Discussion for article #238002
No words…
This is terrorism. Simple.
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If you ask Republicans and the right-wing, it is people with mental illness starting the fires.
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Apparently, if you ask Faux, it’s leftism.
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Roberts Post Racial America at work.
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Possible perpetrators and motives:
- Liberal lefties trying to intimidate Christians, because they hate their freedom to hold deep religious beliefs.
- Racists, because Black people.
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Or maybe it’s insurance fraud.
White Southern men are burning Christian churches.
The Republican Party is silent.
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Worth noting that there are 1,800 fires per year at religious properties. That’s about 5 per day.
Definitely worth investigating these 6, and maybe 1 or 2 are hate crimes, but there is zero indication of that at this time. Even in arson cases, many times it’s homeless people who stay at the church and start them by accident (cigarettes many times), which is still arson, but not a hate crime. Also old wiring, lightning strikes (two of the recent “string” were from that). Kitchen fires are also a problem at churches. Lots of old people, many forget to turn stuff off, etc. Fires are also used to cover up robberies at churches.
Might be best to see how the investigations go first since church fires are quite common. Right now only 3 of this “string” are considered arson, and there is no indication of “hate crime” at any of them at this time. Yes, perhaps one or more were, but best to wait for definitive proof.
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Five fires in a church in a day doesn’t seem like much to me considering how many churches there are in the country, and how many fires. I live in a medium sized town in NJ, and hear sirens multiple times a day.
thank you for that ridiculous comment, it gives us all a sort of validation that the right is just as stupid as we suspect, maybe even moreso… although, as we have learned over the years, here on TPM there are times when The Snark and The Crazy entwine in such a way that sarcasm and irony get lost in the ether. You may have been snarkin’. But I doubt it.
“though the blazes do not appear to be related.”
…some conspiracies need no conversation between the co-conspirators, they are all so much on the same hate wavelength that they just act in concert, without a conductor.
Which raises the question of spiritual influence… We can’t go there o this blog, too many athiest eggheads who get offended when religion is referenced in any way, or "good v evil’ is suggested as a foundation of what is really happening…
But anyone who is watching closely could easily, and I believe accurately, attribute that mysterious link between these “unrelated” fires to evil itself, plain and simple.
There is unity in prejudice and its requisite hatred, even if it isn’t actually spoken or agreed on between its adherents, it is still there, at the seething, slithering foundation of their contempt.
Call it by whatever name you prefer, but denying it just makes understanding it all the more difficult.
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…but, all that being said, there is also a very good possibility that the same pernicious influence mentioned above moved some dedicated bigots to “put the word out” via coded posts or secret meetings, or even emails, for all the rest to start the fires they had conspired to do, sometime, somewhere real.
There’s where the FBI can actually DO something about it.
If the right argues that these are “coincidences” can we start teaching kids the stork theory of birth control?
Always ready to be a tool.
How many are church fires?
Correct, yet you still have a bunch of comments from people who already “know” what happened…
There was a black church in Minneapolis a few years ago that got destroyed in a fire. Everyone on here was ranting about hate crime, etc. Turns out it got struck by lightning… there was even video of it… yet people on here will still say “remember when the KKK torched that church in Minnesota”…
Again, not saying none of these recent fires was a hate crime. But at this point there is absolutely zero evidence of it.
There are an average of 5 church fires every day in the US, I posted the link. 5 per day. There are not 5 fires total in the US every day. There were 1,240,000 fires reported in the US for 2013. That’s 23,000 PER DAY.
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Of course, the critical point of distinction is that one church burned in hate per day is unsatisfactory, not because of the damage to property, but because of the message it meant to carry, the effect to have.
One act designed to weaken society is not just a data point, but something to be avoided. That’s just good business practice any conservative should embrace.