We just went to dinner where we ate Tajik plov, listened to Disney songs, watched Ukrainian comedy videos on YouTube, and had tiramisu.

It also really annoys me when people refer to the Charleston killer as “a kid.”

The man is 21 years old. Let’s stop pretending he’s some confused little child.

Every event, no matter how earth – shattering, always ends up being reduced to a meme. Every discussion of the Charleston massacre has been downgraded to the endless rehashing of the need to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina ‘ s capital. I have scrolled through my newsfeed and discovered not a single article among dozens and dozens that discussed any aspect of the tragedy but the stupid flag.

Yes, the removal of the flag will have symbolic value. But I’m fed up with the symbolic, to be honest. Aren’t you? We’ve all heard endless blather about the symbolic value of electing the first black president, but after Obama has been in office for 7 years, there’s one racist outbreak of violence after another. And the fault lies with those who fixate on the symbolic and pay no attention to anything less cutesy and easy to sell in a neat package with a bow.

Recently, my colleagues went into a frenzy of email – writing and excited chirping over the “politically incorrect” name of the campus grill. When asked why the entirely inconsequential grill name aroused such activity while it was impossible to get anyone to protest the radical budget cuts the governor was imposing on our state’s higher education, the colleagues cheerfully stated that they feel impotent to change anything that really mattered, so they used the grill name as an opportunity to feel like they were still doing something in the midst of all this impotence.

Fixating on the flag is an easy out. All that one needs to do to feel self-righteous is to say or write an anti-flag screed. No actual effort goes into such armchair activism. No acknowledgement of the realities of racism needs to take place. Let’s just declare that somebody else should rename a grill or remove a flag while we go take a rest from this intense political battle we’ve just won.

Dylann Roof ‘ s manifesto has surfaced. There is, of course, a big probability it’s not really his. We will be seeing tons of copycats and crazies using the situation to hide behind Roof and express the hatred they otherwise don’t dare to show.

The manifesto is way too articulate for this fellow.