Racist Domestic Terror In Charleston, SC - What's Behind It?

The racist domestic terrorist, Dylann Storm Roof,  who needs to be taken down like a rabid dog.

By now everyone is aware of the massacre of nine African-Americans in an historical Charleston, SC church. Video imagery has captured a white gunman - now identified as 21 year old  Dylann Storm Roof by the FBI . This POS actually sat with church goers (doing a bible study class)  calmly for an hour before opening fire. According to eye witnesses this maggot Roof reloaded five times and at the end had taken the lives of nine (6 women and 3 men),  including the pastor, a black state senator, in an attack the U.S. Department of Justice called a hate crime.

Well, of course it is a hate crime! DOH!  One does not need a Mensa level IQ to grasp that. (Or shouldn't) Any little scumball who'd go into an all black church and gun down its worshippers is a disgusting racist termite - no two ways about it. And yes, his crime is not only mass murder but mass murder done as a hate crime. For this, this sandy-haired shooter with the fucked-up name, Dylann Storm Roof,   needs to be hunted down like a rabid dog.

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters:

"This is an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind,"

Roof  may have a "deranged mind" but it was certainly filled with hate. Where he got it, who knows? Did he listen to too much talk (hate) radio, slapping down black people as "apes"?  We know, from David Livingstone's book 'Less Than Human' that when  an entire race is denigrated whether as "apes" in the case of blacks, or "rats" in the case of German Jews (during the Third Reich) than the enslavement and slaughter of people belonging to those groups becomes easier because the whole class has been de-humanized.

Maybe also Roof fell victim to vile propaganda spewed as in hate billboards across the South (e.g. SPLC Intelligence Report, Summer, 2015, p. 5).  The epicenter of white nationalism and billboard hate now appears to be Harrison, Arkansas. According to the SPLC (ibid.):

"A billboard war that started in 2013 continued to rage in the small city of Harrison, Ark.,  which to the dismay of many locals has become a battleground for white nationalists bent on promoting racism and sowing discord. "

The fact is we don't know exactly what spawned Dylann Storm Roof's  hate, but - as previous SPLC Reports have noted - we know there's been a steady uptick in hate groups and hate crimes since Obama was elected in 2008.  Indeed, the hate momentum was fueled further after Obama's 2012 re-election, very likely because all the racists were convinced Mitt Romney the plutocrat would be the white 'savior'  to finally replace him. When it didn't happen, they went bonkers. So we beheld racist swine from Texas to Virginia hanging our president in effigy via the chair prop introduced by relic Clint Eastwood at the GOOP  convention in July, 2012.

We also saw students on election night at the University of Mississippi going ape shit,  hanging then burning effigies of President-elect Obama after the final, projected winning returns were tallied on CNN.. The haters simply couldn't take it and there also followed many incidents - mainly in the South- and often included presumed Obama voters beaten up. For what, exercising their franchise? Evidently! (They exercised it for the wrong guy, according to the misfits.)

There are a number of books that are useful in exploring further this penchant for human hate and degradation.   One such work is Simon Baron-Cohen's, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. The aim of this (2011)  book is to explore how it is some humans can be so incredibly cruel, and wreak havoc on so many while pouring out racial, ethnic and other hatred. What is it that turns  people to misshapen monsters? Baron-Cohen, a renowned Cambridge psychologist, is well qualified to pursue this issue and answer the question of the ages: What is cruelty? What is evil? And can they be explained scientifically?

As an objective scientist, Cohen dislikes the term "evil" (freighted as it is with supernaturalism and emotion) as much as I do. In place he uses "empathy erosion" as an alternative. Empathy is just the capacity to feel what another person does, put oneself in his place, and hence - be able to feel his pain. For example, it would be analogous to putting oneself in the place of a poor black, say being racially mistreated or abused in the Old South, before Civil Rights came in. Putting oneself in his place, one would feel his pain and want to do anything to help him. Not doing so, and the person would either join in setting attack dogs on him, or stand by and watch while KKK'ers beat him, which is even worse.

Because empathy erosion is more measurable than the term evil (since one can gauge its presence or absence by using positron emission (PE) tomography in the region of the brain called the posterior superior temporal sulcus) then it's more useful since it's quantifiable. A typical way to do a base quantification would be to hook the person up then show him assorted photos, such as concentration camp scenes, and measure the response. If the PE  radiance region area is maxed out at a certain limit, than that discloses highest empathy. If not, then empathy is absent and hence there is erosion .

The Nazis were not totally insensitive to how their victims were feeling, they simply didn't care! They lacked empathy and hence displayed monstrous empathy erosion. Hitler displayed some of the least empathy, and as explained in one earlier theory by Harvey Hornstein (Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggression and Altruism,1976, Prentice-Hall) his own empathy erosion probably arose from having authoritarianism imposed on him: His father Alois used to beat the boy senseless, and often for no reason. Later, devoid of empathy, Hornstein reasons Hitler took out his pain on the Jews.

Did this little Charleston, SC racist maggot take out his "pain" on innocent blacks? We don't know because we can't be sure in his earlier life there was even some excitation of pain centers. Was Roof beaten by a gang of blacks? Did he call them "apes" or "thugs" to incite their reaction? Did a black teacher take a paddle to Roof's  behind for some misbehavior? We don't know, but in any case none of those can be used for justification of his bestial act. Even if Roof  was beaten senseless by the Crips it doesn't justify mass murder.

If a gang victim, Dylann Roof's  response ought to have been to man up and report his beating to the law, not become his own judge, jury and executioner.  If, OTOH, he'd harbored deep seated Obama-hatred and took that out on nine innocents, he'd also have done better to grow up and suck it up.   You don't get to kill nine innocents in a church to feed your hate of Obama!

