It’s entirely possible that the “addiction” had a racial component, though, considering he was frequenting locations that was staffed by Asian American women. There are none too few white men who have a “fetish” for Asian women specifically because they are seen as more compliant to the demands of patriarchal culture, where as white and Black women are a “lost cause.”
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Cue some barrel-fondler promoting the “Safe Space Massage Table” as a solution.
Charlie Pierce zeroes in on the real problem once again:
Whatever the alleged killer’s motivation was, there is no ambiguity in how he was able to carry it out: this country’s insane fetish for its firearms continues to run unabated. There is some movement in the Congress again on passing sensible gun-control legislation, which means we’re all in for another absurd debate over the Founders’ weakness for dependent clauses. We will learn more about the crime and the criminal as the days go on, but this simple fact will never change: he was able to kill eight people in three places in one night because he was able to obtain the correct tool for the job. One more day of blood sacrifice to a perverse idea of freedom.
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Live updates:
I would have guessed incel, rather than churchy, but of particular note:
CRISTINA CABRERA
11:21 a.m.
Suspected Gunman Allegedly Bought His Firearm Hours Before He Began Shooting Spree
Reynolds told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Long had purchased the gun he allegedly used to shoot up the three spas hours before the attacks.
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Yeah, it sounds like incel, but it also sounds like there was a racial component in that his sexual addictions only seemed to be at asian massage parlours.
I was also seeing in the AJC that he was also going to go to florida to target a few places there when he was stopped.
I think this is going to be investigated down the road.
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It’s very telling how many people seem more concerned that a mass murderer might be unfairly branded as a racist than they are about the lives he destroyed.
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From the same article:
In one jarringly jaw-dropping moment during the press briefing, Baker painted Long as almost a sympathetic figure who’s just been having a tough time lately.
“They got that impression that he understood the gravity of it and he was pretty much fed up, he’d been kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him,” the captain said. “And this is what he did.”
Maybe it’s just me, but somehow I doubt this would have been Police Captain Baker’s response if the shooter hadn’t been a white male.
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Given how white society has hypersexualized Asian women, it is impossible to separate the racism from the sexism here, as some are trying to do.
It’s not one or the other. It’s a toxic white male supremacy stew. Innocent people died because of it.
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What. The. Actual. Fuck.
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Yes, and the response to that problem indicates deep-seated racism regardless. He wasn’t going out shooting white women for “tempting” him. That he viewed whatever self-control problems he had as more important than people’s lives says every thing about how little he valued their lives. I can’t imagine that their being Asian women was unrelated to his valuation of them as less than him.
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I’m vacillating between:
“He threw a few chairs at the Denny’s, shot a few Asian women. I mean, who hasn’t been there, amiright?”
and:
“He’s always been a good kid at our Klan rallies. Let’s cut him some slack.”
/s
Fuck both of them. Sideways. With a saguaro cactus.
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Yes, the Venn diagram is the GOP.
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He’s white and they’re asian sex workers and they’re in the south.
It was always going to be that way.
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Yes. Only people in the south are racist. /s
He’s a white man in American. That’s enough for him to be racist. The whole fucking country is racist.
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No. I didn’t say that.
I said that he’s a white man who committed crimes against minority sex workers. Of COURSE southern good ol’ boy law enforcement is going to characterize it as “He had a bad day.” It’s endemic racism in the system, like you said.
It’s absolutely awful that the people who should be protecting the community are outright painting HIM as a victim, but it’s not unexpected because ACAB.
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to write off one area as forever lost to white racists, especially when there are so many thriving non white communities in that area - seems… wrong.
it’s really not unfortunately. gun obsession crosses racial lines, as does misogyny and xenophobia.
atheists are just as able to be one or more of the above as any other. highly religious groups like the quakers won’t get near guns at all.
where i think you’re right is that where those things overlap is a pretty frightening zone. and in the us, especially so.
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He characterized it as that, and they are taking it a face value, because law enforcement almost always does that with white men. Again, it’s national problem, as I know you’re aware.
I constantly have to hear some around here harp on how horrible the south is, and how the rest of the country should just let us go. It’s not helpful in solving the problem, given how the issues of racism and policing are a national problem. The reality is that this case could have happened anywhere in the country, especially right now with how there are so many hate crimes being leveled at Asian Americans.
But him saying that the crime wasn’t racially motivated, might have also been coached, as we literally just passed a hate crimes bill in the wake of the Ahmad Arbery case (with actual support from the GOP here). I don’t think police in general are keen on hate crime laws, and probably don’t want to deploy it if possible.
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I’m not writing off the area.
I’m FROM that area.
I’m saying that the cops were always going to paint a crime by a white man against asian sex workers as something like “He had a bad day yesterday.” Because that’s how cops in Atlanta suburbs act. That’s what they DO. If he were a black guy, it’d have been a completely different response. If it were an Asian guy, they’d be spinning it as a “Sex worker crime.”
I’m not saying that the whole area is bad. I’m not writing off anything.
I’m saying that he’s a white young guy who murdered sex workers because he had a problem with them existing, and that the cops were ALWAYS going to paint him as the victim because THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT MINORITIES.
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Fixed. Outside urban areas and inner suburbs this law enforcement attitude is more the rule than the exception all over the country, including in “blue” states like California and New York and Massachusetts.
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I’m absolutely 100% aware of that, yes. My characterization of southern good ol’ boy is because that’s where I grew up and that’s the toxic masculinity I know.
All the kids who beat the shit out of me for being a nerd and from the north and being an “n-word lover” for having black friends where I was from in Michigan are now cops.
The characterization of southern was based on what I grew up with, but it definitely happens everywhere because ACAB.
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They even act like in minority suburbs because they ship in cops from white suburbs to patrol those areas now. Police don’t live in minority suburbs.
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