What shall we do with the white people...again?
I ask that question when white men commit mass shootings. I ask that question when Right-wing domestic terrorists kill innocent people. It is unfortunate, that in the aftermath of Sunday morning's murder spree by two white supremacists in Las Vegas, I am forced, once more, to ask said question.
Mass shootings by white men, as well as Right-wing domestic terrorism, have become events akin to those in the classic comedy Groundhog Day.
Unfortunately, there is nothing humorous or funny about how white Right-wing domestic terrorists have shot up Jewish community centers, planted bombs, seen a spike in their numbers since the election of Barack Obama, are coddled and encouraged by the Fox News echo chamber and the Republican Party, and now--with Tea Party regalia, Nazi bonafides, yelling "this is a revolution!"--they kill three people during a brazen daylight attack on Sunday in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Las Vegas shooters were so contemptible that even the racist welfare king Cliven Bundy, and his band of anti-Obama brigands, apparently felt that they were too "radical" for their low tastes.
The Right-wing echo chamber helped to spawn the mass shooters named "Jared" and "Amanda".
Birtherism, an embrace of the neo-confederacy, a worshipful attitude towards the Confederate flag (i.e. "the American Swastika") and the CSA, along with an open embrace of anti-black affect and white racial resentment in a concerted effort to delegitimate the United States' first black president, are the "polite" face of American white supremacy in the first decades of the 21st century.
The Republican Party is a white identity organization.
Complementing this claim, social scientists have highlighted how the Tea Party, a herrenvolk organization motivated by white racism under the guise of "taking our country back"--which begs the question "from who?"--creates a sense of white racialized self-interest among its members. Moreover, Tea Party organizations are a way for "old school" white supremacists to recruit new members from the angry white men (and women) who constitute the more extreme elements in the Republican Party.
The Las Vegas murder spree is a clear act of domestic terrorism by members of the White Right.
Of course, the Right-wing media and its acolytes will find a way to spin and distort the facts.
"Jared" and "Amanda" placed the Gadsden flag, what is now a Tea Party icon, on the body of one of their victims; the shooters yelled "this is a revolution!" while committing murder, a seditious slogan that echoes within the Right-wing echo chamber; Nazi paraphernalia was found in their home; and the Las Vegas shooters sought out a natural alliance with Cliven Bundy and his thugs.
The Right-wing media machine will re-frame the Las Vegas shooting spree in keeping with the principles outlined by Joseph Goebbels and his genius insights about how to manipulate the mass public.
The Fox News echo chamber will chose to either:
1) ignore the events in Las Vegas;
2) highlight those tragic events as an example for why concealed carry gun laws should be the rule of the land;
3) offer the default answer: this is all somehow Barack Obama's fault;
4) advance a lazy, intellectually bankrupt, and morally empty deflection: black people in Chicago shoot each other all the time!;
5) argue that these people are "sick" and "crazy", so why are we even talking about their politics?;
6) lie and commit an intellectually rapacious and craven assault on the historical record by suggesting that white supremacist Nazis are in fact really "liberals".
The most fringe elements of the Right-wing media machine and its base will default to a standard script wherein the white supremacist Las Vegas murder spree is presented as a "false flag operation", one conducted by "liberals" to discredit conservatives with the goal of undermining "gun rights".
When Richard Hofstadter's timeless and brilliant work on "the paranoid style" in American politics is mated with Right-wing bigotry and "conspiranoid" delusions, no ready antidote is available.
Racism and conservatism are the same thing in the post civil rights era. They are the beast with two backs: the American people will need more than a garden hose to stop their deranged coupling.
Alas, all that reasonable folks who care about the Common Good can ask is, once more, what shall we do with the white people? And when will there be a "national conversation" about white people, guns, mass violence, and Right-wing domestic terrorism.
I know that the answer is "never". The humanistic and patriotic concerns driving the question remain nonetheless.