Eight People Shot in Black Church in Charleston, South Carolina

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Looks like a fake nose in addition to a wig. I hope people don't fall for any insanity bullshit - this was obviously premeditated and the killer wants to get away with it.

Crazy people can be intelligent and excellent planners. Mental illness is just not the irrational, mumbling homeless people you see wondering the D.C. streets.
Mental illness is an insidious, awful thing that is manifested in myriad ways.

Crazy comes in degrees. I am sure most people have some degree of crazy. Stop making excuses for this criminal. He wasn't too crazy to not know what he was doing was wrong. He disguised himself and possibly wore body armor to protect himself.

Not PP, but how is saying he's crazy an excuse? There is no excuse. But to perpetrate something like this, you must have issues. You just have to. Doesn't mean you are incapable of planning and executing the plan.

Thanks - I am the one to whom pp was responding. I don't understand when people say calling someone crazy is excusing their actions. That is dumb as hell. Crazy or sane, if you are dangerous you need to be locked up somewhere. How is that excusing anything? This right here is how and why we have broken mental health system in this country, we think identifying and understanding mental illness is excusing it. Stupid.

If you want people to accept mental illness as an excuse, then you have to accept it for all groups of people. It is always an excuse for whites, but other racial groups are automatically assumed criminal without any regards to their mental state. Now, that's dumb as hell.

More than one person told you that mental illness is not an excuse. Yet you continue to pander about your own delusions. Can't you read?

Then stop using it as an excuse, reason, or validation. He is a mass murderer. A thug. A criminal. A monster. There are plenty of people with mental illnesses of varying degrees and they are not murderes, thugs, monsters.

Yes. You can rightfully call him all of these things. Why does it bother you so much that he also is clearly mentally ill?

It doesn't. He may or not be. What bothers me is that when the murderer is white, that is the immediate go to, as if white people would never kill unless affected by mental illness. What bothers me is the hypocrisy so many of you display.

But we're not talking about any kind of killing. There is such a thing as a rational killing and this is not it. Oddly, most (not all, but most) recent mass murderers and serial killers in this country are white males. Of course they're mentally ill. WHO THE F*CK WOULD DO THAT IF THEY WEREN'T? Would anyone question that Jeffrey Dahmer was mentally ill? Of course not. He freaking ATE people! That's doesn't mean he wasn't a monster. Why can't I say this f*cked up individual was an evil monster and also acknowledge that he is mentally ill? Psychopathy is a mental illness, is it not? I would say the same about the beltway snipers. How does that make me a hypocrite?

What you are failing to see is that the other poster is saying the the usual/general go to narrative when there is an alleged black perpetrator is that the black perpetrator is a "thug","animal", "evil". And this is the language that is used to describe an array of black male alleged perpetrators whether they are alleged to have committed a mass killing or playing with a toy gun in the park.
The go-to for alleged black killers is that they are evil and less than human, they are not described with adjectives that suggest that they are humans with mental defects. It is another manifestation of institutionalized and often unacknowledged racism in this society.
Get it?
That does not mean that this young guy is not crazy. Dude can be crazy and there can also be racism in our society.

I completely get that, but I, as an individual, am not and would not use "thug" or "animal" to describe a black perpetrator if he shot up a church full of white people. I would say that person is mentally ill. So when I say that the perpetrator is mentally ill, regardless of his race, I am not "excusing" anything and I certainly don't believe I am a hypocrite. I believe race relations in this country are terrible. I believe black lives matter. I believe the way we recognize and treat mental illness in this country needs to be examined. I believe this man should in no way have had access to a firearm. I believe this was an evil act, I believe the perp was a racist terrorist, AND I believe he was mentally ill. Why can't we as individuals have a conversation about all those factors, which all are clearly at play, without someone calling me a hypocrite because some other white people that I don't agree with would have called him a thug if the races were switched in this scenario?

