Today is one of those historic days in American history. We have had many lately. Most recently was last week when a black church in South Carolina saw 9 members of their congregation gunned down by a white supremacist with his heart set on performing some kind of evil. The worst part about this was that he sat in on the prayer meeting being held with the church members before he exacted his evildoing.
It is my belief that if there is a place called hell, these kind of people will be condemned to the deepest, darkest corners of it and be subjected to eternal pain and suffering at the hands of Satan himself. It is very hard to understand how depraved a man or woman could be to perform such an evil deed and in such a way as he did. I do not care to understand these people. Attempting to understand them only gives credence to their existence, which they are clearly not worthy of, let alone existence at all. But, just like ISIS, there will always be evil in the hearts and minds of some men and women. We cannot change it, but we can do our best to make sure they remain on the opposite end of the majority.
Our country’s psyche and morale has been in a very low place over the last week or so. From the shootings to the sad, sad debate over whether the confederate flag should be removed entirely from all government institutions in the south. The fact that there were defenders of keeping the flags in place just goes to show that our country, as a whole, has a long way to go when it comes to changing our level of acceptance.
The idea of respect and acceptance is one that a lot of people share and one that I’d dare to say the majority of people possess, at least by a small percentile. A good family friend of mine who lives down in Arizona makes it a point to hire minorities to work for his towing service because he has a firm belief in the founding principles of our country.
That being said, there is still an element of hate and bigotry in our society that cannot be ignored. The shootings last week should reaffirm to us all that there is still a lot of racism in our society and that there is still a lot of work to be done. Though these people (or more accurately, scum) may be small in numbers, they have the ability to affect the larger body of consciousness when they decide to take out their hatred on innocent minorities.
It is sad and disheartening to see this happen and my heart is crushed for the victims and their families. BUT……!!!!