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.

Speaking of mental illness: I know a lot of people with varying degrees of mental illness get very frustrated when a (white) person commits a horrific crime that is immediately attributed to mental illness, because they have mental illnesses and it hasn't made them a mass murderer. (I saw many comments along these lines after Andreas Lubitz flew his plane into a mountain and it was immediately attributed to his depression, for example.) As a journalist, I think it is sometimes (but not always!) important that a person's mental health history be part of the story, because mental illness CAN change people's behavior in dramatic and sometimes horrifying ways, but I think it's also incumbent on reporters to make clear that mental illness alone is never the full story; there are always other factors at play. Right now, the media needs to get a lot better at this. (And, to be clear, it doesn't appear terribly relevant in this case. Roof was not in the grip of some delusional episode; again, he planned this for MONTHS.)

Let's talk more about the media's tendency to rush to mental health as an explanation, because oddly enough, it only happens with white people. When a person of Arabic descent commits or attempts to commit a crime, the news networks don't call a psychologist. They call a terrorism expert. Given that white domestic terrorists kill far more American civilians each year than Islamic terrorists, this is a significant blind spot for most reporters. We need to do better.

On the left, meanwhile, attention is focusing largely on two issues: guns, and the Confederate Flag, which is currently flying at half-mast outside the South Carolina State Capitol in a magnificent spectacle of irony. Roof apparently also had a confederate flag license plate. This has once again thrust the flag (technically a battle ensign from Northern Virginia, yes, I know) back into contention: as always, people of color and Yankees assert that it is a symbol of slavery and repression, while white people in the South claim it is a symbol of their proud independent heritage and has nothing to do with racism at all. http://www.bostonglobe.com/…/iLaBh5VNVxVRgCYoXg…/story.html…# is a worthy visual of the debate. But see, here's the thing: it doesn't really matter. Either defenders of the confederate flag are lying and are supporting the flag to express their racial animus toward African-Americans, or they are telling the truth, and are so self-centered as to believe their wankery for a mythical Lost Cause in Dixie that never really existed is more important than the distress felt by a great many of their fellow citizens over the many and grievous crimes against humanity perpetrated by that Lost Cause, which the use of their flag appears to endorse. If the former, defenders of that flag are dishonest, racist fuckwads. If the latter, they are self-centered, racist fuckwads. I don't see any value in trying to divine which precise type of racist fuckwads such people are.

And then we have guns. South Carolina has permissive gun laws (http://gunlawscorecard.org), although it appears Roof got a gun as a gift from his father, which would not be covered by most state and national firearm statutes. But this is not an isolated incident. The Onion, as usual, is on point noting that America is the only developed nation to see regular mass killings with firearms (http://www.theonion.com/…/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-…). And There is a damning correlation with gun ownership: America has the highest rate of civilian-owned firearms in the world, at nearly 9 guns per 10 people (which is insane.)https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_cou… But we also need to recognize two things. First, that no regulatory regime will entirely close every loophole for evil people to get guns (especially given the limitations of the second amendment, which I do support, in the sense that I think members of a well-regulated militia should be able to keep their firearms.) And second, that the availability of guns is not the only or even primary driver of gun violence. If it were, Switzerland, where the vast majority of households have government-owned firearms in case of compulsory military service, would be a bloodbath.

So while it is important to address the availability of guns, it's also necessary to address the other contributing factors: a deeply dysfunctional racial history, as one would expect of the nation that presided over the most horrific regime of phenotypical murder, enslavement and discrimination in history. A national obsession with violence, military force and, specifically, guns, as instruments of solving problems (which is both fed by and responsible for The Expendables, Call of Duty, and similar media produced overwhelmingly by and for Americans.) A hilariously inadequate social safety net and justice system that allows millions of people to be beaten down by entirely preventable financial, medical and legal problems, and is entirely unable to provide early warning and intervention when some people deal with those problems ... badly. And a healthy and thriving tradition of political discourse (including but by no means limited to white supremacy movements) that emphasizes external causes for all America's problems as opposed to, say, ourselves. As long as these other factors remain in force, there will be a demand for guns in America, and no efforts to quench the supply have a hope to succeed.

I don't know how to solve all these problems. We've spent as much as 500 years digging some of these holes, and what progress we've made in the last 150 years to rectify some of them clearly has not finished the job. But God as my witness, we (and white people in particular) need to do SOMETHING. We can start with donations to http://www.emanuelamechurch.org/ or the SPLC or other organizations fighting or affected by racial violence. We can start looking for our own blind spots, like reporters re: mental illness. And can we please, PLEASE, not be that white person who stands up to loudly announce that talking about racism is racist and don't you know that all lives matter?

We have problems. Please, try to be part of the solutions.