re: Two Reporters Killed in Shooting During Live Broadcast in Virginia

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can't really put them on here though.

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Is his video still around??

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your insightful comment and for not buying into what the media often tries to feed its audiences. Nothing about this killer smacks of mental illness. That is just an easy meme that the media uses which is actually a slur against mentally ill people--the vast majority of whom are not dangerous. Shame on ABC News for using this meme. This shooter was angry and bitter and by his own admission he was pissed off for a long time. He sounds as if he had significant personality problems, but that is not seen (legally at least) as a mental illness. Chronic anger is also not a mental illness and someone who is provoked to target white people in part because he was pissed off that a white racist slaughtered a room full of innocent African-American worshipers is racist revenge, not mental illness. Flanagan/Williams was not, for all we know now, "descending toward madness" as the ABC story reports. He was someone who bought into the same thing Dylan Roof bought into: that there is a race war. In some important respects he really is no different from Dylan Roof--just another arrogant, gun-toting angry person in America fed-up with the reality that they are dissatisfied losers. Do I doubt Flanagan/Williams, a gay black man, was the target of racist and homophobic remarks? Not at all. I'm sure that he was at times in his life and I'm sure that must have made him angry (as it should have). Ask any black person or gay person in America and they will tell you that they experience racist and homophobic remarks (and many times worse--discrimination, harassment, and violence). Do I doubt that Flanagan/Williams endured the stress of being a double minority? No. He probably did. But that does not give him license to kill. The thing I find impressive is how the vast majority of people of color and LGBT people cope maturely with all the crap they have to deal with in America. They form deep friendships and family relationships. They fight for what is right, but they do it pro-socially and they cherish who they are. That was not the killer.He descended into wallowing in his own rage, not mental illness. Flanagan/Williams could have chosen to get help to deal with his anger. He chose not to.

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Ask any black person or gay person in America and they will tell you that they experience racist and homophobic remarks (and many times worse--discrimination, harassment, and violence

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endured the stress of being a double minority?

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