Poison

Replacement Theory. To label it a theory is a disservice to the word theory. Mr. Gendron had to be buying into the whole white supremacy “dream” of fomenting a race war.

I’m not going to try to summon words worthy of the disgust and anger I feel. It’s a futile pursuit. I guess my anger manifests itself in what I wish would happen to this piece of shit human being who most likely is feeling like he’s done something great, something heroic and worthy of admiration. It must have taken every ounce of restraint among arresting officers to not mete out immediate justice or lay a hand on him for fear of providing a reason for mistrial or countersuits or getting off on a technicality.

Did he have the dead eyes like the rest? They seem to pride themselves on who can have the emptiest, most haunting stare. And it turns out he wanted to keep going to another store, if he hadn’t been stopped—in order to maximize the fear, so that Black people wouldn’t feel safe anywhere they went.

This disease goes back a long way in this country, and it has not been eradicated. It keeps popping up. It’s so blatantly paranoid and hateful, a conspiracy theory that gains traction among a certain subset of impressionable white people who believe that all human beings aren’t all human. This is such a maddeningly ignorant and dumb way of looking at the world. And it appears to be making its latest comeback.

Perhaps most disheartening of all is the Republican buy-in. Not all, but enough of them. Who in their right mind would believe that this has anything to do with American greatness?