Shameless Evangelical Liars and The Squad

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-squad-shamefully-tries-to-inflame-another-summer-of-riots.html

Are these serious people – or merely actors and clowns? The Squad is trying to start riots?

But the Right with its fearmongering and anger is not trying to start riots? What was January 6? What is Right-wing media being dominated by at the moment? There is a literal hysteria over immigration. I personally know of growing numbers of people in my part of rural Pennsylvania that are scared to leave their house – outlets like FOX have made them crazy, angry, and terrified.

It's hardly a stretch to suggest this whipping up of the public and nativist sentiment will lead to violence – and certainly mass shootings. It's already happening. And look at the response from Texas – the governor has pre-announced a pardon for the killer in Austin – who went out looking for trouble, hoping for an encounter with protestors. If that's not promoting a breakdown of civil order, I don't know what is.

Both sides are guilty of gross hypocrisy but the Right has ventured into the Twilight Zone – and now they're playing with fire.

As far as the man on the subway – the deconstruction of his character is to miss the point. The same thing happened with George Floyd. It doesn't matter if someone was a 'bad person' – that's not how the system works. Private citizens and for the matter individual police officers don't get to charge, try, and execute a person on the spot based on their judgment and intuition. There's a process. There's a system. If you don't believe in it – fine. But quit waving the flag because it represents a system (and set of values) that you clearly reject.

I wasn't on the subway and so I cannot say if the restraint of this man was reasonable but it seems as if it could have been dealt with in another manner. Of course if the man had been White and killed by a Black man – what would the response be then? A couple of generations ago, the Black man would have been lynched in many parts of the country. The Squad may or may not be irresponsible in its calls for justice and certainly the group's pseudo-left identity politics are a joke – The Squad is largely a joke.

But everyone should be offended when an absurd publication like The Christian Post makes accusations like this – it is literally ridiculous. And as far as the call for men like this to be in mental institutions – those of us who live near such institutions and know people who work in them are all familiar with the watershed moment for mental health asylums in the United States – the 1980's. Reagan started the process of fragmenting and defunding these institutions and it continues to have repercussions on not just the penal system but all of society. And frankly this society is under such Judgment that the mental health problem is exploding – which is not really about 'mental health' at all.

Get used to it – it's going to get a lot worse.