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Sunday, August 4, 2019

El Paso and Dayton

Yesterday was another tragic day in America. Two senseless attacks in El Paso and Dayton by two deranged young men. A total of 29 dead and dozens wounded.

I learned of the El Paso attack shortly before leaving to attend a Dodgers game in Los Angeles. I was only able to post a couple of lines containing what was known at the time. Only after I returned home last night did I learn about Dayton.

Today, my posting above received two comments, one from Yossi C and the other from Anonymous, both informing me that the El Paso shooter was a white/white nationalist.

Fair enough. That is, in fact, the case. Here is my response to both of them, which is pretty much all I can say at this point:

Yossi and Anonymous,

.....and his name is Patrick Crusious, so we know more about his identity than either of yours, but no matter.

Seriously speaking, it certainly does appear that he is a white nationalist who was upset about the southern border immigration issue. It is very likely, he was targeting Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. For God's sakes, that could have been my (Mexican) wife killed in El Paso.

I understand that he was inspired by the New Zealand mass murder. He reportedly said something in his manifesto that Trump would be unfairly blamed for his actions. So is he a Trump supporter? Very likely.

But Trump is not a supporter of Crusious. He has condemned the incident just as he has condemned Dayton-also very likely the work of a white nationalist. But now we are all standing around blaming each other.

First of all, we have a serious mental health crisis in this country. A lot of sick people-angry people- are walking around. More to your points about him being a white nationalist, I have recently conceded that white nationalism is growing, and it concerns me. We already face the threat of Islamic terrorism, and now we have to deal with this. One thing that does not help the situation is this growing trend in the direction of tribalism, identifying ourselves not by our American nationality, rather by our ethnic identification. At the same time, white people are being demonized as "privileged" and "racist" in our universities. We now find ourselves in a vicious circle. 

Perhaps, we all need to be more careful with our words-including the President. We can support secure borders without hating Mexicans or other immigrants. We can demand that criminal aliens be removed from the country without hating whoever their nationality is. We can criticize the troubling aspects of Islamic doctrine, condemn the terrorists, and criticize organizations like CAIR et al without hating Muslims as people. We can also criticize racism without dismissing all whites as racists, which they are not. 

Had these been Islamic attacks, I would have written and pointed that out as part of my opinion that Islam is indeed a danger to us. I would not have written that all Muslims were responsible or that we should take out our anger against them. In fact, I have already said that several times. 
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What else can I add? Actually, I may have jumped to conclusions about the motive of the Dayton shooter, whose motive at this moment is not clear. (One of the victims was his own sister.)


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

why do we always jump to "mental health" when these things happen? They have issues with mental health in other countries as well. Is it a mental health crisis when young Muslim men turn to violent jihad?

We keep ignoring the elephant in the room - it is far too easy for violent people to get their hands on high-powered weapons. That's what's different from other countries. Not mental health. Not video games. Not movies.

This isn't hard.