Yesterday the Indiana legislature shot down a hate crimes law, leaving the Hoosier State one of just five states without one. The law would have allowed judges to impose tougher sentences for crimes motivated by race, religion, sex, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation. But of course, the you-know-who-folks in our legislature larded it up with amendments that would leave it meaningless.
But hey, no big deal, right? After all, nobody in Indiana, in The Heartland, has anything to worry about, right?
Yesterday the Jewish Community Center of Indianapolis was the victim of the ongoing series of bomb threats to JCCs around the country. Some may argue, “it was just a threat,” but that’s the purpose of stochastic terrorism, keeping people afraid. And it doesn’t end with the threat and the evacuation of the building. Parents wonder about using the day care center. People stop going to the gym, going to meetings. It matters.
And in the early morning hours the same day, a bullet was fired into a synagogue in Evansville, Indiana. Evansville is in the far southwestern corner of Indiana. We know people who are members there, and they’re scared.
This is ultimately going to end in bloodshed.
I truly wish the President of the United States would stop whining “fake news” because the New York Times doesn’t wax eloquent about the splendiferous aromas wafting up from his taint and start doing his damned job, which includes protecting all Americans, even if they aren’t the White Christians he and his white supremacist allies think matter the most.
