Reactions I've seen include a Miami Herald columnist asserting that this probably wasn't racial because the last time a white guy killed a bunch of African-Americans was, what, seventy years ago? and Fox News speculating that the shooting was the result of anti-Christian animus.
They've got the suspect already, so there's that. apparently he's a regular in one of the 4chan cesspools.
Or possibly I misread that last part.
Santorum says this just shows that we need to stand up for religious liberty in the war against secularism, because people are being gunned down in church.
And anyway there's a picture of him wearing a jacket with a couple of African nation flags (Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa) and there are a lot of Muslims and Al Qaeda based in Africa so it's probably Islamic terrorism.
(Got that one from a Freeper thread someone else posted for purposes of mockery.)
"You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."
Projection!
Dude has a bunch of black Facebook friends, which seems kind of strange.
I think Republicans have no problem disavowing this guy. He's motivated not by anti-tax sentiment, not by anti-immigration sentiment, not by anti-Muslim sentiment, not by resentment but by the kind of literal belief that blacks are subhuman species that's hard to find nowadays. Republicans want to believe that any degree of racism short of belonging to Stormfront.org and having a Rhodesian flag on your jacket means you actually just hate "thug culture" and fatherlessness, and you actually care MORE about black people than the liberals who have doomed them to a life of low expectations and dependence on the state.
The Daily Beast has published one of the most telling Freudian slips ever about him:
Roof was previously arrested on April 26 on a trespassing charge and was awaiting moderation
Awaiting moderation, like some sort of human blob of goatse and swears the Internet just farted into your slush queue. Which is, in fact, exactly what he was.
He's not racist, some of his best Facebook friends are black!
I can't help but have as a secondary reaction in the back of my head "please let this kid not be on some mutant new atheist mission."
So, would it be accurate to ascribe to racism the contrast between the police response to this vs. to the Boston Marathon bombing? No lockdown here.
Also all the more disgusting in this context that SC still flies the Confederate battle flag.
The lockdown in Boston wasn't immediately after the event, it was 4 days later when the guys resurfaced, killed a cop, carjacked a guy, and got in a shootout with police killing one suspect and resulting in the remaining one hiding out somewhere nearby. In this case they caught him pretty quick, and 200 miles away- that range would have required locking down all of New England.
Santorum says this just shows that we need to stand up for religious liberty in the war against secularism, because people are being gunned down in church.
?! I had to google this. I thought maybe you were joking?
You were not.
Not that I agreed with the lockdown at the time, I thought it was a pretty stupid approach as evidenced by the fact that they found the guy right after they lifted it. And it was really sort of voluntary anyway, I think they gave out maybe 4 tickets total, as we debated here at the time.
But anyway, it was a different situation that marginally justified it more.
A guy who's been planting bombs in public crowds with eye towards max casualties and then subsequently carjacks a citizen and is engaging in full on gun battles with the cops in public streets is an excellent reason to tell everyone to stay inside.
I do wonder if people are going to fixate for very long on the fact that the capitol is still flying the confederate flag. The confederate flag strikes me as probably a good point to concede in private disgust (to the tune of "many southerners have a stupid fixation with this offensive piece of cloth, but it's not the actual problem") if the goal is some kind of inching toward mutual understanding rather than an increasingly entrenched standoff.
The confederate flag is apparently the only one that's not even at half staff today.
Even if you're right about the practical wisdom of conceding the (bullshit) position that allegiance to that flag isn't about white supremacy, it's about whatever-the-hell-else, I see no justification for keeping it all the way up the damned pole.
18 -- your other options for actually positive public policy outcomes from this event are (a) gun control or (b) South Carolina spends more on mental health services/services for the poor, both of which will happen approximately never, so I'd take the symbolic removal of the stars and bars as maybe the only positive thing to get out of this horrible goddamn massacre. And we probably won't even get that.
19: agreed that it should be at half mast and agreed that it's bullshit, but people will never surrender this particular bullshit.
I don't know, I'm probably just baiting Natilo.
mental health services
Sounding like this is going to be the big one in this instance. Supposedly he was shouting "I have to do this" as he shot and then was totally cooperative with the cop on the traffic stop.