What should happen to this piece of refuse, Roof, if found guilty and condemned to death? Maybe do a partial electrocution - to the point his eyes are nearly popping out of his head and his face is sizzling- then finish it off with a trip to the gas chamber.

In any case, an example needs to be set. The problem is it likely won't reach that phase because when finally cornered Dylann Roof - evident punk that he is-  will probably off himself. Or the cops will do it - which has the benefit of saving the good taxpayers of Charleston, SC hundreds of thousands of bucks!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-berkowitz/62712/homegrown-right-wing-racist-terrorist-massacres-church-goers-in-charleston-south-carolina

See also this  salon.com piece, torching the idiocy from some on the Right that "we don't know it's a hate crime" (Doh! We DO! Stop being so delusional and in denial!)

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/notallwhitepeople_twitter_racists_react_to_news_of_dylann_storm_roofs_killing_spree_with_delusional_denial/

Five Takeaways From Last Night's Debacle

And I use that term "debacle" deliberately, because seriously, Americans have no idea what they are in for. I refer to two disparate groups: 1) the energized and angry Repubs who were driven by Obama hatred to take it out on any Dem, and 2) the lazy-ass Dems who sat at home or never even attempted to vote in the first place, enabling this travesty.

Anyway, let me give 5 takeaways from this debacle which has left the Repukes in control of the Senate with a 52-48 majority so far, and also in charge of many governorships (which could allow a lot more gerrymandering to ensure future repuke domination):

1) Democratic coalition voters are politically immature and too mesmerized by the cult of personality.

This explains why they never turn out in the same numbers for  mid-terms as they do for general elections. In so doing, by their absence, they invariably cede power to the angry wackjobs who are always intent to vote in mid-terms to "teach them libruls a lesson". The numbers as displayed this morning on the CBS stat board tell the sorry story:

In the 2012 general election, young (18-22 yrs.) voters represented 19 % of the electorate while yesterday they represented only 13 %. African-Americans, meanwhile dropped from 13% to 12% representation and Hispanics from 10% to 8 %.   Given many races - such as here in Colorado for the Senate seat occupied by Mark Udall - came down to 5-7 pt, wins it means that this absence in the current election could well have explained Udall's losing his seat to the nimrod Cory Gardener.

I attribute this backsliding to political immaturity, driven especially by younger voters' need to embrace a personality, as opposed to grasping the issues in play. If they would detach from personality worship, and simply study issues in each state and the candidates, this regular falloff should not happen.

2) As usual the Right was energized by fear and anger.

And in contrast, as in 2010, the Right's loonies came out angry in their numbers, driven by the nuts on FOX and Rush Limbaugh.  They came out in larger numbers than the original "Obama coalition" and this possibly explains up to 50 percent of the losses suffered by the Democrats.

It is no secret that the handlers of the Tea Party nuts and others on the Right know how to manage their minds to drive them to the polls in higher numbers than their D-counterparts. We call it "dog whistle" politics, especially presenting numerous unsavory images of Obama to try to instill racial hatred and fear. The voters will deny this plays any part, of course, but at a deep subliminal level it certainly does. One need not go out on a black person's lawn and actually wear a white robe and burn a cross to be a racist. He need only put up a 'skunk' image on Facebook and assert that it should be the "Presidential seal" for Obama so long as he's in office, since he "smells" and is "part black, part white". Funny? Not!

3) Money, as usual, trumped votes in at least three states - probably more.

As noted on Scarborough this a.m., the Koch brothers, using their tons of money and the front of "Americans for Prosperity" were significantly better this time around at the ground game -especially in North Carolina and Florida. That easily made the difference in those states, i.e. in Kay Hagen losing to Tillis in NC and Charlie Crist losing to Columbia HCA criminal Rick Scott in FL.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, big money flooded the state to try to get rid of Mark Udall (which succeeded) as well as the ability to label GMO foods (downed by a 68% 'No' vote). In the last case, opponents - mainly the pawns of multinationals like Monsanto- deluged the state with negative ads and spend nearly $12 m to the 1/2 m of pro-labelers.

The only good news? Hickenlooper held on as Colorado governor by 48.3 percent to 47.1 percent for Bob Beauprez.

4) Democratic candidates need to embrace their leader not run from him.

This was evident throughout as Dem Senate and other candidates shamefully ran from Obama and his accomplishments rather than embracing them, touting them. This was especially critical in states like Colorado where health exchanges were set up under the Affordable Care Act and have proven a boon to many. But Udall didn't say a word about the Act, or its benefits - focusing mainly on how women will suffer by losing contraceptives if Cory Gardener is elected.

News for you, Sen. Udall: Colorado women care about more dimensions of their health care than just contraception and you ought to have made that message clearer!

5) The Democrats need Think Tanks to Craft Their Narratives.

I have said this many times before but will repeat it again: the Dems are lousy at formulating convincing narratives which are as good as the Republicans. Classic case? The Reeps call removing the Bush tax cuts a "tax hike". The Dem response? To sit on their thumbs and sing 'la-la-la'. They have no convincing response. The Reepos say that estate taxes are "death taxes" - again no response. The Dems simply appear dumbstruck at how the  other side has seized the language and used it to create multiple mind fucks.  Can they create a mind fuck of their own? NO they can't.

This is why they need real Dem dedicated think tanks to think up narratives for them, analogous to the American Enterprise Institute on the Right, as well as American Heritage Foundation.

Maybe, just maybe, these takeaways will be acted upon next time around. But I remain a skeptic.