WASHINGTON ( Associated Press) — In far-flung cities, deadly violence ripped apart the most typical of American spring weekend, fueled by anger or insanity, the bloodiest by suspected racist hatred.,
Crime scenes represent a cross-section of mediocrity—a grocery store in New York, a California church, a Texas flea market, the streets near a basketball field in Wisconsin.
This is not Ukraine. The carnage that Americans have seen on their screens is not from an invading force. It is from within. The United States is a cauldron of grim complaints and venomous social media conspiracy theories that have even gotten buy-in with some in power.
So far, there is a pattern after the mass shooting – shock, thought, prayer, vows to do something, then collectively shrugged shoulders as the meditation progresses and it becomes clear that not much will change.
Americans still in phase one as they absorb the aftermath of last weekend of violence, which coincided with a COVID-19 death toll that reached 1 million in the US
“I’m trying to testify, but it’s too much,” Buffalo, New York, resident Yvonne Woodard said of the stampede outside Topps Friendly Market on Saturday. A white youth wearing body armor and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire on Saturday, killing 10 black people. “You can’t even go to the damn shop in peace,” Woodard said.
In this country of political and cultural animosity, ubiquitous guns and homicide rates today you certainly cannot go anywhere with peace that much of the industrialized world.
Not at the Houston flea market where thousands of people were browsing on Sunday when a shootout startedIn which two people died, three were injured and passers-by were terrified.
Not the church, where a man opened fire during the lunch reception on Sunday In Laguna Woods, California, one person was killed and five were injured before a priest crushed the gunman’s head with a chair and parishioners tied him up.
Not in Milwaukee’s downtown, where officials announced a partial curfew for the weekend 21 people were injured after three shootouts near an entertainment district where thousands had gathered for an NBA playoff game. Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Indianapolis are among the cities that saw a record number of murders last year, most involving guns.
In Laguna Woods, police said on Monday, the gunman was a US citizen who immigrated from China and was motivated by hatred for the Taiwanese community, whose members were attending church.
Americans have a president who, like them or not, is good at empathy and wants to tap into that quality more than anyone. Joe Biden travels to Buffalo Tuesday to comfort and address bereaved families, yet “hatred remains a stain on America’s soul.”
Biden is the second president in a row to warn of existential threats to the American fabric.
Donald Trump stunned dignitaries at his 2016 inaugural podium with his talk of “American genocide”, a clear picture from urban poverty, rusty factories “scattered like graves”, crime, gangs and drugs.
Biden’s portrait is black in separate cases, centered on a systematic effort by Trump and now his allies to uphold election laws and procedures based on false accusations of the 2020 election. Add to that a poisonous concoction of conspiracy theories on race and immigration, which officials say fueled the buffalo massacre.
An 18-year-old suspect, Peyton Gendron, is believed to have written a document in police possession that launched an attack aimed at terrorizing non-white, non-Christian people and prompting them to leave the country.
The document counts black people and immigrants as “substitutions”, derived from the “Great Replacement” racist conspiracy theory Spread by fringe groups that elites are plotting to reduce the influence of white people by increasing minority populations. The topic is a staple on some Fox News programming.
Cleaner versions of that claim have gained currency among some Republican lawmakers, who have accused Democrats of encouraging illegal immigration from Latin America to gain more voters and quell “permanent election rebellion.” As GOP Representative Alice Stefnik of New York put it in one. campaign ad last year.
That’s worrisome for Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, once a senior member of the Republican congressional leadership and now excommunicated because of her pushback against the election lies that powered the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots and continues to be spread by many. . his associates.
“House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy and anti-Semitism,” she tweeted Monday. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends badly.”
The Conservative MP urged his party leaders to “reject and reject these views and those who believe in them”.
Yet the principles of the substitution principle resonate with many Americans.
In a poll last week, the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that nearly 1 in 3 Americans believe an effort is underway. To replace US-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains. A similar section supports the idea that immigration is undermining the political, economic and cultural influence of people born in America.
There was a note of hope. Two-thirds said that diverse populations make America strong.
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