Let's remember: in this sordid case, there were very good people -- the black people that Dylann Roof killed or injured. Some white Americans should ask themselves whether they want to be more like Dylann Roof or like the good people that he killed or injured. If we were all more like the victims then maybe we would not have the violent, murderous racism that erupted in a church.
Dylann Roof is really sick. There's no question of that. The cure would have been for him to identify with those upstanding black people. He may have been on a possible Saul-to-Paul journey... maybe that scared him. (As Saul he persecuted Jesus' followers; as Paul he became for all practical purposes the "Thirteenth Apostle").
The 'Black Church' that Dylann Roof attacked was doing everything possible to lead him to a recognition that black people could be good, decent people. I can imagine a programmed racist finding the people that he hates for their 'racial' difference and discovering that they really are decent people, competent and loving. I could imagine a happy ending in which Dylann Roof abandons his racism after losing his fear, falls in love with a black woman, marries her, and has beautiful mixed-race children in a very Christian family. One reads the revelation in Ebony Magazine as an uplifting story of how love can overpower hate. Maybe that has happened somewhere else.
Instead he did the worst thing possible. Yes, we should all be shocked. But we cannot blame Donald Trump for the atrocity. He was not then President. Hate kills. Hate did not need Donald Trump to make a murderous racist out of Dylann Trump.
Donald Trump is a very different matter.
Dylann Roof is really sick. There's no question of that. The cure would have been for him to identify with those upstanding black people. He may have been on a possible Saul-to-Paul journey... maybe that scared him. (As Saul he persecuted Jesus' followers; as Paul he became for all practical purposes the "Thirteenth Apostle").
The 'Black Church' that Dylann Roof attacked was doing everything possible to lead him to a recognition that black people could be good, decent people. I can imagine a programmed racist finding the people that he hates for their 'racial' difference and discovering that they really are decent people, competent and loving. I could imagine a happy ending in which Dylann Roof abandons his racism after losing his fear, falls in love with a black woman, marries her, and has beautiful mixed-race children in a very Christian family. One reads the revelation in Ebony Magazine as an uplifting story of how love can overpower hate. Maybe that has happened somewhere else.
Instead he did the worst thing possible. Yes, we should all be shocked. But we cannot blame Donald Trump for the atrocity. He was not then President. Hate kills. Hate did not need Donald Trump to make a murderous racist out of Dylann Trump.
Donald Trump is a very different matter.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.