'Hate Crime' is the new 'I'm not racist, but...'

One of the more idiotic epidemics happening in the comments sections of STLToday is the amount of people who don't understand what entails a hate crime. They assume any kind of violence perpetrated between people of different races is done because they are on different parts of the color wheel.

According to the paragon of information, Wikipedia, A hate crime is when someone is target because of their perceived membership in a certain social group. And make a mental note of the word perceived because that will be coming back around.

Example: if I punch you because you are black, white, gay, Chinese, poor, rich, old, Libertarian or woman, I have committed a hate crime. If I punch you because you seem Cuban, and I hate Cubans, but you're actually Mexican, I have still committed a hate crime because I totally crimed out of hate.

I imagine a large amount of the violent crimes that happen in the city aren't hate crimes. Sure, you could argue any crime committed with the threat or act of violence is a crime of hate, but if you are just a victim of opportunity and happen to get your Samoan face punched by a Papua New Guinean fist for your fake Ray Bans, it isn't a hate crime. It's just good ol' fashioned crime.

Remember how I told you to keep that word 'perceived' in the back of your mind? While commentators of STLToday and KSDK may not be committing a crime of any kind, they already have the hate part well taken care of. Not a day goes by without someone calling any black on white violence a crime of hating whites.

Meanwhile, commentors are sharpening their pitchforks to storm the Post Dispatch front doors for not being as racist as they would like since race is only mentioned when necessary for identifying a criminal. It's a pretty well known fact that the people who comment on STLToday believe an underground race war is brewing. What the ignorant masses don't know is that the Illuminati Lizard Pope is behind it all and using misdirection while he unwinds his nefarious plots.

I guess STLToday is run by Lizard Bishops. Also, Freemasons are involved somehow.

Point is, commentors are all stupid and need to be punched, but since I would be punching them because they belong to the class known as 'stupid people,' it is considered a hate crime. A vicious cycle, indeed.

In a story from STLToday, a second man has been arrested in the murder of a pizza delivery driver. It's a stupid, senseless crime and the man who pulled the trigger is a grade-A asshole. That much we can agree on. But a hate crime?

Thank you Thomas Turner. Both for your observation and your inability to grasp English grammar. I had to look up Eric Holder since I don't keep up with politics on account of not wanting to drop the word 'functional' from 'functional alcoholic'. Turns out he is the current US Attorney General. So he is at the head of the Department of Justice. I imagine he lives in Washington D.C. being important and making decisions.

What I am reaching for here is why the fuck would Eric Holder have anything to do with a random act of violence in St. Louis? Especially when local police have caught two of the assholes involved in the crime. I don't understand why anyone would jump down the throat of a guy who...

Ahh. A bad case of Obama syndrome.

Alright, benefit of the doubt time. Perhaps the concerned citizens of St. Louis are under the impression that the head of the justice department should be reading the newspaper and online news sources of the 58th largest city in the U.S. (not including the weird county people.) Atty. Gen. Holder should swoop in on this Imo's delivery murder and start cracking heads superhero style, and then fly out once all the poverty is gone while everyone waves their Bachelor's degrees in farewell before taking their first steps into the workforce.

Come on Jerald Johnson. Do you expect us to do all your racist dirty work? Start your own damn march!

I kept that whole comment thread together because I want you to see the mental chain of events taking place here. First, we have a call to march again, even though the suspects are being found and brought to justice. Then we have another insistence of a hate crime. Daniil Maksimenko was murdered because of whiteness. Sure, reading the article it might seem the crime happened due to his proximity to St. Louis style pizza. Or perhaps it was a mixture of hungry sociopaths who heard the "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" line one too many times, but whiteness is always the reason for being targeted in St. Louis.

It seems the most dangerous thing to be in this city is white. I now need to reclassify my own mugging. I wasn't mugged because the guy happened to be in the 7/11 I was in, watching me get money out of an ATM and then walking out alone. He obviously hated my stupid white face and wanted me to know about it. Never mind that the people in the neighborhood, mostly black, ratted the guy out immediately and now he is behind bars for quite some time. I'm sure they too hated my whiteness and wanted me to stay so they could hate me even more.

Convoluted logic aside, nothing screams racist more than proclaiming 'hate crime' in the first ten minutes. I'm sure there is some crime committed because of race, but let's press the brakes and get more information other than race before we jump to conclusions in the minefield of stupidity. Unless the trigger man yelled "Black Power, you fucking mayonnaise eating honkey!" we should just assume this was a crime of assholery.