I am guessing that made all the air around exceptionally stinky, a smog of burning auto tires! The stinky things in life have a way of being noticed though. The source of the stink gets promptly rectified. Its the source of the little smells, coagulating in our nostrils from many sources, that are most elusive. We can invoke nice smells with perfume, but its best to do that after we eliminate the source of the stink.

Racism and all the faces of it are the best magnifying glass for looking at what is fundamentally human hatred, a base need to transcend our experience at the expense of another, or to wreck vengence as a way of righting wrongs. With racism, it's usually about superiority, which is fundamentally about inferiority. People who are racist, sexist, homophobic, violent, predatory feel inferior and hide it by being thieves of our humanity. The instinct also lurks in ourselves and indifference is the same as hatred in its end result. If hatred itself is primal and fear-based and inferior in human nature, it is also the most common response to hatred in others. And indifference at the core is cowardly. So our choice is fight hatred without hating, and overcome the fear in our own indifference.

Take simple economics because it gives a broader view of hatred and indifference. It's just dollars and sense, human sense. As a flawed human being, I will be inclined to resent the guy with more money or hate the one with less. Now if I am barely getting by, limited opportunities, counting quarters for coffee, can't find my way of this hole, I will hate panhandlers. I will see them as conniving greedy lazy people who refuse to work for a living. Its easier to hate them than to see and feel the suffering in their midst. If I am slightly more evolved, I will help the ones that talk to themselves. I will help the ones that hand out religious pamphlets. I will help the ones missing a limb or crippled. You know my flaws by the ones I refuse to help. You know hatred by what people hate.

Now give me a little more money and a house that I own, and I will hate right up the social scale. I will hate halfway houses that bring down my property values, and landlords of rental properties.

Give me a few houses to rent and I will hate landlords that take vouchers. They bring in tenants that might chase away my own more wealthy prospects.

If you elect me to office with all my houses, I will hate those that oppose me. And if you elect me to President, I will hate those outside my borders. And after I retire, I will give speeches and donate some of my holdings to charities. I will be a wise philanthropist, revered for my vast benevolence.

I think the best way to root out hatred is to not hate, and not be indifferent, as individual people. We can hate the fruits of hatred, the damage it causes. We can cure our indifference. But the people who stand for hatred with causes of hatred are the least threatening among us. They make a big bad smell. The others make a different smell, the flatulence of overindulgence and the sweat of greed and twisted desire.

Did you know that the two most intimate senses to appeal to are smell and taste? I learned this in a writing class, but it makes sense. In a Manhatten crowd at rush hour, or on a full train in Tokyo, noises and sights and touch are impossible to discriminate. Your senses reduce to smell. Smell translates to taste. If there are many smells, we notice the bad ones most. If they are bad enough, we taste them as well and feel violated just by the presence inside our bodies. And for some reason we don't sense our own smell. We bathe regularly to prevent intruding on the taste of others haha.

Whoever conceived a cross of burning rubber tires was presenting and undermining their cause all at once. Maybe that was the intent. I am sure it tasted bad for miles around, so bad that it made others avoid the area. But the worst smell would have been the underlying sweat of scret passion from the armpits of believers who used our best symbol of not hating, a cross, and rendered it into blasphemy. Second worst would be the trickle of sweat that comes from fear and indecision about what to do next about this burning blasphemy. I would favor calling the fire department. Let them put out the smelly cross. We could burn sage around the area to lend a nice smell and then go home and bathe.

How long did the KKK last in Olympia and about how many members were there? They most like received some support from the local masonic lodge since Albert Pike, the founder of the KKK is the most heralded Scottish Rite freemason. Pike was a brilliant but evil man, who had an intense disdain for the "uninitiated" and spoke about how the master mason needed to learn how to, "harness the seething powers of Lucifer."

Actually, the work of Albert Pike in books like "Morals & Dogma" is considered to be basically his own take on things and has no standing in Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Plus, as for "Lucifer", that was also the title of the Theosophical Society's journal in the early part of the 20th century and no one accuses them of being evil...