The United States is in clear and present danger of “imploding”, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) has warned. The lawmaker’s remarks came as he addressed the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and the mood of Black voters amid increased racial crimes in the nation.
“It’s just a mystery to me that we’ve become so tolerable of these kinds of incidents,” the South Carolina Democrat told The Washington Post in an interview published Friday.
“It seems as if they were just supposed to happen then you go and wait for the next one to happen. And they’re going to keep happening,” he continued. “But look at where we are in the country. It seems to it’s coming from all sides. You wonder whether or not people just decided that the pursuit of a more perfect union has come to an end.”
Clyburn said that the shooting brought to mind the 2015 Charleston, S.C., church massacre in which nine members of a Black congregation were killed. The gunman had expressed white supremacist views online before the shooting and reportedly said he wanted to start a race war.
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“Quite frankly, last year, this time I was in a different place than I am now,” Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement, said.
Asked to elaborate, he added, “I thought in difficult times that this too shall pass. I’m not too sure anymore. I’m really not.”
Asked about the mood of Black voters in the U.S., Clyburn said: “Dangerous. The mood is very dangerous.”
“The country is in danger of imploding,” he warned. “Democracy is in danger of disintegrating. I don’t know why people feel that this country is insulated from the historical trends.”
The Buffalo massacre has put a spotlight on the far-right “great replacement theory” after a screed allegedly posted by the white 18-year-old suspect espoused the theory, which alleges that there is an intentional effort taking place through immigration to replace white Americans with people of color.
Republicans have faced widespread criticism for enabling and encouraging white nationalism by endorsing the conspiracy theory, a charge that they deny.
Read it at The Washington Post.
