The Massacre in Charleston
Every once in a while, we learn of a crime so horrific, so absolutely and undeniably detestable in its perpetration, that mere words cannot begin to balance the totality of its impact- not only upon its victims and their families, but on the greater society, as a whole.
Such is the massacre which took place Wednesday night, the 17th of June, 2015.
A deranged racist, one Dylann Roof, who had a history of arrests and drug use, attended a Bible study group in the basement of Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, participated in the study group for about an hour, and then summarily arose, and thus killed nine innocent people, starting with its pastor and State Senator Clementa Pinckney. The perpetrator of this heinous crime was a known user of the drug Suboxone, a powerful narcotic analgesic, one that is known to bring about sudden violent outbursts if used in excess of prescribed dosages. He was also a nascent white supremacist, who was involving himself in the ideology of neo-Nazi, skinhead and other racist ideologies who spew the same kind of hatred that other such groups are known to disseminate.
The fact that this malcontented miscreant chose to thrust his hatred upon a group of people, who gathered in the basement of a church to read and pray and worship, all the while pretending to be part of this group, makes his deadly assault especially repugnant. This was not merely a crime of passion, nor even a crime of unbridled racism. This was a crime of absolute and unadulterated evil- the satanic nature of which cannot and must not be overlooked.
It will be some time before we know all that was coursing through the twisted mind of this evil young man. Yet, at the end of the day, it is hardly a stretch to say that his motivations went far beyond racism, far beyond the twisted philosophy of white supremacism, far beyond the glorification of apartheid, as evidenced by an earlier photograph of Roof wearing a jacket adorned with the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. When all of the dust has settled, it will become a self-evident truth that what really motivated this twenty-one-year-old, to kill such innocent people in the way he killed them- in the place and circumstance of their killing- was the presence of evil so invested into the soul of such a man, which can only and possibly be rooted in something far more sinister than sociology and pathology. Its root is in the evil incarnate and all-consuming perdition of Satan, himself.
It is, indeed, no surprise that certain politicians, namely the President and the former Secretary of State, took the occasion to exploit this tragedy for political purposes, by renewing calls for gun control legislation- exposing the depravity of their political aspirations by revealing how they would use the sacrifice of nine lives to suit their own agendas. Other politicians chose to suspend their campaign activities out of decency and respect for those whose lives were lost Wednesday night- but this is a topic for another day and another time.
Today, all of us must re-consider and duly recognize the fact that there is, indeed, absolute evil which exists in the world today- an evil which cannot be politicized, cannot be socialized, cannot be legislated away. It is an evil as old as mankind, as old as Cain and Abel, and as old and ruthless as the unabashed hatred with which it is commingled, and one in which we can only pray and hope and aspire to rid within our society and within the world at large.
-Drew Nickell, 19 June 2015
© 2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved