Some Quick Thoughts on Charleston and Media

To call the mass murder in South Carolina anything but Terrorism is itself a crime.

The vast majority of terrorism in the United States is not from foreign right-wing religious fanatics. The vast majority of terrorism in the United States is, and has been for many years, the action of American White Christian Right-wing fanatics who are inspired in their actions by the promotion of their hatred by right-wing radio and Fox News and the Koch Brothers’ funded Tea Party and it’s long past time that we called those forces of hatred out and stopped pretending that they’re just "another view".

When we ignore the tacit support these "information" sources give we contribute to making their hatred and violence mainstream.

When we pretend that a White, Christian, Right-Wing terrorist is, over and over again, a "disturbed person the mental health system missed" we contribute to excusing the climate of hatred and violence these forces encourage and spread.

When we pretend that shooting doctors and blowing up clinics is merely "an excessive response" to perfectly legal medicine rather than acts of terrorism, we contribute to excusing those actions as not reflective of those whose idea of debate is to violently force their views on those who disagree.

When we do not demand the disownment of these terrorists by all those who have given normative voice to their hatred and violence, when we do not demand apologies from those who have encouraged the reduction of debate to the violence of the mob boss it is we as a culture that have failed to do our job of saying that the fruits of their actions lie partly at the feet of those who planted that fruit.

The cost of free speech and a free press is that those who speak share responsibility for the actions of those who are inspired by them and we have failed and failed miserably as a nation at holding those sources responsible.

And that must be recognized and that must be fixed.