I am the pp to whom you are responding. I don't think u are a hypocrite, I was just trying to explain. I think the other poster is upset and scared and angry. Black folks don't have it easy these days, we can't even go to church.

I know. I'm sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I fail to see is this was deemed a hate crime last night early on yet the DC family murders weren't. Why is that ?

I am not sure anyone has made the case that Wint was motivated by hate. Roof told the folks in the church he was going to kill them because they were black. Wint was able to obtain $40,000. Roof didn't take a dime.

That's too easy, Mr. Steele. Wint didn't have to torture and/or light a child on fire to get the $40,000. There was apparently way more cruelty involved in the Wint case than can plausibly be explained by purely financial motivations. While the Wint case continues to have a lot of open questions, this is exactly the kind of inference I think is to some extent intellectually dishonest. All the term "hate crime" does is try to make certain crimes sound worse because of extraneous political considerations. I'm not sure there is any meaningful way to say which case was worse; obviously more were killed in the church shooting, but I suspect the Wint victims suffered far more over the length of their ordeal. I think it is foolish to try to get into such comparisons, and the hate crime concept does so for no good reason, in my estimation.

Having said that, there is zero doubt that the church shooting was a racist incident. I mean, the guy actually said as much.

I wonder what your motives are even bringing this up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well in any case I'm eagerly awaiting my other $5 cause I KNOW this dude ain't gonna be called out as a thug or a criminal (despite being recently arrested on drug charges) and there's a 99.999999% probability that the meat of the discussion around this dude will be his psyche - not his race.

OK, he is a thug and a criminal and a racist (see, extra!) and you are a whiner.

I think he would be described as a loser and a punk. He isn't man enough to be called a thug.

White loser-punks do have a tendency to blame their loser-punk status on minority ethnic and/or religious groups, but most of them only lash out on the internet and keep it in check in public interactions.

The ones that are most dangerous are like this guy - so socially and psychologically detached that he has no real friends, white or otherwise, so when his delusional brain took a wrong turn he just kept going into the tunnel.

[Anonymous]

I think we can agree that anyone who kills multiple innocent people with no provocation has some kind of mental problem. The issue is whether we impute his acts to his race or "culture" or to his mental problems. In this case, I think we can do both. I will point out that the recourse to "mental illness" is not unique to white shooters - the DC Sniper was tagged as mentally ill by most, not a thug.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 9 people dead and new developments in the story but this thread is flooded with argument over a freaking flag. Really?

Maybe start a new thread for the flag debate so people can discuss what happened and actually find updates.

Honestly, I think this piece is relevant because at the beginning of the thread there were folks who doubted this was terrorism, or that it was racialized. The South African flags and the appreciation for the Confederacy are integral to dispelling that idea.

The question is, can we implement a group behind it. We know, for instance, that the Ft. Hood shooter was talking with other radical Islamists, as were other Muslim terrorists. On the other hand, we know the Aurora shooter acted alone, as did Gabby Giffords' shooter.

It remains to be seen if this guy acted on behalf of the KKK or other supremacist organization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I fail to see is this was deemed a hate crime last night early on yet the DC family murders weren't. Why is that ?

I am not sure anyone has made the case that Wint was motivated by hate. Roof told the folks in the church he was going to kill them because they were black. Wint was able to obtain $40,000. Roof didn't take a dime.

That's too easy, Mr. Steele. Wint didn't have to torture and/or light a child on fire to get the $40,000. There was apparently way more cruelty involved in the Wint case than can plausibly be explained by purely financial motivations. While the Wint case continues to have a lot of open questions, this is exactly the kind of inference I think is to some extent intellectually dishonest. All the term "hate crime" does is try to make certain crimes sound worse because of extraneous political considerations. I'm not sure there is any meaningful way to say which case was worse; obviously more were killed in the church shooting, but I suspect the Wint victims suffered far more over the length of their ordeal. I think it is foolish to try to get into such comparisons, and the hate crime concept does so for no good reason, in my estimation.

Having said that, there is zero doubt that the church shooting was a racist incident. I mean, the guy actually said as much.

