Condemning flag won't end racial strife
Like everyone I am saddened, angered and heartbroken over the senseless slaughter of nine Christian saints in the very place where they should have been safest. A drug-addled ninth-grade dropout from a broken home struck in a different time and place with an apparent "different" reason. The violently mentally ill always have a "reason."
Before the bodies are even cold, the media frenzy and finger pointing began, perhaps hoping for yet another spasm of riots and spiked viewership.
The gun ginning was predictable. The flag? Does this not speak volumes to the priorities of the left? The truth is the media uses tragedy like an 800-pound gorilla, i.e. challenging spineless politicians and corporatists to do their bidding.
They have come to think of themselves as the fourth branch of government. The cowering, trembling pawns comply and the cycle will repeat itself only in a different time place and manner.
Pause for a calm, rational minute. How is a soldier's flag at a soldier's monument, a few steps away from the nation's only African-American monument commemorating slavery's struggles somehow responsible for this tragedy?
The only state where riots did not occur was in South Carolina and because, black and white, they defiantly acted like the Christians they are!
The flag may come down, it may remain up. But the politics of division will only multiply, not diminish the flag's presence.
While we condemn ISIS for destroying antiquities and our president excuses the excesses of Islam, what the media demands differs only in degree. How is it that the 99.9 percent of good people who revere this flag do so with both love of heritage and their fellow man?
The sad reality is righteous indignation just feels too good. It's 150 years later and real peace is no closer at hand.
Steve Quick
Arlington Heights