Blood on the hands of Republicans and those who cry murderous, racist shit in the face of hate.

Ten people on a normal grocery-store run Saturday died because of the terribly violent and racist agenda by a white kid who perpetrated an event that “was pure evil” in its encompassing horror:

A food pantry operator. A substitute teacher. A breast cancer survivor. A deacon. A man picking up a birthday cake for his 3-year-old grandson. https://t.co/KOjNR5TfgR

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) May 16, 2022

A couple of the 10’s life stories (Jezebel):

Ruth Whitfield stopped by the Tops supermarket to grab something to eat after visiting her husband at a nursing home. Her son, former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr., confirmed his mother’s untimely death on Saturday. Whitfield was her husband’s caretaker and, as of Sunday, he had no idea that his wife had been gunned down right after paying him a visit. She made it a point to visit her 88-year-old husband—who has been in the nursing home for the past eight years—every day without fail. Her son said: “She dedicated her entire life to her family, but specifically the last eight years to him.”
…
Heyward Patterson was a deacon at his church and a local driver, offering rides to and from the supermarket while also helping to load groceries for those who needed them. He was helping a customer when he was gunned down in cold blood. His wife, Tirzah Patterson, confirmed that her husband was in the middle of doing good right before he died: “His client was getting ready to get into the vehicle, and that’s when he got hit.” Patterson also leaves behind his daughter.

Go read the whole piece, it’s sad and sadder still. And a pisser, too.

A good view on the backbone reason these people were murdered came via Michael Tomasky at The New Republic today — ‘white rage backlash’ is another example of cruelty is the point routine rightwing assholes have mustered in the last 40 years.
White whine tries to cover the racist horror-shit — highlights:

It’s the heart of the Republican Party’s message, and it has been for decades. The press tends to gloss over the dog whistles, but years of this malpractice have led to the whistles becoming as loud as bullhorns.
The very word extremist means that the person in question is well out among the societal fringes, which in turn tends to exonerate the mainstream, which by implication is not extremist. But the GOP mainstream is extremist on race. It has been since Barry Goldwater. That doesn’t mean that every individual in the party is a racist on a personal level—clearly this is not the case.
But it does mean that the party, in terms of its behaviors and policies, is a racist party.

When you stop and think about this country’s history from this perspective, the story is pretty bleak. From its founding until roughly 1960 — that is, around 180 years—racist violence was frequent, and it was almost never punished.
And racial discrimination, of course, existed in every nook and cranny of American life: education, employment, housing, recreation, you name it.
Once upon a time, as we know, it was the Democratic Party that harbored the worst of the racial separatists.

America then set about correcting this. It was the greatest project on which we as a nation have ever embarked.
Discrimination was and remains so embedded in our laws, our tax code, our zoning regulations, and so on that we’ve barely scratched the surface in many ways; but much good was done.
And from about the mid-’60s to mid-’70s, there was a consensus that this project was a good and necessary thing.

Crucially, this was true even in the South, where most states in the 1970s were governed by Democrats who were moderate-to-conservative in general but who were pretty good on race, if for no other reason than that there were now all these thousands upon thousands of Black citizens who could vote, and these governors wanted their votes.
In Florida, Reubin Askew put a Black man on the state Supreme Court. In Mississippi, William Waller disbanded the notorious Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which used state funds to openly defend segregation.
Atlanta declared itself, in the late 1970s, “the city too busy to hate.”
…
When I was a young man, I believed that we were getting somewhere on race relations in this country. Now I see very little hope for improvement, at least in our political culture.
The backlash grows more intense all the time. The right-wing media and social media are unregulated and unstoppable. As we move toward becoming a majority-minority country in the 2040s, the backlash will metastasize, and violence, I believe, will grow.
So this white rage is going to get worse and worse for at least the next 20 years.

Oh, and by the way. That Black justice in Florida appointed by Governor Askew? His name was Joseph Hatchett. He died last month. An effort was mounted—which, to be fair, I should note that Marco Rubio and Rick Scott backed — to name the federal courthouse in Tallahassee after him.
It needed two-thirds of the House of Representatives to pass. It failed, with 186 Republicans, all but about 20, voting against.
And America’s voters appear likely to reward this sort of behavior this fall.

Some dense, ominous words on our immediate future.

In context, Liz Cheney tweeted an ugly, but futile reality: ‘“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism … History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”‘

Despite the heart, here we are once again…

(Illustration out front: MC Escher’s ‘Old Olive Tree, Corsica‘ (1934). and found here)