Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Contrary to what you might hear on the national news or read in the big time papers, this country does not have a violence against Blacks problem, or a violence against Asians problem or a violence against Latinos problem. No anti-Semitic violence problem, either.

America has a much bigger problem of which all those other problems are only part and parcel, not unlike the symptoms of a disease.

America, and White America in particular, has a hate problem, which if not somehow addressed, not somehow brought under control, is now and will continue to eat it up from the inside out.

I’ve about had it with this White supremacist “this land is our land” mantra, not just because it leads to manifested ignorance, but because it also leaves trails of blood and stacks of bodies when renegade rednecks apply an ends-justifies-the-means philosophy to it and think it gives them license to beat, stab, shoot or run down anybody who doesn’t look or believe just exactly the way they do.

Oh, you want me to be specific? All right:

• A hate filled individual named Robert Aaron Long who just happens to be White, opened fire in three Atlanta-area businesses that employ a large number of Asian women. He kills eight people, six of whom are Asian women. Coincidence?

• A hate filled individual  named Dylan Roof, who just happens to be White,  killed eight people, all of whom were Black, inside an African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. Coincidence?

• A hate filled individual named Patrick Wood Crusius, who just happens to be White, shot to death 25 people in an El Paso Wal-Mart, the vast majority of which were Latinos. Coincidence?

• And, let’s not forget our old standby anti-Semitism. Remember the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg? A hate filled individual named Patrick Bowers, who just happens to be White, shot to death 11 Jews while they were worshipping there. Coincidence?

Some folks would have you believe that—in each of the cases, even though at least three of those hate-filled killers had been kind enough to leave behind white supremacist manifestos or racist rants all over social media before they went on their shooting sprees. Who knows, maybe the latest greater Atlanta creep did too, and we just hadn’t found his particular penned or electronic poison yet.

Doesn’t matter. Fact is, I’m not a big believer in coincidences, especially when they share a common denominator as old as mankind itself.

Nothing new about hate. Go into the nearest Barnes and Nobles, or even better, one of the still remaining endangered mom-and-pop bookstores and open any tome on history that you like. It’ll be full of it. One of those folks who takes the Bible literally, are you? Well, look no further than Cain and Abel—of course, if you read on, there’s plenty more. The Old Testament is slap full of folks hating other folks when they are not begatting them. The redemption and love and soul-saving and caring about your fellow man doesn’t come around until the New Testament and the haters either never quite get around to that, or don’t take it to heart if they do.

But they are fine Christian folks, mind you. They will tell you that in a heartbeat. Reckon what might Jesus say?

At times humans use racial hate as a way to act out their life frustrations, but this doesn’t seem like that. Roughly 75 percent of domestic terror acts are committed by right-wing extremists, White nationalists and White supremacists and that is now deemed the biggest threat for mass violence in the country.

My lord, folks, these same people just carried out an insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, killing and beating police and threatening lawmakers in an attempt to overthrow an election and install their false prophet and pseudo savior Donald Trump as de facto emperor in what would have proved the end of America as we know it.

Think it might be time to start taking this seriously?

“Cause everybody’s gotta have somebody to look down on—prove they can  be better than—at anytime they please.”

Ray Mosby is editor and publisher of the Deer Creek Pilot in Rolling Fork.