I'm torn on the flag. Half the time it seems like the effort is better spent elsewhere, but other times it feels like this is the most symbolic fuck you possible, and it needs to be publicly torn to shreds and then salt all the flag poles.
Well, at least you won't be seeing it on license plates.
If you salt the flag pole your tongue won't stick to it in the winter.
25: oh hey! I was wondering if that decision had come out. Yay!
7: Are you sure you had the right Dylan(n) Roof?
Sounding like this is going to be the big one in this instance. Supposedly he was shouting "I have to do this" as he shot and then was totally cooperative with the cop on the traffic stop.
That seems equally compatible with ideological extremism. Anders Breivik during his massacre called emergency services to surrender, and when the police came he laid down his weapons.
Are you sure you had the right Dylan(n) Roof?
Yes.
29: Yeah, but 21, black friends on his FB, etc. I'm betting this is the onset of schizo.
If Roof counts as crazy, then so does Tsarnaev.
If you truly believe in the righteousness of what you're doing, you might expect to be released, acquitted, or even thanked when you surrender. Which as recently as 50 years ago wasn't an insane belief at all in terms of killing blacks.
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Follow-up at the surgeon's office. This is the guy that made me wait 3+ hours at the first appointment. So far we're an hour deep into sitting around, but at least this time I brought stuff to do.
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You should tell him that every hour of waiting is three doublings of your infection bacteria.
32: What the hell are you talking about? Roof was bouncing around without a real address, getting caught with LSD, coke, meth, getting the cops called on him for acting weird in the mall, etc.
Tsarnaev by all accounts was totally the opposite of this. Outgoing, athletic, well liked, and academically accomplished.
And I don't know for sure Roof's issue is the onset of something like schizophrenia but there are definitely some hints that it might be the case.
This kind of thing is not good for my not-very-convicted opposition to the death penalty. If they took this guy down to the river in a sack, it would not much trouble my sleep.
On my local news feed this morning, the commentors were all blaming the shooting on Obama.
See, if Obama hadn't caused all this racial division in the country, then this poor misunderstood white boy never would have had to go into that church and done such a terrible thing.
Poor kid. Now his life is just ruint.
My view on the death penalty is since only white people support it, only white people should be subject to it.
I'm betting this is the onset of schizo.
I suppose it's possible, but in some story an old acquaintance of his was saying how very racist he'd always been, but they didn't think it was serious.
41: But surely he could be both? Both very racist and mentally ill, I mean.
There can be more than one explanation: marinate in totally racist environment, use drugs and be the one guy who thinks he actually needs to do something about it....
"You don't have to be crazy to use violence and murder to maintain the dominance of the white race, but it sure helps."
43: I forgot about the drugs. Also the easy access to firearms.
How are people spinning this as an atheist motivation? You [Christians] rape our [atheist] women? That's not a thing.
41: His uncle's description is right in line with what's commonly seen with stuff on that spectrum like schizotypal personality disorder.
I wonder who gave him the 45 for his birthday? That was clever.
49: I read his uncle gave him the gun, don't know if it's the same one in 48 because that would be brilliant.
BTW, this does seem to be an evangelical meme of the moment. I know they've been expressing fear that Christians will be persecuted for a long time, but the past few times I've been to my parents' church, two different pastors (generally fairly reasonable people) start screaming about how we need to be doing drills with our children about what to do when the atheist overlords come to murder us in our beds. There will be torture, rape, flames, death, yadda yadda, and it's already starting now. Radical atheist T-shirts and internet posts are cited as evidence. I keep wanting to raise my hand and say, do you know what radical Christianists have been posting on the internet in your name? Do you really want to consider that as the body of evidence for the zeitgeist?
48: I think we can all appreciate amateur diagnosis hour, but the uncle's description is so vague and broadly applicable among teens, that linking it to a personality disorder or any psychosis is absurd.
I mean, he's 19, spends time in his room, avoids his uncle, and doesn't have a job. That's not indicative of anything.
Ok, it looks like his uncle is the one who said he got a gun, initial report made that out that uncle gave him the gun but that's not clear now.
The factor that matters here is racism and racist paranoia. The further stigmatization and marginalization of mentally ill people, loners, and depressives does not prevent anyone from becoming a murderer. Fucking calling people out on their delusional racist fantasies just might be helpful.
