Charles Bethea of The New Yorker writes “Witness to Terrorism in Charlottesville,” in which he quotes an eyewitness account by counter-protester Kristin Adolfson:
I was ten feet away, so I didn’t really see details of the car. It was just sudden movement through the crowd, sound, bodies in the air. One of my friends was an inch away from the car. I went and found her and she was looking for her partner. She was freaking out. I stood with her until she found him. She’s in one of those photos circulating around now….
This was a terrorist act. Something that happens in so many places around the world, and it happened here in our little town. It was hard to process that. And the hate—that someone could actively take people’s lives, that’s what their goal was….
Most protests I’ve been to have been against a system or an organization or going to war. But, with this one, there were people on the other side. We weren’t protesting these people, exactly, but we were standing up against their hatred, the bigotry and racism. That’s a completely different experience.
My thoughts:
Conservatives denouncing the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville should shut their mouth and take a seat if they supported the following:
- Donald Trump
- Birtherism
- Open carry laws
- Racist police profiling
- Legalizing driving cars into crowds
- Applying “terrorism” exclusively to non-whites and non-Christians
- Celebrating the treasonous Confederacy and its symbols
- Using bogus claims of fraud as a pretext for vote suppression
- Demonizing with coded words like “cosmopolitan” and “international bankers”
- Only respecting elections won by Republicans
You cannot gain power by the politics of division and then expect applause when you feign shock at the results. Critique yourself. Stop harming the country.