Yesterday, evil won

EDIT: I appear to have placed too much faith in the Great State of South Carolina: contrary to statements below, it appears the Confederate flag outside the capitol building was NOT lowered to half mast when the US and SC flags were lowered. Instead, they left it at full height. So that's, you know, horrifying. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150618/PC16/150619374

Ok. Let's talk about Charleston.

First off, in case anyone was still puzzled about whatever could have inspired Dylann Roof to kill 9 people in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Looking at you, Rudy Gulianihttp://talkingpointsmemo.com/…/rudy-giuliani-charleston-chu…), let me lay your confusion to rest: He hated black people. He wore clothing with apartheid-era flags from African nations, he told his roommate (who should be remembered for the rest of his life as a feckless imbecile who could have spoken up and didn't) repeatedly that he wanted to spark a new civil war between whites and blacks, and he told one of the survivors in the church that "You rape our women and you’re taking over our country and you have to go." This was not a jilted lover going overboard, this was not a bout of delusion or mental illness, this was racism.

What makes America exceptional

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/?tid=sm_tw

This is an interesting article, and one that helps me understand a distinction I had not previously recognized. I do not believe America is the greatest country on Earth. Even if such a subjective statement could be quantified, there is no possible metric by which America can be said to stand above all others (and yes, the opening monologue from The Newsroom is on point here) ... except, perhaps, for aspiration.

More people want to be in America, to become American, than any other nation. The reason for that is not (or shouldn't be) quality of life; otherwise, the most popular nation on Earth would be Sweden, probably. And yet people aspire to be like us, or like our best vision of ourselves, because moreso than any other country, we aspire to be better too. And as the article says, it's not been the wealthy and privileged who've striven for continuous improvement in America: it's been "the ability of the unsung and the outsiders to challenge the country’s elite and force change."