Nation Still Reeling From Weekend of Violence

Wednesday, May 18th, 2022 -- 12:00 PM

(AP) 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, 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.

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. Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old suspect in the New York shooting, is believed to have written a document in the possession of police that laid out an attack intended to terrorize nonwhite, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country.

The document counts Black people and immigrants as “replacers,” drawing from the “great replacement” racist conspiracy theory spread by fringe groups that elites are plotting to diminish the influence of white people by increasing the minority population.

The tenets of replacement theory resonate with many Americans. In a poll last week, The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 1 in 3 Americans believes an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain.

A similar share endorse the view that immigration is weakening the political, economic and cultural influence of those born in the U.S. There was a note of hope. Two-thirds said a diverse population makes the U.S. stronger.

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