Soul of America hurts today

Today the vicious and cowardly mass shooter who killed nine people at a prayer meeting at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C. was arrested.

To call what this lowlife did vicious, evil, and cowardly would of course be an understatement. My heart goes out to the innocent people who were murdered and injured and to their families. I think that to lose a loved one due to an act of terrorism – and this was an act of terrorism – must be the worst thing a human being could endure.

I happen to be near Charleston this week. I hesitated to write anything because such cruelty is really beyond comprehension. The German critic Tadeeus Rozewitz wrote, “After Auchwitz it is barbaric to write poetry.” In other words, when suffering is so extreme, when hatred is so diabolical, is there any poem or little blog post that can possibly add anything?

But on the other hand, we writers write; it is what we do. Perhaps it is better to write something, however inadequate, to memorialize the victims and express feelings than to write nothing.

And so, I want to say to the victims’ families that all decent Americans who have heard about this are sickened.

We are so sorry for your unimaginable loss. For people of faith to be gunned down by a terrorist is a horror unimaginable to us, and we are walking around with heavy hearts today.

Charleston has always been one of my favorite cities, and I have passed the historic Emanuel AME Church where the atrocity took place (pictured above).

In my experience, the people of Charleston, black and white, tend to get along very well and tensions are low. It would be a terrible shame if this atrocity led to more racial tension in a city whose residents have chosen a path of productivity and mutual respect.

No doubt the shooter chose this target because it was “soft” (gun free zone). No surprise those who commit “hate crimes” almost always target the perfectly innocent. Just goes to show what idiots they are. This beast wouldn’t have tried it in South Central (not that he would have been justified in trying it anywhere, of course; and there are good people everywhere.) But my point is, one of the terrible ironies of this crime is that the church-going people of a place like Charleston are surely some of the most peaceful and productive people in this country.

No doubt the victims are resting in peace. I hope the monster who did this does plenty of hard time before he feels the wrath G-d has for him.

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on June 18, 2015 at 1:50 pm and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: Charleston, Emanuel AME Church, shooting. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>