Amy at Texas Faith: When racism becomes terrorism
The Charleston church shooting weighed heavily on our panelists this week. Here’s what they have to say about this unspeakable tragedy.
AMY MARTIN, president emeritus, Earth Rhythms
States a headline from the Onion satirical enterprise: ‘No way to prevent this’ says only nation where this regularly happens.
Comedian John Oliver points out: “One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.”
Notes comedian Denis Leary: “Racism isn’t born, folks, it’s taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.”
The video response to Charleston by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show has been viewed millions of times. He says: “What blows my mind is the disparity of response. When we think people that are foreign are going to kill us… we invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American
s… But nine people shot in a church — ‘Hey, what are you going go to do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?’ That’s the part that, for the life of me, I can’t wrap my head around.”
When comedians make more sense than everyone else, it’s well past time to put a stop to the mass psychosis that fuels our homegrown hate-crime terrorists.
What will it take for ordinary Republicans to speak out against the party’s fervent opposition to regulation of guns and its slavering obedience to the NRA, built on tin-foil paranoia about race and government fueled by Fox News? When will the Christian churches behind which so much of this hides embody Matthew 5:9, value all human life, and demand action week after week from the pulpit to stop the carnage? When will Americans collectively insist that we longer want to live this way, that we want something closer to the gun-sensible societies of Australia and Canada?
Let us not get lost in reactions. We manifest what we focus on. Choose peace, choose life.
