“The Horror! The Horror!” are the dying words of Mr. Kurtz in the novel “The Heart of Darkness.” There’s a consensus these words summarize the totality of human evil witnessed by a man driven insane by succumbing to its savagery. But Kurtz’s attempt to describe the unspeakable failed because it’s impossible to articulate what’s unimaginable.
Following the South Carolina Emanuel AME Church massacre (9 blacks were shot and killed by a 21-year-old white male.) attempts were made to describe the unspeakable and others pondered political solutions to the unimaginable violence.
Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. labeled the shooting an act of terrorism and said there is a culture of terror against Black people, a local pastor at a prayer vigil downgraded Jackson’s sentiments to domestic terrorism, and the next day at the U.S. Conference of Mayors President Barack Obama said, “We have to stop being confused about this. You don’t see murder on this kind of scale …In any other advanced nation on earth…I refuse to act as if this is a new normal or pretend it is simply sufficient to grieve and that any mention to do something to stop it is simply politicizing the problem…If congress had passed some common-sense gun safety reforms after…A group of children had been gunned down in their own classroom…We might have stopped one shooter…you all [The 300 mayors in attendance] might have to attend fewer funerals.”
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