Knee-jerk or just a jerk?

Enough with racist attacks

By Will Collette

When you go to the supermarket, a shopping mall, to school or the doctor’s office, a restaurant or to church, how likely is it that you will find yourself swept up in a “mass shooting?” Very unlikely, like the odds of getting hit by an asteroid.

However, if by some terrible chance you were caught up in such a horrific event, who is the most likely shooter? 

Law enforcement officials describe the typical mass shooter as a white male, generally a “lone wolf,” who is motivated by rage against family members or co-workers. He might harbor some festering grievance or be inspired by some twisted ideology. 

This is the anatomy of terror. On any given day, the odds are that there will a mass shooting in America. However, this shooting will probably not be carried out by a foreign terrorist who snuck across the border with the intent of carrying out a bloody mission. The shooter is more likely going to look like that guy who's fussing and fuming while waiting in a long check-out line at the Stop & Shop.

Or that guy at work who thinks that no one respects him and all the bosses are out to get him. Or that guy with trouble at home who’s over at one of our local gun shops looking at assault rifles. Or that kid at school who hates not just the school but everyone around him.

Or some guy who hates Jews or African-Americans.

Or some militia group that fancies itself as the vanguard of a revolution to restore their own version of Constitutional law. 

Charged by hyped-up rhetoric from demagogues like Donald Trump, our own local breed of wingnuts spin their own factless yarns of paranoia and racism, ignoring real world data. They issue clarion calls to arms against nearly one-fifth of the world’s population. They say we are all in danger of murder, rape and mayhem from all Muslims.

I am sick of it. It's about time we all take a stand against the racism and bigotry that is tearing this country apart and making us more vulnerable to real threats from real terrorists. Or from each other, as they urge us to arm ourselves to the teeth so we can shoot it out with the next mass shooter. 

That’s why I wrote the following letter to the Westerly Sun to refute two letters by Charlestown’s leading curmudgeon Jim Mageau and to an extent, our racist state Senator Elaine Morgan who represents the northern part of Charlestown. Click here for details on Morgan's racist rant.

The San Bernardino shooters

Both Mageau and Morgan have made public blanket condemnations of Islam, one of the world’s largest religions with 1.6 million believers, and called for the United States to close its doors to refugees from the wars that our misguided Middle East policies caused. Simultaneously, they sing the praises of gun ownership, even though there are more guns in the United States than there are people.

It's those readily available guns, including military style assault rifles that are the common denominator in all of our mass shootings.

I would encourage you to add your voice to the chorus of those of us who say, “Enough!” Here is my Sun letter as I wrote it:

The Planned Parenthood killer

In his December 5 letter to the Sun, Jim Mageau decries “knee-jerk reactions” by liberal Democrats to the terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

I guess that’s because knee-jerk reactions are Mr. Mageau’s specialty, and he does not disappoint. As he wrote earlier in his November 25 attack on the idea of granting asylum to refugees from war in the Middle East, Mr. Mageau served up his usual right-wing “Muslims are bad; guns are good” perspective with a heavy dose of imagined and incorrect history.

There is something about some narrow-minded right-wing ideologues, whether it’s Mr. Mageau, state Senator Elaine Morgan or GOP Presidential hopeful Donald Trump, that make them dive straight into the cesspool of wholesale bigotry. They condemn an entire religion, one with 1.6 billion members worldwide, for the actions of tiny minority of murderous zealots.

What do they have to say about the murderous zealot who committed his own act of terrorism at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs? Silence. Do we hear calls for labelling all adherents of Christianity because of this zealot’s act of slaughter? Silence.

In all of the hundreds of mass shootings that have occurred in the US over the past year, there is an obvious common denominator. Hint: what do you use when you engage in a mass shooting?

It makes little difference what makes these killers grab their assault rifles and a bag full of high capacity magazines. Whether it’s religion or ideology or grievances against society that drives them, these mass shootings, each in their own way a form of terrorism, represent law enforcement’s worst nightmare.

There is no one course of action we can take to make us all safe and secure in our homes, just as there is no one simple solution for the wars and strife in the Middle East. These are all complex problems that require thoughtful responses, not knee-jerk reactions either from the Left or from people like Jim Mageau.  

Mageau in full rant mode

NOTE: Mageau wrote a response to my letter that ran in the Sun on December 10. In it, Mageau tries to “red-bait” me, Sen. Joseph McCarthy-style, by calling me a “well known left wing progressive ideologue in Charlestown who consciously engages in falsehoods and personal attacks against people he disagrees with.”

Obviously I take no offense to being called a “progressive” since, after all, I am co-founder of Progressive Charlestown (duh). I do take offense at Mageau's baseless claim that I peddle falsehoods since I carefully source what I write. Readers know that and generally, the criticism about falsehoods comes from such political opponents as the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party).

But Mageau dares me to produce letters where he pronounces Muslims to be bad and guns to be good. That’s pretty easy to do since his own letter clearly makes those points, as do the two letters – links provided above – that spurred me to write my Sun letter.

I invite you to read Mageau’s letters to the Sun – the first two and the December 10 rebuttal letter – and decide for yourself whether I mischaracterized Mageau as a pro-gun, anti-Muslim bigot.