Massacre in Buffalo

 

"There’s no such thing as a lone wolf — an appellation often given, in error, to terrorists who act alone, particularly those of the white supremacist variety. There are only those people who, fed a steady diet of violent propaganda and stochastic terror, take annihilatory rhetoric to its logical conclusion."

Talia Lavin, Rolling Stone

I lived in Buffalo, NY for a time in the nineteen-eighties. Headquartered at the Lafayette Hotel, I was doing a series of metal restoration jobs for my family's business, Stuart-Dean Company. Buffalo was in a pretty depressed state at that time. I remember one night having to walk about half-a-mile in order to find a nightspot where I could meet some nice girls. I finally found a bar called City Lights - which was also the title of Charlie Chaplin's greatest film - a good omen, I thought. It turned out to be a gay bar with no ladies inside whatsoever.

To the best of my knowledge, the last time a shooting in Buffalo made international headlines was when President McKinley was assassinated there on September 14, 1901. Since that time, the place has been fairly docile. That all changed two days ago.

On May 14, an 18-year-old white supremist named Payton S. Gendron walked into a Tops supermarket and preceded to wail away on the crowd gathered there with an AK 15, shooting thirteen people - ten of them fatally. Of the thirteen shot, ten of them were African American. He had traveled over three hours from his hometown of  Conklin, NY. Instead of hitting nearby Binghamton, he chose Buffalo, which has a high percentage of blacks. The store he chose for his attack, Tops, is in a black neighborhood.

His manifesto contained the usual extremist rightwing tirade about how the Jews are trying to dilute the white race by conspiring to bring a lot of nasty, non-white people into the good old USA - the kind of crazy talk that has become part of the mainstream GOP talking point.

Probably by the midpoint of the twentieth century, the "white race" will no longer be in the majority in this country. That's fine 'n' dandy with me. The only race I care about thriving in the future is the human race.

For years I've been saying that the Republicans are no longer a political party. They've become as organized criminal enterprise. I must amend that. They've become a satanic cult. What happened in Buffalo over the weekend is a bleak harbinger of nastier thing to come. Get used to living in a nation in decline

Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED READING:

Here is a link to read Talia Lavin's article in Rolling Stone that was quoted above:

Buffalo Shooter's White Supremacist Fixation Ties Him to Modern GOP - Rolling Stone 

We sure do live in strange times.