It's time to relegate history to the past

If I'm going to mention social issues on my blog at all, I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about the events in Charlottesville and their fallout.

To recap, a controversy over a statue of a Confederate personage turned into an excuse to hold a white supremacist rally with an alarmingly Nazi bent ("Jews will not replace us", they chanted, as though it had anything to do with anything). As generally happens when people go looking for a fight, there was fighting, escalating to the point of a white supremacist deciding to drive a car through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring several others. In the ensuing backlash, the alt-right has since leveled farfetched false flag accusations against both the organizer of the event and the driver of the car.

Here we go again...

It's bad enough coming from assorted strangers online or newspaper editorialists who have made no secrets of their biases. Somehow, though, it's just worse when it comes from people you know and want to respect. It stings, it feels like a betrayal, and... it's just disappointing. Especially since this is someone I've tried to get through to before and hoped I'd met with at least a little success. Especially since this is one of those people who ought to be spreading God's love, choosing instead to parrot ignorance and propagate hatred.