Mullah Joe Rides Again

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for March 11, 2011

Are you now or have you ever been . . . .?

The ghost of Joe McCarthy is now haunting the halls of Congress again. This time, under the guise of a “hearing” to determine the extent of just how dangerous and disloyal American Muslims are and just how terrorist-filled their mosques are. The hearing is being run by Congressman Peter King, a Republican, at a time when the GOP has degenerated into a party that even conservative columnist George Will has accused of generating vibes of weirdness, so holding hearings on “Muslims” in a poisonously radicalized country like America while claiming you’re just after the facts, Ma’m, is ingenuous at best, malicious at worse. Dealing with the issue of targeting and recruiting young, disaffected, radicalized American Muslims to serve as foot soldiers for Al Qaeda is a job now being dealt with very well by local law enforcement in cooperation with the Muslim community. So what we’ll have with King’s committee, (which has the full blessing of Speaker of the House, John Boehner, so it isn’t like King is some kind of weird-vibed wacko running off the rez,) will be mostly a piece of Republican Political Theatre, a movie-trailer intended to feed the base and keep them riled up and ready for the 2012 election.

And I have no doubt that like the ginned up fake Ground Zero Mosque controversy, we’ll see a whole new round of hoiked-up up Islamaphobia. Which is all red meat for the GOP base --dog-whistle language of the uninformed, the fear-filled, the “birthers,” the AstroTurfed dupes who live in terror that Sharia Law is coming to their town and some Mexican-looking guy in a turban will go all hijab on their asses.

And if this little piece of political theatre results in generating more fear resulting in further scaring and alienating Muslim Americans, well, no matter. The 2012 election takes precedence over any long-term harm done to our social fabric. Social fabric, even our basic core beliefs are of no use in these Joe McCarthy hard times. Instead, the winning strategy for 2012 to keep fear alive, divide neighbor from neighbor, the have-less from the have-nothings, and make clear the battle lines are between Us (white, Christian) and Them (non-white, non-Christian, those not-really Americans du jours who have taken our Country away from us). Dog whistle music.

Mr. King claims that his hearings will be very informative and will educate the public. If that’s really his intent, then what Mr. King should be doing is broadcasting a National Education Workshop, a series of informative lectures about the history and basic belief systems of the world’s great religions. As it is, Americans are woefully uninformed on even the most basic principles of their own religion and disgracefully ignorant about other faiths. This lack of accurate information is what allows otherwise good people to behave so badly when the weirdness-vibe fear-mongers come to town.

Mr. King also claims that his hearings will focus on “terrorism.” If that’s really the topic, then shall we expect Mr. King to move onto hearings focused on Mexican Americans since narco-terrorists are recruiting young, disaffected Mexican American youth to go to work for their lucrative drug cartels? True, the narco-terrorists represent a lucrative business opportunity for American gun manufacturers, but they also are busy terrorizing American tourists, so surely Mr. King would want to next target the Mexican community and get some informative, educational answers?

No? Well, surely Mr. King will next target “Catholics” to find out why they are recruiting and sheltering dangerous pedophile priests in their midst? In Philadelphia alone, 21 priests were just suspended following a grand jury investigation. Surely, the Catholic community is a hot bed of radical clerics terrorizing children?

No, again?

Then how about targeting the Irish? After all, King was good buddies with the IRA, a known terrorist organization. Surely he needs to investigate the threat from his old Irish terrorist pals?

But, no. Irish terrorists, Mexican mafia, Catholics, even home-grown Christian Militia groups don’t have the cache that Mr. King can get from “Muslims.” And so we enter our burning time -- A feverish country filled with fearful people who have forgotten what it means to be an American, a populace with bulls-eyes on their backs, their homes stolen, their jobs off-shored, good men and women who are turning ugly in their fear and ignorance as they begin to understand that they have no future, except to be targeted and fleeced by demagogues and scoundrels with books to sell and TV shows to flog.

Demagogues and scoundrels. Now there’s a terrorist group that really does need an investigative hearing.

Bonfire of the Stupidities

The pastor of a very, very small fundamentalist evangelical Christian church in Florida is going to hold a Koran burning Saturday.  He's also hinting that he might not, but he's praying on it and Oh, isn't it such fun to keep the media on the hook as long as possible, oooooh, yes-no, well, maybe, we'll see, call me back in an hour and can you get me on ABC World News Tonight?  Pastor Terry Jones claims his actions will send a message to Muslim Americans that America won't stand for Sharia Law being imposed here, even though Sharia Law is NOT being imposed here and there is no danger that it will ever be imposed here.  But no need to muddle the good pastor with facts. 

And Pastor Jones also claims he wants to "send a very clear warning that they [muslims throughout the world] are not to retaliate in any form," thereby displaying the kind of magical thinking that demand A on my part will stop Reaction B out there in the world, a delusion that likely caused him to become a pastor of a very, very small fundamentalist evangelical Christian church in the first place. 

General Petraeus has weighed in, stating that the good pastor's pathetic auto-de-fe burn-in will endanger American troops.  But, reveling in his 15 minutes of fame, and operating on the Wife-Batterers' Moral Code -- if I hit you and you hit me back, it's all YOUR fault --it's clear the good pastor doesn't care about consequences, especiallyif they happen to somebody else.  And while Secretary of State HIllary Clinton has spoken out against this profoundly ignorant event, so far, no word from anybody important on the Republican right.  And, oddly, zero tweets from Mamma Grizzly Sarah, who likes to inform the world that she's a mother of a soldier.  Whose buddies will be put in danger by this action.

Meanwhile, City officials in Gainesville have declared that the Dove World Outreach Center is "an embarassment to our community" and has refused to issue Pastor Jones a burn permit.  Unknown is whether city officials will have a fire truck standing by to do what fire trucks do when matches are lit without the proper permits. If they are quick first responders, we may end up with a Rain Day rather than a Burn Day, followed by a You're Under Arrest Day.

And it remains to be seen if a whole lot of un-stupid people of all faiths will also show up at the book burning/media circus to protest this event. Let's see if we can end up with some world-class photographs of a very wet fool in front of a soggy pile of books surrounded by thousands of people of all faiths standing arm in arm holding crosses, Bibles, Korans, Books of Mormon, volumes of Torah, and all carrying signs bearing photos of  Pastor Jones wearing a Hitler moustache and a dunce cap.

On the other hand, I think maybe the pastor's thinking is way too small.  What we really need is a national auto-de-fe, a HUGE central bonfire, maybe located in Kansas, upon which we will throw ALL our holy books that use God to justify what are really just our own pathetic human fears and hatreds. Burn 'em all!  And then each and every one of us will forswear to never believe any fundamentalist religion that creates The Dreaded Damned/Infidel/"Other" and then uses God as an excuse to indulge in our own dangerous monkey-brained ugliness.

Maybe then we can create the kind of societies we actually want to live in.

Say Amen.  Amen. 
Now, gimme that match.