Breaking News reports that “at least two people were injured after a gunman opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust [Memorial] Museum in Washington, D.C.” today. I can’t even begin to fathom the kind of mind that would plan and execute this kind of thing, although I’m sure we’ll learn more about the psycho than we really want to know in the next several days. And I shudder to think about what his actual plan might have been.
Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for awhile may remember that my family and I visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum last summer and that it had a big impact on us. Over a year later I’m finding myself in the position of asking, again, Why?
R.J. Keller 
Apparently he was an 83 yr old Nazi, white supremacist, Holocost denier. I guess he figured he was old and about to die, so he might as well act out his weirdo beliefs.
When I was little, every time I complained about a teacher, or anyone, my mom would say, “They’re probably anti-semetic.” I’d tell her, “Mom, I’m pretty sure they don’t hate the Jews. They just hate me.” Guess if this guy had been my math teacher, I would have been wrong.
Kel – I thought of you immediately when I heard about this incident. The blog post about your visit to the museum had a large impact on me. I have used it to educate a few people around here. Powerful stuff – Thank You! We have a plan to go there next summer – I thought about bringing the blog to add to some archive they may have.
I can totally begin to fathom this.
Here’s a scenario: We nuke Hiroshima, and Nagasaki (see what a huge assumption I make, when I say “we” here, that you are also American like me?). But as it turns out, Germany has recently developed a really kewl EMP weapon, which destroys all electrical and electronic equipment without actually hurting any people. And they’ve shared it with Japan. Japan deploys this weapon on August 10, 1 day after the bombing of Nagasaki. It’s spectacularly effective, and by early 1946, Japan, Italy, and Germany have accepted the unconditional surrender of the Allied Forces.
Fast forward to 2009. There’s a holocaust memorial museum in Tokyo to commemorate the deaths of more than 1 million Japanese civilians who were killed during the strategic and then nuclear bombing of Japan from 1942-1945. Fred (not his real name) now lives in Japan. In the actual version of history, Fred served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II, where he lost his brother and two of his fingers. In the early 90’s, I delivered the Seattle Times to him every day from my bicycle. The first time I went around to his house in my car, to collect that month’s subscription fees, Fred yelled at me and told me to get my fucking Japanese rice burner out of his goddamned driveway. I never parked that car anywere near his driveway again. But in this alternate version of history, Fred, who is even *more* bitter than he was in the original version (you have to realize how roundly the entire world has condemned the U.S.’s use of total war in Japan in WWII), has somehow ended up living in Japan. And in 2006 his wife of 50 years dies, and he sort of finally cracks, and decides to finally do something to “get those bastards”. So in ’09, after a couple years of working up to it, and planning and so forth, he takes a gun to the Memorial Museum in Tokyo and just starts shooting people.