These words are traceable. We can see the similarity in them in things we, ourselves, have said.
"All these Jews need to die."
Take Robert Bowers words and wonder where he learned to think that way. Wonder if society had any influence on him. Wonder if words of our own have any similarity.
Do we ever suggest that if someone invades our home, they need to die, or deserve to die? Do we have former spouses who we see as so evil that we wish they would die? Our words echo in the hearts of others. The hatred we espouse may seem to fall harmless from our lips, but if those words teach others that killing can be okay -- even right if the person being killed "deserves" it -- then we are spreading the illness that killing can be justified depending on who you are killing.
Our cough becomes their cold, or vice versa.
So, I open my morning paper today, and see those words, "All these Jews need to die," and I see them as evidence. If you were a detective on the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting case, and you wanted to know what brought Robert Gregory Bowers to do what he did, this would be evidence.
Guns are used to kill. But, the gun has to be brought out, loaded, and the trigger pulled before anyone is killed. They don't act on their own. Just so, the laws of cause and effect are at play in humans. There are things that bring us to do what we do. If we would study why we have so much violence in America, we would trace back words such as, "All these Jews need to die" to where they come from. We would try to learn who taught the shooter to think like that.
Society teaches its own. And, then it can't understand where all the Robert Bowers come from.
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