Oh. My. God. This country is in meltdown...

[RandySF]

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A 15-year-old boy died after losing too much blood when his legs were severed in what police believe was an intentional attack outside the Somali Center of Kansas City Thursday evening.

He was rushed into surgery at Children’s Mercy Hospital, but did not survive.

The child was getting into a car outside the Somali Center when he was hit by a man driving an SUV near Admiral Boulevard and The Paseo at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

“It became pretty clear that this was not an accidental crash, there is a considerable amount of evidence that leads us to believe it was intentional,” Sergeant Bill Mahoney with KCPD said.

According to some witnesses, the suspect is a man in his 30s and known to them. They say he is also from Somalia, but that he has a history of hating Muslims.


http://fox4kc.com/2014/12/04/pedestrian-struck-near-downtown-kcmo-has-critical-injuries/

[TwilightGardener]

1. Yikes. Awful.

[AverageJoe90]

2. Damn! Poor kid. ='(

[Hekate]

3. Turn off the tv for a week. The country is not in meltdown.

I agree you have posted a tragic story, however.

[dballance]

4. However what?

Killing a kid because of his religion does not make a country in melt down? In deep trouble?

If some one killed a kid for being a Christian I bet you'd be in overdrive decrying that.

Try to remember that people in the early colonies got hanged for being Baptist.

[Hekate]

5. As I am not Christian, no, I would not be in overdrive for that reason by itself.

I respect all religions insofar as they at their core teach the Golden Rule; those that do not, not so much. I decry the killing of any innocent; furthermore, religious warfare throughout recorded history has always been particularly heinous.

If I read the original article correctly, the murderer was himself an immigrant from the same country as the victim -- it seems that some people carry their hatreds with them over the ocean, and frankly that mitigates somewhat the guilt of Americans per se, and therefore, does not by itself strike me as an indicator of the US having a societal meltdown. We have to deal with it in our own legal system since it occurred here, but it is not our fault, if you see what I mean.

We have enough homegrown problems of our own, and they most certainly are our fault. Right now we seem to be entering a new Civil Rights movement (at least I hope we are), and about time, in my opinion.

The forces of regression have been tearing away at essential progress that I thought was settled law and attitudinal change two generations ago. The administrations of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II/Cheney, and their enablers in Congress (starting with Newt Gingrich), have shredded the social contract and encouraged racial and class resentment to continually simmer in a toxic brew. So we have the sickening evidence of what amounts to post-Jim Crow legalized lynchings by cops against black men and boys. THAT's the evidence of what could cause our society to really unravel from the inside.

I see the marchers/protesters as a hopeful sign of a new Civil Rights movement; but I also see us standing on the edge of a knife, because if we do not come to grips with the issue of militarized and racist police very soon, every one of us of every color will live to regret it bitterly.