Killings in Christchurch

     This one is a bit of a rant.
     March 15: Killing innocent people is certainly a crime. Killing innocent unarmed people is heinous. Killing innocent people while they are praying in a house of worship is a heinous abomination. I awoke this morning to killings of 49 people in Christchurch, New Zealand. A racist, white supremacist, gunman walked into one mosque and killed 42 people and then went to another mosque in the same town and killed 7 more before he was arrested.
     The terrorist assassin is a white male from Australia. He is a white supremacist who planned this to the point where he had a hat mounted camera which he used to broadcast to Facebook Live while he shot and killed.
     I cannot fathom how anyone gets to the point where they could do such a thing. There had to be such a build-up of hate and delusion to conceive of and execute such an attack and broadcast it on social media.
     Killing people in a church, a synagogue, and in this case a mosque is inconceivably evil to me. Killing people in a house of worship is… I have no words. It is such an alien and abominable thing. When I first read about people being barricaded into a church or synagogue that was then set on fire, I was shocked to the core. I was first exposed to such heinous crimes over fifty years ago, and nothing has changed. I am shocked to the core each and every time something like this happens. Of course, we can replace the words house of worship with school, community center, and even workplace. They are equally horrible and wrong.
     March 17: I could not finish this piece the evening I started it. It is easy to be outraged and sickened. But it is quite another thing to say something that will resonate with all and put an end to such attacks. I really am not sure how to deal with some of the ugly as well hypocritical statements being made. Certainly, many world leaders including President Trump, made a statement about the killings in Christchurch. I have to be honest, while they sounded heartfelt. Many sounded hollow.
     Immediately, the analyses of and dialogue around this crime was, as the killer no doubt wanted, all about the white supremacy as an ongoing threat. As hours turned to days, biases emerged proving that we have learned nothing, and this kind of vile crimes will certainly happen again. I heard, Erdogan for example, talking about Islamophobia while he barely tolerates other religions in his country not to mention his crimes against the Kurds. There is the Australian Senator, Fraser Anning, who blamed immigration for the mosque attacks. There are numerous posts on social media basically siding with either Erdogan or Anning to some degree.
     From my perspective, this is all insane. Common folks praying in a place of worship have to be safe from a psychopath or gang of psychopaths barging into their sanctuary and gunning them down. It seems like such a simple truth. Most of the time, most everyone, has no problem following this tenet. At the same time, too many of us harbor biases and hatreds that, sadly, have a few on the psychopathic fringe take the hatred to the extreme and go on a shooting rampage.