Charleston 

20 Jun 2015

I don't have much to say. What can you say?

The last year in this country has shown, with great clarity, our problems, problems we refuse to address. It seems that those who see the problems continue to struggle and fight to rectify them. Those who refuse to see the problems grow even more recalcitrant, attempting to deflect the blame on to the victims or anything else that fits their narrow world view.

It's astounding and profoundly upsetting.

And even more astounding and upsetting that there are only two TV news organizations—HBO and Comedy Central¹—who care to address the issue head on. The other networks have to play the "middle", as if there are two sides to the argument.

Fuck.

Here are people who express my views better than I can.

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show

Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show

Charlie Pierce in Esquire

There is a timidity that the country can no longer afford. This was not an unthinkable act. A man may have had a rat’s nest for a mind, but it was well thought out. It was a cool, considered crime, as well planned as any bank robbery or any computer fraud. If people do not want to speak of it, or think about it, it’s because they do not want to follow the story where it inevitably leads. It’s because they do not want to follow this crime all the way back to the mother of all American crimes, the one that Denmark Vesey gave his life to avenge.

(Credit to Alan Sepinwall for pointing to the Larry Wilmore video.)