Terrorism Is Being Hijacked

The focus of yesterday's diatribe was about the voices that come out every time we have a tragedy relating to guns which tells us it is wrong to politicize the event and, in effect, dismiss the lives lost. Not only have those voices managed to politicize this massacre and dismiss those lost lives, they have managed to hijack the message America needs to hear. Initially the Tea Party was able to hijack the GOP. It was stunning. It still is. The Republicans began to fall to their will for fear of a radical base leaving them. The Tea Party then managed to hijack the Bible. The message of Jesus Christ in a relatively short period of time has turned from peace to vengeance, from love to hate, and from comfort to condemnation. They have grown adept at spinning things in a way that America is pretty much just left in a state of shock where it is too profound to imagine so they ignore it altogether. That may have been the objective all along.

Whatever their objective, I do believe that this attempt to hijack the tragedy in South Carolina was probably a step too far. I imagine anyone who has heard their leaders over the last few days explain to them that this mass murderer was on a mission to kill the Christians will have a moment of pause and scream a quick, "Wait! What?" at the television screen. We have plenty of Americans who do their best to never know what is going on around them. They don't really know what the Tea Party has managed to do to the country, but I feel confident that every time they are confronted with a message of Christian persecution having been a motivation in what was quite obviously a racist attack, they will have the sense to tell themselves, "That is so fucked up."

The politicians on the right, but those in the Tea Party specifically, have mastered the fine art of changing the national discussion. They don't want to talk about racism right now because their party is a safe haven for racists. And they don't want to talk about gun control right now because their party is funded by people whose base has a sole mission of obtaining and maintaining arsenals.

Lindsey Graham, a Senator from this state which is still proudly displaying its white supremacy today with the confederate flag on its state house lawn, was on The View yesterday and offered such an outrageous reflection on the massacre that I had to rewind it to make sure that I heard what he said. But he said it. "It is 2015. There are people out there looking for Christians to kill them." So in Lindsey's mind (a place I never want to spend a moment of time), this little sonofabitch determined that he would walk into a church, pray with its parishioners and kill them because he is afraid of Christians. Absolutely! I hear that all of the time. When I am anywhere in social media the thing I hear from Americans is abject fear over the pending murderous attacks from Christians. I guess that makes sense because I have never seen anyone say anything racist. And, even though we have had people who know this murderer come out and explain his extremely unbelievable views about race and hatred for the black community, I suppose it was this fear of their Christianity that finally pushed him over the edge.

Yesterday Rick Santorum was on a radio show in New York and said that it was an obvious "assault on religious liberty." He agreed that it was a hate crime, however the hate was not directed at the black community but at the Christians who have recently decided that they are being persecuted in the country they have an overwhelming majority in. He told the audience, "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 time for a deeper reflection beyond this horrible situation."

I can not find a place to put this. I actually feel rage over it and can not find a way to accept that any leader in one of our two major political parties is diverting the focus of a profound tragedy and another of the many opportunities recently afforded our society to talk about and work toward mending our national disgrace of racism toward a discussion about his political agenda. Many Americans don't even realize that the Tea Party candidates have decided that their own persecution is the new campaign slogan. What would rational people think if they knew? I certainly hope that if any good can come out of this deplorable plummet into the lowest of realms by the right it will be for Americans who are not paying attention to actually hear their message. I believe that is our only hope right now.

Many on the news have been asking one another whether or not the massacre in Charleston was a terrorist attack. I find myself actually shaking my head when I hear that question. Is it such a profound question to struggle over? Has the media conditioned itself to believe that the only way to define a terrorist is by their religion?

Terrorism: the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

Ok. Where is the confusion? A massacre is certainly violent and is obviously meant to intimidate. If his act and its reasons were not meant to go out to the world beyond, thus being a political message, he would not have set one person free to go tell what he was doing.

I am sick of typing the same thing and I assume my readers are growing weary of reading it, but we are complicit in every facet of this problem. Society is allowing itself to ignore the hate that comes from the right. We are allowing them to hijack everything from our important and meaningful national discussions to our interpretations of the Constitution. The fact that a single media outlet would give a voice to a candidate who has the nerve to insist that Christianity is under attack and that the massacre this week was a result of Americans persecuting this religion is beyond my comprehension. It is only made worse by having those who are meant to inform us struggle to determine if this was an act of terrorism. But they do it. And they have an audience. And they sell advertisements. And that is why they exist. As long as we allow the voices of the most hateful among us to distract us from making reparations in our own country, we will continue to allow them to take us to the depths they envision for our country. That should terrify everyone with a conscience and a capacity for critical thought.