My Thoughts are With the Poway Chabad Congregation

I am sickened and appalled that six months to the day of the Squirrel Hill tragedy, another synagogue in the US has been struck by a self radicalized, armed human horror show. First and foremost, I grieve with this community and lift you up in my admiration for your humanity and wish you strength, peace, and healing. 

I wish I could separate this shooting from the bigger picture of intolerance and hate in this country, and even around the world, but I can't. I am not unaware that addressing the specter of anti-Semitism in this moment is politicized, but who is it that drags this into their politics, and doesn't know that events like this might follow? 

The suspect in this tragedy, John Earnest, has left us a manifesto of the usual boring twaddle that involves admiration for all the wrong people and is intermixed with falsities and even sarcasm. (I'm not going to be all that sorry for Pewdiepie getting called out even if it is sarcasm because, well, sometimes jokes are not funny and they backfire an awful lot, is all. Jokes are not funny when they mean harm to human lives.)

He has also claimed credit for arson at an area mosque which could very well be plausible, if he's not just trying to make a bigger an hero of himself. (He admits in his manifesto thingy some really martyr-baiting stuff.)  And while he can boast he likes the idea of life in prison better than the idea of having done nothing, our sick society makes people like him have just a little hope the law won't come down on him like a ton of bricks.

None of this acceptable. It is not. I will speak out always in hope we never let it be. I will not forget.