I've come to expect Erick Erickson to write and say horrible things while trying to cloak them in his religious garments, but it's still revolting just the same. Yes, Conservatives have been trying to run from the fact that Dylann Roof is a homegrown terrorist and he committed a hate crime. It's hard to fathom that, but we've been covering their reactions and the truth of it can't be denied.
In EE's diatribe, he only mentions the word race once and the word racism once because for some reason those are the words that may not be mentioned by Conservatives whenever there is an act of racism. No, racism most not be named or attributed to Roof as a motive, but the word evil is certainly fine. Just as fine as using the word evil to describe Caitlin Jenner. After reading what he said, I have no idea what he means and I doubt he does either.
All it really is is a right wing word salad designed to blame the left for a right wing, racist, lunatic's murderous actions.
On the June 18 edition of The Erick Erickson Show, and in an accompanying blog post on RedState.com headlined, "The Conversation We Won't Have," Erickson denounced the "political" conversation in the wake of the attack that killed nine people, and criticized what he called "cries from the left" about racism and gun laws. He lamented that "as a nation, when these things happen, we never have the conversation about real evil. We also never have the conversation about mental health:"
Erickson wrote that society's acceptance of transgender people like Caitlyn Jenner was evidence that people are reluctant to discuss things like the nature of evil and mental health issues (emphasis added):
As a nation, when these things happen, we never have the conversation about real evil. We also never have the conversation about mental health. For that matter, we don't have honest conversations about why some kid in Minnesota or Alabama would want to go join ISIS and kill their fellow citizens or why some kid would want to join neo-nazis or a gang.
Instead, we descend into partisan conversations where everything is political and neither side can concede or acknowledge the other's points. Everyone and everything gets blamed while ignoring the actual person who killed.
I realize now why that is. I realize why we will never have the conversation we should have.
A society that looks at a 65 year old male Olympian and, with a straight face, declares him a her and "a new normal" cannot have a conversation about mental health or evil because that society no longer distinguishes normal from crazy and evil from good. Our American society has a mental illness -- overwhelming narcissism and delusion -- and so cannot recognize what crazy or evil looks like.
While Erickson is the first Fox personality to link Caitlyn Jenner to the Charleston shooting, his comments are part of the larger effort by conservative media to steer the public conversation about the massacre away from the underlying factors of racism and gun laws.
