How Could We Know?

A good summary of the great ideological/theological divide. And yes, it’s a yawning abyss, although no one is yawning, and quite a few folks are howling.

“Another Dallas-area pastor and Trump advisor, Jack Graham, agreed. “I’m not going to blame rhetoric on the evil heart of some terrorist. Who knows what was going on in the mind of this shooter,” he told me. “To me, this is not the time … to go running out there and condemning political leaders, whether it’s the president or anyone else, or blaming rhetoric, or blaming guns.”

I submit that we can know what was going on in the mind of this shooter because he told us precisely what was going on in his mind. He wrote it all down, in excruciating, misspelled, grammatically tortured syntax. His multi-page screed appeared online 19 minutes before the first 911 call alerted authorities to a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso.

It is amazing to me the lengths to which people, many of them Christians, will go to deny the obvious. Trump calls it “an immigrant invasion.” Our boy El Paso Patrick (EPP) calls it “an immigrant invasion.” EPP uses the same language and talking points that Trump uses at the Nuremberg, er, Tallahassee Rallies.

"Late in his disorderly presentation, as he discussed the work of Border Patrol officers, he raised, and then dismissed, the idea of allowing them to use violence against migrants.

"And don't forget - we don't let them and we can't let them use weapons," he said. "We can't. Other countries do. We can't. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people? You can't. There's -"

It was then that he was interrupted by a woman in the crowd. "Shoot them!" she yelled.

The president found this funny, as did his audience. "That's only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff." He stopped for a moment to take in the crowd's roaring approval. "Only in the Panhandle!" he repeated."

Well, El Paso, too.

I mean, really, how could we possibly know?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/mass-shooting-christian-response/595522/