Sorry to have been away for a bit. Early last Tuesday morning, my digestive system suddenly decided that it was Tommy DeSimone and that the rest of me was six weeks late on the money I owed him. I feel markedly better now, but for a very long stretch of hours I’m convinced that I and the toilet became one.

But at least I wasn’t in South Carolina getting shot by a bigot.

In response to this vicious racist attack, we got the usual bullshit from the usual quarters. GOP Candidates couldn’t bring themselves to admit that it was a racist attack because it’s an article of faith in their party that the only racial problem that exists is the epidemic of minorities falsely accusing white people of racism. The gun nuts claimed that lives could have been spared if only the church’s congregation, staff, and passers-by had all been packing heat. I imagine both groups pre-write these statements to be released whenever a hate crime or mass shooting happens. I guess we’ll know when a press release calling for all teachers at a local elementary school to be armed lands on a reporter’s desk when no shooting has actually happened.

It is somewhat mollifying to hear that the flag that should have never been up in the first place may be coming down. I refuse to give Governor Nikki Haley any credit for that, at least, any more credit than should accrue to someone who, only very reluctantly and under great pressure, does what she’s supposed to do.  (She’ll be getting back to making sure black people in South Carolina have a hard time voting, and that none of her poorer citizens get any health insurance.) Instead, I credit those who applied the pressure.

Still, we’ve got tons of nonsense to get through. Fox News (sigh) is now obsessed with policing President Obama’s use of “nigger” in an interview, while missing his point: that racism isn’t over just because it’s no longer socially acceptable to use racial slurs in public. No doubt they’ve got their pundits lined up to tell us who the “real racists” are. Fox News won’t win the argument, but by throwing enough dust in the air, they’ll obscure the point long enough that everyone will forget what it was. We’ll also get the single-achievement-ends-racism idiots who’ll say “Okay, we took down the flag. Racism’s over now, right?”

What is the source of all this nonsense? Here’s my theory. White America really, really, really, really, really doesn’t want to take responsibility for its greatest crimes, and it will credit any argument, however ridiculous, that tells it it doesn’t have to.