"Thoughts and Prayers": A BS Response to Mass Shootings

Chabad of Poway synagogue .

Yet another shooting at a synagogue - this time in the San Diego area - apparently by yet another white supremacist and what is Der Trumpenführr's response?  Thoughts and prayers for the victims.  This from the man who has striven to normalize white supremacists and who has called neo-Nazis terrorists bent on intimidation and threats "very fine people."  Meanwhile, his political party has blocked all efforts at reasonable gun control measures, including bans on assault rifles such as the one used in this latest attack which left one dead, three injured and many traumatized. Any politician who mutters the bullshit response of "thoughts and prayers" while opposing gun control is a liar and needs to be treated as such.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this latest atrocity, the perpetrator of which took inspiration from the mass murder at a Pittsburgh synagogue and the mosque massacre in New Zealand.  This is what Trump's four year message of racial and religious hatred has sown.  Here are article highlights:

A 19-year-old man with an assault rifle opened fire at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, Calif., on Saturday morning, leaving one dead and three injured, authorities said.

Four people were transported to Palomar Medical Center with gunshot injuries around noon, Pacific time, officials said in a news conference Saturday afternoon.

One of the victims, a woman, “succumbed to their wounds,” according to Poway Mayor Steve Vaus. The three others — a girl and two men — remain in the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Rabbi Yonah Fradkin, executive director of Chabad of San Diego County, identified Lori Kaye, 60, of Poway as the woman who was killed, according to the Associated Press. Fradkin said those injured were Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, Noya Dahan, 8, and Almog Peretz, 34.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s office identified the suspect as John Earnest. According to Sheriff William D. Gore, the assault weapon might have malfunctioned after the gunman fired inside the Chabad of Poway, preventing a more extensive tragedy. An off-duty border patrol agent fired at the shooter when he was fleeing, but missed.

Saturday’s shooting in Poway, approximately 20 miles north of San Diego, came six months after the massacre at Pittsburgh’s oldest synagogue, Tree of Life, where an armed shooter killed 11 people and injured six others in the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the United States.

Earnest is a California State University San Marcos student, the university’s President Karen S. Haynes said, according to the Associated Press.

In a manifesto published online Saturday under the name John Earnest, the writer described plans to kill Jews, referring to himself as an “anti-Semite” and “white supremacist.” It referenced the alleged shooters at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue and the New Zealand mosques, Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler as role models. The writer expressed no remorse for his impending actions.

In the document, the writer confessed to setting fire to a mosque in Escondido, Calif., located fewer than nine miles from the Poway Chabad, a month earlier, and dedicated the arson to the alleged New Zealand shooter. The writing mirrors the alleged New Zealand shooter’s manifesto.

In a post on 8chan, an Internet message board, a user who appears to be Earnest shared the manifesto and announced his plan to live-stream his actions on Facebook and shared a link, but the social media platform blocked the profile before it gained widespread attention.

In his 8chan message, the user references the “red pill” movement, which developed on Internet message boards and revolves around the idea of men’s rights, anti-feminism and the alt-right, and generally promotes a misogynistic worldview.