair. It would have been beautiful if everyone was miraculously changed, but it was enough to think that those clinging to hate were in a dwindling minority, and that love would ultimately triumph.
And then came Trump.
A phony billionaire whose only claim to political fame was disputing the American birth of our first African-American President. A man who began his campaign by disparaging Mexicans as rapists and murderers. A man who wanted to build a wall, a wall that will serve no purpose other than to send a message of racial hatred and fear. A man who proposed a Muslim Ban, and even a Muslim registry - whether or not Trump is a Nazi may be debatable, but it is undeniable that these are steps right out of the darkest pages of the Nazi playbook.
And now this narcissistic man-child, appealing to the very worst of us, is inexplicably the President of the United States. And he is proving that his racist appeals were no fluke.
He has instituted his first step in a Muslim Ban. Plans for a Muslim Registry are being drafted. He has issued an executive order to build the wall. He wants the FBI to step down from investigating white supremacist groups. He has threatened to invade Chicago and defund the University of California at Berkeley. The only African-American in his cabinet is the head of HUD - a typical post assigned as the token position for Blacks
We have a President who talks about ravages in the street and American Carnage. And all his supporters know exactly what he is talking about.
A white supremacist, Steve Bannon. sits at the right hand of power.
The most racist US Senator, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, is about to become Attorney General. He believes that we should further dismantle voting rights and increase voting suppression. And that is only the tip of his bigoted agenda.
I can't say that every Trump voter intended for this to happen. But it's what they got. Maybe they were blinded by other right-wing issues. I don't know. At best, they were low-information voters who did not think it through, or they were blinded by their irrational hatred of Clinton and/or Obama. At worst, they knew that Trump would do these things, and they simply didn't care enough about it to dissuade them from voting for him. Either way, the results are the same.
Dylann Roof Won.
It wasn't a clean victory. It took Comey and the FBI sending the wrong message at the wrong time. It took Russian interference. It took the narrowest of Electoral College victories, by the thinnest of margins in several Rust Belt states, to negate a decisive almost three million vote margin in the popular vote.
But it ain't horseshoes, and close don't count.
And now they're large and in charge, and they don't give a darn about the rest of you losers.
Hate won. Fear won. Authoritarian fascism won.
Do not despair. There are still many good people in this country - the majority in fact. There is every hope and prayer that in our cyclical way, they are going too far and we will boomerang back to something better than we've had before - a true Progressive majority.
Meanwhile, for those who are horrified by this, make this not the whole war, but only a single battle. Mordor's Sauron was eventually defeated, Love and sacrifice won in the end,
We must cling every day to our new watch word -
RESIST!
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