I wonder what your motives are even bringing this up.

I'm not the one who raised the Wint case. Your quarrel is with Mr. Steele if you believe it is somehow illegitimate to raise that topic.

Having said that, there is an ongoing discussion of hate crimes and how white people discuss white vs. black crimes in this thread. My motive was to participate in this discussion. What is your motive in even bringing my motive up?

[Anonymous]

I think the real comparison here is ideology mixed with mental instability. The proper comparison is not to Wint or so-called "thugs," but rather to the Oklahoma City Bomber and 9-11 terrorists. They should all be in the same class: terrorists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I fail to see is this was deemed a hate crime last night early on yet the DC family murders weren't. Why is that ?

I am not sure anyone has made the case that Wint was motivated by hate. Roof told the folks in the church he was going to kill them because they were black. Wint was able to obtain $40,000. Roof didn't take a dime.

That's too easy, Mr. Steele. Wint didn't have to torture and/or light a child on fire to get the $40,000. There was apparently way more cruelty involved in the Wint case than can plausibly be explained by purely financial motivations. While the Wint case continues to have a lot of open questions, this is exactly the kind of inference I think is to some extent intellectually dishonest. All the term "hate crime" does is try to make certain crimes sound worse because of extraneous political considerations. I'm not sure there is any meaningful way to say which case was worse; obviously more were killed in the church shooting, but I suspect the Wint victims suffered far more over the length of their ordeal. I think it is foolish to try to get into such comparisons, and the hate crime concept does so for no good reason, in my estimation.

Having said that, there is zero doubt that the church shooting was a racist incident. I mean, the guy actually said as much.

I wonder what your motives are even bringing this up.

I'm not the one who raised the Wint case. Your quarrel is with Mr. Steele if you believe it is somehow illegitimate to raise that topic.

Having said that, there is an ongoing discussion of hate crimes and how white people discuss white vs. black crimes in this thread. My motive was to participate in this discussion. What is your motive in even bringing my motive up?

On re-reading, I now see that Mr. Steele was responding to someone else who raised that case. Apologies for the error. So, speculate as to the motives of that person, not me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well in any case I'm eagerly awaiting my other $5 cause I KNOW this dude ain't gonna be called out as a thug or a criminal (despite being recently arrested on drug charges) and there's a 99.999999% probability that the meat of the discussion around this dude will be his psyche - not his race.

Will you settle for racist pig who should be handed over to the families of those he killed? And I'd give the families immunity to do what they please.

[Anonymous]

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I think conflating mass murders and serial killers is a category error. Dahmer was obviously loopy; people who kill abortion providers are rational given their premises. I think this gets at the crazy vs. evil distinction, which in real life is, of course, to some extent muddled in all cases.

I agree with this. I have a very hard time handing mental illness as an excuse to mass murders. Do you need to have some crazy in you to do that, sure. Should that be an excuse for your crime, in my opinion, no.

Serial Killers, different story. Should be locked up forever, but no doubt that they have a compulsion and they cannot be anything but a predator.

For me the question is, if we could address the mental illness... can we prevent mass murders? In this sense, we need to see how mental illness plays in these sort of situations, as a prevention, not an excuse.

While I strongly disagree with those who are arguing that whites in general use "mental illness" as an excuse for murders committed by other whites as compared to how they discuss black murderers, it is fair to say that there is no reason yet to assume this guy was mentally ill. He did something evil, for reasons he apparently stated while doing so, and there is no evidence of meaningful delusions, etc. Some seems to believe that a person "has to be" crazy to do something like this; I disagree entirely. Consciously-chosen evil is relatively uncommon, but it does exist, and it exists here I believe.

I agree. Depends on your definition of "crazy" though. People are calling this man a sociopath. Sociopaths do not fit my definition of "crazy" because they know exactly what they are doing. But that is an unlikely diagnosis because sociopaths do not tend to care very much about a "cause" like killing people for racist reasons and they do not tend to commit crimes for which they will definitely get caught. This man left a witness. He did this for a reason which made sense to him and he wanted notoriety for it. This is clearly a hate crime.

