Not even the reality of racial violence can overcome the razzle-dazzle of a presidential candidate

Sixty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic March on Washington, much of his dream is still just a dream.

- Clarence Page

I'd like to offer a more cheerful message, but that's hard today, even for a resilient self-described optimist like me, after this year's anniversary march on the Washington Mall was followed by a racially motivated rampage in Jacksonville, Florida.

Authorities say 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter fatally shot three people in a Dollar General store with an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun before turning the gun on himself.

He was white, and the three victims, later identified as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Anolt Joseph "AJ" Laguerre Jr., 19, and Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion, 29, were Black.

Speaking at a news conference Sunday, Sheriff T.K. Waters described the suspect as a white man who "hated Black people," and then he released a suicide note, a will, and a written rant of racism that the sheriff described as "quite frankly, the diary of a madman."

I don't want to make too much of this tragedy if that's possible, but one cannot help but note that the Saturday rampage was the latest high-profile racially motivated attack carried out by a white gunman in the United States.