The shooting incident this past week of 9 innocent churchgoers and the ruling today by the Supreme Court finally granting equal protection under the law to everyone regarding the basic human right of marriage are not, I'm afraid, unrelated future news items. I had the first inklings of this idea as I posted a comment regarding the shooting to a Facebook thread of an acquaintance of mine, who ironically was working for a local organization promoting "Peace and Justice." I got no response.
Here's what I said:
This kind of hatred and violence is sickening, and it is even more sickening to see the NRA and other groups blaming the victims or excusing the shooter. Why is this still happening in this day and age? Believe me, I have had plenty of time to ponder that question. I have been, on occasion, the person assigned to stand in the foyer of our synagogue with my hand and a panic button in my pocket. There are others dispersed in the building who also have one, just in case. But the person in the front foyer knows that although probably nothing will happen, if it does, my job is essentially to die first, but make sure I press the panic button just the right way somewhere between being shot and hitting the floor, so the police will come as soon as possible. There are hundreds of people like me, in every synagogue and temple, every Chabad house, every Jewish dayschool and daycare, all over the country - every shabbat, every holiday, every wedding, every baby dedication, every school program, and, even more surreal, every funeral. Just standing there pondering the unthinkable: What if it happens today? It is bad enough that we have to live that way. I sincerely hope that the hatred and violence promoted by certain groups against anybody not like them doesn't make it necessary for other people to live this way, too. This is not what living in the land of the free is supposed to be. I would not wish it on anyone.
We regularly have patrol cars sitting at our synagogue during major holidays, to hopefully scare away those who might be inclined to otherwise cause trouble.
What I am afraid now is that even though the court was stacked with conservatives, the far-right republicans, racists, bigots and fundamentalists are going to feel very, very betrayed. And they are going to say to themselves that since the justice system has stabbed them in the back, the only means of achieving their goals is violence and intimidation. And they are heavily armed with no worthwhile gun control laws in sight.
I am afraid that we will now see a free-for-all of shootings at gays and blacks and Jews and Muslims and anyone else the white-supremacist fundamentalists deem to be beneath them and therefore unworthy of life, liberty and happiness. The republicans have never really gotten over the plantation mentality, and all these uppity people are not something they are willing to countenance.
They will say to themselves that the only means now of achieving their goals is war - and I believe this is something they have been wanting for a long time. They will gladly martyr themselves just as gleefully as a suicide bomber - and may even try that tactic, too.
So now any worship service, wedding, funeral, daycare or school of "those people" will be a target. And we will all have to go around with panic buttons in our pockets at every event, knowing it will most likely be too little, too late when the police finally come. We will all be living that way, ultimately, because why stop at there? Why not get rid of those pesky atheists, Catholics, immigrants, family planning centers, and secular humanists, too? In for a penny, in for a pound.
It is a very, very short trip between the rhetoric they've been spouting and having them become the American version of ISIS. They're halfway there already.
I hope I'm wrong.