those murders in Charleston

I have a lot of thoughts.  This could turn into a long ramble, or just a links dump.  I'll try to make it in between.  The short version is that the people who say it wasn't about race are liars (even the murderer said it was, and he was the one with the gun).  The people who say the war of 1861-1865 (as it says on a memorial on the UNC campus to those who died) wasn't  about slavery are liars (there were other aspects motivating people from both sides, but that was a big one).  The people who continue to defend gun ownership under any circumstances are accomplices in such massacres.
Remember that if anybody were to ask, my self-defined cultural heritage is that of a white southerner. That doesn't mean that I in any way think chattel slavery was ever, even once, justifiable.   I am a total Federalist, and believe that secession at the time was the equivalent of treason.  I walk around almost all the time aware of the aura of privelege that surrounds me. I haven't really done anything to spread privilege around, but the idea of someone else having autonomy and agency doesn't bother me.  Apparently it bothers a lot of people, many of whom have guns.  And the internet, but that is an issue I don't feel that I can address.
The Stars and Bars flag (sometimes called the Confederate battle flag) creeps me out everytime I see it, but it's interesting to me that the Lost Cause people and the majority of the SC legislature use that, rather than one of the other flags of the CSA, the earliest of which was the Bonnie Blue flag (which I had never seen even mentioned, outside of Gone With The Wind, until the Ken Burns Civil War series).  The wikipedia article goes through the various possibilities, implying that there was never just one official flag of the supposed country. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
I have always assumed that the use of the battle flag was meant to imply some sort of ongoing battle, which one would think implies continued treasonous plans.

Pretty good summary, with opinions that I agree with unreservedly:
http://www.charlottemagazine.com/Blogs/Poking-the-Hornets-Nest/June-2015/Its-Not-Going-To-Stop/

"Corner Speech" by Alexander Stephens, VP of the CSA is linked below.  You can read the whole thing if you want to do so, to see what people think needs to be done when setting up a new country, but the currently strategic bit is this:
>>Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.<<
http://web.archive.org/web/20130822142313/http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/

We don't always watch "The Daily Show," but had it on the night after the murders.  Can't be better put than this:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/kb2h42/charleston-church-shooting

Snarky wisdom from The Economist online  (as an aside - Arthur is hopeful about the progress in pollution in China, but hasn't seem much evidence of it yet).

>>The regularity of mass killings breeds familiarity. The rhythms of grief and outrage that accompany them become—for those not directly affected by tragedy—ritualised and then blend into the background noise. That normalisation makes it ever less likely that America's political system will groan into action to take steps to reduce their frequency or deadliness. Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard them the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution.<<

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/06/charleston-massacre