Hatred

As the Republican bigwigs and their media flunkies puff and gasp over what Rick Santorum calls "an assault on religious liberties," as the New York Times primly notes the existence of an argument that "assailants who are white are far less likely to be described by the authorities as terrorists," at a moment when the legal term hate crime is being used to whitewash the fact of racism, as a young white man wearing pro-apartheid badges walks into a black church in South Carolina and reportedly tells a Bible study group, "You are raping our women and taking over the country," and then murders nine people, six of whom are women, three of whom are elderly . . . you are raping our women and taking over the country! . . . as an intensely idiotic young man murders nine innocents, as the Confederate flag still flies in the state of South Carolina, as my own state of Maine loosens its concealed-weapon laws, as terrorists are only terrorists if they have dark skin, as racists aren't called racists, as schools and churches become morgues, as I imagine what it must feel like to have raised this young man, who is exactly the same age as my older son, as I realize it probably feels like nothing I would ever recognize because how else did he get that way except to absorb the stupid lessons of his stupid world? . . . a young man who can tell three old ladies you are raping our women and taking over the country and believe that he is talking sense . . . and as I stand here, trying to create some order out of these chaotic clauses, trying to move this sentence to some conclusion, I know that I have no hope of ending it because the idiocy goes on and on, because even the governor of South Carolina, the daughter of Sikh immigrants, a woman whom a former lieutenant governor once publicly denouced as a "raghead," won't scream Racism! Racism! Racism! because she's a Republican politician and Republican politicians don't use that word in public if they want to get reelected.

Poet Audre Lorde wrote, "Strong women / know the taste of their own hatred." And my hatred is strong right now.