Now... whether or not he was having a psychotic break and operating under a set of delusions remains to be seen and we should not make those assumptions. Plenty of so-called "sane" people have committed hate crimes who believed they were doing the right thing.

The bolded is untrue. Sociopaths often get away with a lot of crimes at first, but eventually deteriorate and slip up. As a side note, lots seem to get caught in death penalty states. They kill due to a compulsion. - Bundy, for instance, was a necrophiliac.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I think conflating mass murders and serial killers is a category error. Dahmer was obviously loopy; people who kill abortion providers are rational given their premises. I think this gets at the crazy vs. evil distinction, which in real life is, of course, to some extent muddled in all cases.

I agree with this. I have a very hard time handing mental illness as an excuse to mass murders. Do you need to have some crazy in you to do that, sure. Should that be an excuse for your crime, in my opinion, no.

Serial Killers, different story. Should be locked up forever, but no doubt that they have a compulsion and they cannot be anything but a predator.

For me the question is, if we could address the mental illness... can we prevent mass murders? In this sense, we need to see how mental illness plays in these sort of situations, as a prevention, not an excuse.

While I strongly disagree with those who are arguing that whites in general use "mental illness" as an excuse for murders committed by other whites as compared to how they discuss black murderers, it is fair to say that there is no reason yet to assume this guy was mentally ill. He did something evil, for reasons he apparently stated while doing so, and there is no evidence of meaningful delusions, etc. Some seems to believe that a person "has to be" crazy to do something like this; I disagree entirely. Consciously-chosen evil is relatively uncommon, but it does exist, and it exists here I believe.

I agree. Depends on your definition of "crazy" though. People are calling this man a sociopath. Sociopaths do not fit my definition of "crazy" because they know exactly what they are doing. But that is an unlikely diagnosis because sociopaths do not tend to care very much about a "cause" like killing people for racist reasons and they do not tend to commit crimes for which they will definitely get caught. This man left a witness. He did this for a reason which made sense to him and he wanted notoriety for it. This is clearly a hate crime.

Now... whether or not he was having a psychotic break and operating under a set of delusions remains to be seen and we should not make those assumptions. Plenty of so-called "sane" people have committed hate crimes who believed they were doing the right thing.

The bolded is untrue. Sociopaths often get away with a lot of crimes at first, but eventually deteriorate and slip up. As a side note, lots seem to get caught in death penalty states. They kill due to a compulsion. - Bundy, for instance, was a necrophiliac.

I did not say that sociopaths never get caught. I said that they do not choose to commit crimes for which they will definitely get caught. This guy left a witness ON PURPOSE. That is not something that a sociopath would do.

[Anonymous]

This country has gone mad!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well in any case I'm eagerly awaiting my other $5 cause I KNOW this dude ain't gonna be called out as a thug or a criminal (despite being recently arrested on drug charges) and there's a 99.999999% probability that the meat of the discussion around this dude will be his psyche - not his race.

Will you settle for racist pig who should be handed over to the families of those he killed? And I'd give the families immunity to do what they please.

You are talking about families of faith, I have a feeling that they would not do to the killer what you think they would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well in any case I'm eagerly awaiting my other $5 cause I KNOW this dude ain't gonna be called out as a thug or a criminal (despite being recently arrested on drug charges) and there's a 99.999999% probability that the meat of the discussion around this dude will be his psyche - not his race.

Will you settle for racist pig who should be handed over to the families of those he killed? And I'd give the families immunity to do what they please.

You are talking about families of faith, I have a feeling that they would not do to the killer what you think they would.

I think they would pray for him, his family and find forgiveness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Will SC fly its Confederate flag half-staff?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/18/1394227/-Will-South-Carolina-fly-its-Confederate-flag-at-half-mast?detail=email

lol