Record Collection

 Way back when, Bono introduced U2's cover of Helter Skelter by asserting "This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. Tonight we're givin' it back." While this is fundamentally true, since Charlie appropriated  the songs on The White Album and mashed in some of the Book of Revelations from the Bible, stirred it around his drug-addled brain and came up with a rationale to kill a bunch of people. He had hoped that the violence would touch off a race war, and when it was all over he and his "Family" would be left to rule over what was left. 

I would like to note a couple of things: Manson's murderers misspelled it "Healter Skelter" when they wrote it in the blood of the LaBiancas on their refrigerator. Bono, despite his grand intentions, managed to muddle the lyrics to the song. Which seems pretty on brand, since "helter skelter" used to mean disordered or confused before it meant race war. 

Why all the history? Because there was more ugly history made this past weekend when a loon with a gun opened fire outside a Buffalo, New York supermarket. The eighteen year old loon with a gun shot and killed ten people, most of them African American. Not random or haphazard. This was a planned killing spree that had racial hatred at its core. The one hundred eighty page manifesto that the loon with a gun posted just prior to his murderous rampage "explained" the reasoning behind the chaos he was about to unleash. He showed up in the Tops Friendly Market parking lot dressed in tactical armor and helmet, with a camera affixed to it in hopes of capturing the whole bloody mess for posterity. 

He was taken into custody by officers responding to the scene, but not before the loon with a gun managed to kill a security guard whose several shots could not penetrate the loon's armor. Law enforcement was able to talk the loon out of shooting himself in the neck and was arrested. Later in the day he was arraigned on multiple counts of murder in the first degree. All of which was essentially laid out in the loon's manifesto, in which he described being locked away until the "real war" came to pass and he would be released by the whites who would celebrate him as a hero. 

How did an eighteen year old get all this hate? From the dark corners of Al Gore's Internet, of course. He had spent years digesting the regurgitated bile from dozens of neo-Nazis and their ilk, creating a patchwork of hate that put him in a place to carry out his "mission." It should be noted here that it was only a year ago that this same loon attracted attention from local authorities when he threatened to shoot up his  high school graduation. He was given a mental health evaluation and released. The gun used by the loon was purchased "legally." The powers that be at Twitch, the streaming service that the loon hoped to use to broadcast his murders, pulled the plug after the violence erupted. 

Charles Manson died in prison. John Lennon was murdered by a loon with a gun. If Bono decides to sing about this, I hope he gets the words right.