Yet Another Small Minded White Man

 "Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." 

This was the admonition of my childhood against reacting to insults, to hateful rhetoric. 

"Words may never hurt you but I have bullets that can."

This is the response of a small minded person burnished by fear and hate. 

Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Georgia, was arrested for opening fire at three massage spas in northern Georgia hours earlier, killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent.  

It may be too early to attribute these attacks as racially motivated but there is no denying that Asian Americans have endured a rising tide of threats and assaults of the last year or so.

In the wake of his bungled management of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, Donald Trump took every opportunity to disparage China. He called COVID-19 the "China virus", "the Wuhan virus" and "kung flu".  These racist sentiments were echoed and amplified by his sycophantic political supporters and right wing media, riling up the Trump faithful something fierce.  

With the repeated hate mongering proliferating in the Trump World echo chamber, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino recorded  a 150% increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans in the U.S.’s largest cities in 2020.  

There were reports of 3,795 reports of harassment against Asian Americans, including assaults that resulted in deaths.  

For all the hate and fear directed at China, I have to note that the Asian Americans targeted by violent small mind bigots are not always of Chinese descent. Some of the women killed in the assault in Georgia were Korean. 

It's a small detail, I know, but it goes to underscore the petty hate fueled mentality we're dealing with here. 

Who knows what exactly was going on in the rage fueled head of Robert Aaron Long. Maybe it might turn out he's more a fucking misogynist than racist. 

Whatever his reasons, misogyny or racism or his shoes were too tight, it looks we have yet another small minded white man who thought to sort out his frustrations with a gun. 

Below is an image from Lea Thompson's Twitter feed.