08:42 – I thought local newspapers were concentrating on local news as a matter of survival, but the whole first section of our paper today was pretty much devoted to the Charleston, SC church shooting and Brian Williams being demoted from the major leagues to Pop Warner. News from the past. Surely there can’t be anyone in Winston-Salem who hadn’t already seen the coverage all over the Internet and TV yesterday.
The shooter was apparently an avowed white separatist or supremacist. A friend of his commented, “He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race,” Meek said, adding that the friends were getting drunk on vodka. “He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks.”
So why shoot up a church full of ordinary black people who were, like anyone else, just trying to get by? Why not go after Sharpton, Jackson, or one of the other racist rabble-rousers who make a living by stirring up hatred between the races? For that matter, why not go after gang-bangers? This guy reminds me of a beginning chess player who delights in taking pawns because they’re so easy to get. It’s not brave to slaughter unarmed civilians. It’s pathetic. Had this guy decided to go after racist pot-stirrers or gang members, I might have had at least a bit of respect for him. But going after defenseless ordinary people is a cowardly act that deserves only contempt. I hope they burn him.
09:55 – Is it just me, or should the EU be working flat-out to build its military forces in the face of the Russian threat? Current European military forces are pathetic. If the US draws down US military forces in Europe, as it should until they reach zero, Europe will be defenseless against Russia invading former Eastern Bloc countries, including the former East Germany. If I were Merkel and the Germans, I’d be building and training Panzer divisions as fast as I could. It’s decades past time when Europe should be paying the full costs of its own defense.