Fox news and current Conservative politics engender hate and violence because they encourage and validate separateness.
My sweetheart and I just got ejected from the gallery we have inhabited for five years. It was done swiftly and without hesitation because I believe our landlords see us a people apart, different -- lacking. We are of a different tribe and as such don't deserve the same respect or consideration as their tribal members. This may or may not be true, however I want to believe that it is because otherwise I could see them as animal, base -- not completely human. I don't want to fall into the trap I'm writing about here.
They certainly are not anything like the shooter in South Carolina but I believe there is kinship in the two very different acts. They are both the result of individuals seeing other individuals unique humanity as a problem and viewing them as people apart from themselves. The tremendous, sad irony of this is that all of this is transpiring within the powerful embrace of a twisted Christianity.
Jesus showed those that had ears to listen that we are the prostitute, the leper, the downtrodden. We are the oppressed. We are the Negro. We are the Jew. We are the Anglo. We are the Poor. We are the Other. Obviously the weight of his admonition was just too heavy for society to bear and very rapidly Christians started building churches and painting flags and sewing vestments and performing rituals -- all acts of separation in the hope and guise of spiritual unity.
The profound simplicity of Jesus' message of love was just too difficult for those of power and inner bitterness.
I understand that the South Carolina church members welcomed the shooter into their midst and treated him with kindness. I understand that this caused him to hesitate before pulling his gun. I ponder what one potential outcome of this tragedy may have been if the airwaves were not saturated with hate and calls to judge and estrange and separate: One very disturbed, confused kid may have seen the real Christian message in the smiles and kind words of his victims, excused himself and returned home. We would never know his name.
