Poway incident shows the nonsense in what both sides say

Kristina Davis et al has an article about the Poway anti-semetic shooting incident Saturday that refers to an unreleased “manifesto” or letter which apparently was posted on the Internet briefly and is now removed.  Note that he used an AR-15. Poway is south of San Diego, almost on the border.  Later Sunday NBCNews had more details on the contents of the "open letter". 

  

The perpetrator committed another atrocity against an Islamic facility in Escondido recently.  The screed apparently refers to New Zealand, but this time the point was anti-Semitism.

On the meantime, Biden enters the presidential race and refers to Trump’s “very fine people” after Charlottesville. 

And all of this adds up to nonsense.

Trump says he was referring to Lee as a general.  When I took US history in high school, we studied the War Between the States and stayed away from the emotion it engenders today.  I recall seeing Ted Turner’s 4 hour film “Gettysburg” at a heater in northern Virginia in 1995, but I don’t recall a lot of passion – I do remember the contemplative speeches. 

So, to me, to fight identarian struggles over monuments in many cities (like Richmond now) rather than do actual public policy sounds silly to me (like try health care, even legitimate border security).  Why not simply build more statues of accomplished African-Americans (like Arthur Ashe, in Richmond) as a counterweight?

But when the United the Right rally appeared in Charlottesville in Aug. 2017, the marches didn’t talk about the statues. They used the “J” word and the “replace” verb in the negative.  I don’t wan to repeat the meme.  So Trump has it all wrong.  No fine person says that.

The rally would logically be at odds with Trump for supporting Israel and moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

Of course, some of the resistance did get violent.

 Kate Sullivan of CNN has a story on the release from jail of a former military officer on weapon's charges when he had made horrific plans, because federal law doesn't view "domestic terror" the say way as foreign terror in terms of charges that can be brought or bail that can be demanded. "Right wing extremism" is far more covert and hidden in memes. 

It's fair to note that a lot of the "inspiration" for the far Right comes from sites like 8chan (as if 4chan were too authoritarian after refusing a few of the most extreme imageboards, as explained in Wikipedia;  one in particular is a serious cyberterror group with a name composed of slurs that will get you banned from Facebook and Twitter;  just read Wikipedia on this for details.) 

Truthout, a left-wing periodical that keeps making panicky demands for donations and threatens to shut itself down, as if only they could speak for us, does feature a challenging article by Cherise Morris, “To conjure a future we want, we need a revolution of the heart”.  Trouble is, I need to make it with my own efforts first before I pledge allegiance to a “group”.  I don’t have group oppression as an excuse, even if some unjust things happened early in my life. But if a revolution really happened, I would be gone.  I can’t gamble my own soul on “abolishing capitalism” which actually saved me.

  

There follows an even more challenging piece by Loav Yitvin on “embracing intersectionality”.