Two young men, both of them growing up with all the advantages of being a young man in modern America have, between them, slaughtered a total of 14 men and women. They were good, honorable, and decent men and women who did not deserve their fate. Unfortunately, the actions of these two monsters have become cultural and political Rorschach tests. Instead of bringing out the best in us all, various factions are doing just the opposite. There is a very good reason for this. We’re getting two different narratives for what should be the same tale, just different chapters and verses.
Dylann Root grew up with a lower middle class family, who apparently indulged him. Socially stunted, then dumped by the love of his life, for a black man (allegedly), he turned to drugs, suffered from mental illness, degenerated into far right extremism. He left a paper trail of writing about his extremism, went to the gun range, then he murdered nine people.
Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez was a naturalized American. He did well in school, athletics, then was fired from his first major job. He began experimenting with drugs. He suffered from depression. His family sent him back to the old country where he became indoctrinated with religious extremism. He came home, began writing about his extremism, went to the gun range, then murdered five people.
They were both seriously disturbed, and acted out in hate. People can be involved in ‘hate’ groups and not kill. What both young men did requires serious mental illness, but that mental illness does not result in diminished capacity. They knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing would destroy lives and would destroy their families. By the time they started killing people, all they could do was let hate wash over – both of them.
This is where the resemblance ends. Instead of trying to understand what made Dylann Root tick, the moment it was discovered he had delved into the worst kind of hate, the situation was used to damn an entire part of the country. It was immediately used and manipulated for a political agenda. There was no attempt to treat Root’s family with dignity or consideration. Why bother. He was a white supremacist. His family created a monster. Why even bother trying to explain his mental illness and what caused the breakdown. He was a product of South Carolina, which, because of slavery 150 years previous, he murdered 9 people. His victims are memorialized, and treated like martyrs to a cause. What Root did is being used to damn an entire part of the country, erase history, and allow for wholesale politically correct censoring.
Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez’s family is being treated with the utmost respect. The poor young man was suffering from depression. That’s why he did what he did. His mental illness, not the hateful indoctrination of a monstrous perversion of a great religion, caused him to do what he did. It is almost as if the media is trying to find an excuse for what he did, rather than admit that his actions were identical to Root, a hate crime. If you dare mention they are the same, you are damned for it.
The real problem here is two-fold. First, if one admits that the storyline is basically the same, then an entire political segment must be required to admit they blew it. They went over-board with their damnation of the entire South, and they are the ones who degenerated into pure, abject bigotry and hate. Unable to see beyond their own bias, they were incapable of any sort of compassion for the man’s family. They still aren’t. They are so determined to maintain their politically correct narrative of white supremacists kill more people than Islamic terror does, that they must turn themselves into pretzels, in order to prove a point. In order to maintain the hysteria, they are making fools of themselves, turning righteous indignation into what is starting to look like wholesale censorship and cultural cleansing.
If these same people admit that what Abdulazeez did was a hate crime, then the politically correct narrative that Islam is not a religion of extremes and hate comes tumbling down, like Humpty-Dumpty. For years there has been this narrative that only the extreme right is a domestic terror danger, when that is far from the truth. In fact, if you check the FBI’s most wanted for domestic terror, every single person on it is far left. The Administration has turned the far right into such monsters of near mythological proportion that, in order to maintain their narrative, if Abdulazeez is recognized as having committed a hate crime based on a corruption of Islam, then they fear far right, white supremacist haters wills start killing Muslims. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Like I said, this is a cultural and political Rorschach test. One group of us see what both men did as an expression of evil. Another group sees it as a political tool to further a cause. There’s nothing wrong with politics. But, I detest intellectual dishonest, and we’re been treated to it, in major league proportions.
This country has a far greater problem with radicalized Islamic terror than we do far right idiots. There is one reason the numbers don’t show how bad the situation actually is. The FBI has done a magnificent job arresting people before they turn to slaughter.
These stupid idiots are a far greater danger to themselves than to others. The problem is, the situation has now become so insane, no one wants to put anything into perspective. No one is bothering to apply a little bit of psychology or understanding of human nature. The main reason people like this should not have guns is because they would end up shooting themselves by accident.
There are some very bad extremists in this country. Associated via Stormfront, there are skinheads, and violent neo-Nazis. The big mistake is the failure to understand that idiots like the above, and Confederate sympathizers are killers. They are not. Neither are normal Muslims.