52: Sure, if you totally uncouple it from behavior odd enough at a mall that people call the cops on you and things like "prayed with a congregation for an hour before turning and attempting to shoot them all".
I think the "attempt to shoot them all" part is doing all of the work there.
47: So help me godAthe, I laughed. Makes Christians and atheists sound like the Romans and the Sabines. Today's a day for dark humor.
51: Not that I really think where this line of thought is going, but that's awfully similar to what would be said before pogroms.
Look who knows so much about what to say before pogroms.
AWB, I haven't been watching Fox News myself, but my FB friends who watch it claim that Fox News is claiming that Roof shot the people in the church not because he is a racist and they were black, but because he is an atheist, and they are Christians.
He didn't hate them for their race, IOW, but because they loved Jesus.
Never mind his shouted racist statements to the contrary, or those Apartheid patches on his jacket. This is the beginning of that liquidation of the Christians they have been promised.
Also OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI
Also, if only Obama hadn't taken away those poor Christians' guns, they could have defended themselves against this poor deluded atheist child, who is totally a pawn of Obama.
61, 62: I shudder, overcome with rage, to read of such filthy lies. What the hell is wrong with those assholes?
not by anti-Muslim sentiment,
I dunno, do you think it is a coincidence that this happened on the first night of Ramadan? Dumbshit probably thought he was attacking a mosque.
Q: How do you keep a white man in South Carolina from drowning?
A: Why the fuck would you want to?
And Natilo is baiting me back. E la nave va.
Actually, I wrote that before I saw your post. I've actually moderated my views on displaying the Stars and Bars -- there will come a harvesting, and when it comes, we're gonna need to know who to get first.
Guns for show, [night of the long] knives for a pro.
66: This is the problem with revolutionaries, always so concerned with who's going to be first against the wall. Look: the wall's not going anywhere. If you expect you're going to run out of walls or bullets, you may want to invite an accountant into your junta.
69: You know I'm in finance, right? Before he liberated Ireland, Michael Collins was a financial advisor.
This may be the lowest I've seen yet (Cotton is an NRA baord member):
Commenter ShootDontTalk: Something else to consider: The pastor of this church, who was killed, is a State Legislator in S.C.
Charles L. Cotton: And he voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.
But they already have concealed carry in SC! And they just voted for permitless concealed carry. And they have the death penalty too, so Roof should totally have been dissuaded from murdering people.
Racist white folx on the attack!
What do we do?
Stand up! Fight Back!
Hunch over our phones and complain on social media!
And he voted against concealed-carry.
Oh well, then, I guess he deserved to die.
Is this pure, genuine and unalloyed stupidity, do you think, or is it strategic stupidity in the service of a deliberate and cynical campaign of lies and distortions? Is he honestly that stupid? in other words.
You know, they've basically got the same platform as the floating-head people in Zardoz.
And that would only work if they had a floating head.
Shorter RW media: "He hates these cans!"
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Speaking of sad and demented (plus CCarp mentioned Laffer the other day).
Arthur Laffer, Heritage's Stephen Moore and others who met with Jindal before the dinner were impressed with Jindal's policy chops.
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Christ, the thing in 71 is vile.
Apparently Jon Stewart had a very good unscripted 6-minute monologue on Charleston tonight (no jokes). I haven't seen video yet on Twitter.
Schizo on the streets, racist under the sheets.
Christ, the thing in 71 is vile absolutely 100% normal and predictable for members of the gun lobby, who are almost entirely fucking psychopaths.
Christ, the thing in 71 is vile vile AND absolutely 100% normal and predictable for members of the gun lobby, who are almost entirely fucking psychopaths.
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Jesus fucking christ, this mandatory orientation I brought my daughter to? I was thinking like 60-90 minutes. They're talking five hours. It just community college for fucks sakes. If they lead everyone in one more round of applause there's going to be a massacre right here.
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You're not oriented until your spirit has been crushed. It's right there in the handbook.
The whole point of orientation is to sneak out to illegally drink/do drugs. They design it on purpose to make people do that, so they can get to know each other. Unfortunately, you're a cop.
The UNC orientation session I'm attending next month is two full days and the schedule/agenda is five pages long.
Oh christ, Roof had a manifesto website all ready.