Uh-huh, so a couple of things in today's Inbox got me to
thinking. One was about the massive scandal about John Kerry letting it slip
that he believes the Charlie Hebdo murders were justified!
Or rather it was the scandal created by the vast right-wing
media death star constellation out of a verbal miscue by Kerry when he said that
the Hebdo attack unlike the latest attack had a "legitimacy" -- which he
immediately corrected and said he meant a "rationale", i.e., that the target was
chosen based on a perceived offense to Muslims as opposed to the randomness of
Friday night's mass murders. Too late, he said legitimacy -- and anyway it's
just as bad if he meant to say rationale, cuz there ain't no rationale
for the irrational -- so let's make believe that we think he
meant to say murderous terrorism makes sense and go for the jugular! No shame,
and apparently not a shred of self-respect either, on the part of RW propaganda
whores who are being well compensated for dropping their last crumpled-up shred
of intellectual honesty or journalistic integrity into the cigarette disposal
can outside the front door.
The other Inbox thing was Sen. Al Franken's request. It
was that I put myself in the Thanksgiving dinner seat of the
irrepressible Uncle Murray, the iconic old fart who has to nudger everyone
around the table about political topics. So Franken asks, what are the topics I
want to nudger the relatives (and the Senate) about this year?
Well, as everyone around my dinner table knows, I hate to have
to share my opinions on stuff. But I overcame my natural disinclination to
express myself in writing and responded thus:
The timing of this survey is going to make it a skewed
sample, since security will be utmost on every sane person's agenda less than a
week after Paris, Sinai and Beirut have shown us a new threat on the doorstep.
I am sane in that way myself!
At this very specific moment I am most deeply troubled by
the polarization in America, so deep that millions of citizens believe the
right-wing media's attack claiming that John Kerry's verbal confusion means that
he really does support terrorist murderers.
I am troubled by it because it has one possible and one
definite outcome, and both are scary to the bone. It's definite that a divided
country is more vulnerable and less effective in dealing with an external
enemy. It's possible that the fear and loathing could lead to the election of a
warmongering neocon chickenhawk who will precipitate not a piecemeal but an
all-out WWIII, i.e., nuclear.
After that, my many other worries include global warming,
voting rights, women's reproductive rights, Repubican (I'll use Republican when
they resume using Democratic as an adjective rather than Democrat) attacks on
Medicare and Social Security, racial profiling by police and the criminal
justice system, the highest incarceration rates in the world along with a
corrections and re-entry system that doesn't correct or build people toward
productive post-release lives, crumbling infrastructure that requires a massive
investment that would also create good jobs, stronger enforcement and oversight
of Wall Street as well as polluters, and stronger support for and enforcement
regarding workers' rights as well as a significantly increased federal minimum
wage. If you want more, lemme know!
P.S. The Daniel Pipes and Hassan Abdi articles I wrote about
yesterday both moved me, albeit it in opposite directions. So FYI I wrote a
letter to the Inquirer about them. Don't know if they'll print it, so I'll
share it with y'all.
To the editor:
What a stark contrast of perspectives you've offered between
Tuesday's and Wednesday's opinion pages!
Daniel Pipes' Tuesday op-ed "In denial on Islamist terror"
argues that we should stop denying that terrorist
organziations like al Qaeda and IS are Islamic. In a
verbal cloud of vitriol and loose opinions, Pipes conflates "rape gangs, exotic
diseases and bloodbaths" with Islam and Muslims. He explicitly argues in favor
of a strong national turn to the right, as if a reaction borne of visceral anger
and hate would help to solve the complex problem of IS.
By the end of Pipes' essay, I was struck by its failure to
propose even one single benefit that would arise from adopting an official
policy of referring to these terrorist groups as Islamic.
Meanwhile, Imam Hassan Abdi's Wednesday letter economically
conveys an amazing amount of information and a palpable cry of the heart to move
us toward a constructive understanding. Hassan shows clearly why IS is
not Islamic, and he pleads with us not to collude with IS's recruitment efforts
by tarring Muslims with the brush of condemnation and otherness that is
rightly raised against IS. This is not the West versus Islam -- that is why
President Obama is insisting that Muslim nations take the point in the effort to
defeat IS.
Hassan's argument is for building unity to overcome
divisiveness; I profoundly agree with his view.
The right-wing call for casting Islam as our enemy is cut from
the exact same tattered bolt of neoconservative ideology as created the "Axis of
Evil" and the Iraq War. Let's not fall for it again, for
God's sake.
Howard Dansky
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