In far-flung cities, deadly violence ripped apart the most typical of American spring weekends, driven by rage or madness, the bloodiest by suspected racist hate.
The crime scenes represented a cross-section of ordinariness — a grocery store in upstate New York, a California church, a Texas flea market, and the streets near a basketball arena in Wisconsin.
The carnage Americans see on their screens is not from an invading force. It is from within. The United States is a cauldron of seething grievances and poisonous social media conspiracy theories that have even gained purchase with some in power.
There is, by now, a pattern after mass shootings — shock, thoughts, prayers, vows to do something, then collective slumped shoulders as attention moves on and it becomes clear nothing much will change.
Americans are still in the first phase as they absorb the aftermath of the past weekend of violence, which coincided with a COVID-19 death tally that reached 1 million in the U.S.
“I’m trying to bear witness but it’s just too much,” Buffalo, New York, resident Yvonne Woodard said of the rampage Saturday outside Tops Friendly Market. A young white man wearing body armor and live streaming with a helmet camera opened fire Saturday, killing 10 Black people. “You can’t even go to the damn store in peace,” Woodard said.
You can’t go anywhere in peace with certainty today in this country of howling political and cultural animus, ubiquitous guns, and murder rates surpassing those in most of the industrialized world.
Not to a Houston flea market, where thousands were browsing Sunday when a gunfight broke out, killing two people, injuring three, and panicking bystanders.
Not to church, where on Sunday a man opened fire during a lunch reception in Laguna Woods, California, killing one person and wounding five before a pastor smashed the gunman’s head with a chair and parishioners tied him up.
Not to Milwaukee’s downtown, where authorities declared a partial curfew for the weekend after three shootings injured 21 people near an entertainment district where thousands had gathered for an NBA playoff game. Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Indianapolis are among cities that saw record numbers of killings last year, most involving guns.
In Laguna Woods, police said Monday, the gunman was a U.S. citizen who immigrated from China and was motivated by hate for the Taiwanese community, whose members were attending the church.
Americans have a president who, like him or not, is good at empathy and has to tap that quality more than anyone would want. Joe Biden goes to Buffalo on Tuesday to offer comfort to bereaved families and to address, yet again, “the hate that remains a stain on the soul of America.”
Biden is the second president in a row to warn of existential threats to the American fabric.
Donald Trump startled dignitaries on his 2016 inaugural stage with his talk of “American carnage,” a stark portrait drawn from urban poverty, rusted factories “scattered like tombstones,” crime, gangs, and drugs.
