James Kirkpatrick:
As we saw when Swedish leftists angrily denounced a gay pride parade because it might “provoke Muslims,” so-called progressives don’t really believe in their own causes. It’s just something that is used to attack people they don’t like, usually White Christians. Politics is about “who,” not what.
The #IStandWithAhmed fable wasn’t about overzealous school officials or law enforcement. If that had been the focus of the story, people would have brought up all the white kids who keep getting suspended for doing things like making a gun out of a pop tart or wearing an American flag shirt.
Instead, it was about engaging in a Two Minutes Hate against prejudiced Texas rednecks who oppressed a genius Muslim who just wanted to be a scientist and wear a NASA T shirt. (After all, NASA’s highest priority, in the words of the Administrator appointed by Obama, is to “reach out to the Muslim world.”)
Of course, as with every single one of these hashtagcauses célèbre, there was Narrative Collapse. In this case, it came as soon as the father’s background as an ethnic activist was revealed and people got a look at Ahmed’s “clock,” which was actually a model of a briefcase bomb. It turns out he didn’t even build the thing.
And two leftists noted for their atheist activism made the mistake of Noticing.
First, Bill Maher, who’s already clearly stated that “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas,” asserted on Friday’s “Real Time” that “This kid deserves an apology, no doubt about it. They were wrong. But could we have a little perspective about this? Did the teacher really do the wrong thing?” He drew applause when he said that the clock “looks exactly like a f__king bomb” and demanded that “Someone look me in the eye right here and tell me, over the last thirty years, if so many young muslim men…haven’t blown a lot of s__t up around the world…. It’s been one culture that’s been blowing s__t up over and over again.”
[Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins sink to new lows: Trolling a child in the name of Islamophobia is not “passion for truth,” by Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon, September 21, 2015]
Williams sniffs, “Just a reminder: cultures don’t blow s__it up; extremist members of cultures do.”
Well, it’s good to know diverse and vibrant Third World cultures get a pass. But Williams (as you’ve guessed), has a much less forgiving interpretation of Western culture. In response to Taylor Swift’s video set in Africa, she sternly intoned, “You don’t have to be overtly hostile to people outside of your own experience to participate in the bias against them” [Taylor Swift’s fantasy Africa: Glorifying colonialism in art is a political act, like it or not, Salon, September 3, 2015]
And while someone bringing a mockup of a briefcase bomb to school should be celebrated (if he’s Muslim), Williams believes those who defied a school ban on Confederate flags are associating themselves with murderers and called for the school to re-educate them.
High school students who love their Confederate flags, who feel “offended” about some imagined insult to their “heritage,” may I make a suggestion? It’s called Google. Maybe you could read about Dylann Roof, the confessed killer of nine African American church-goers in Charleston earlier this year, and his fondness for the flag.
It’s not sufficient for their schools to ban the Confederate flag, or to suspend those students who still flaunt it. They have to teach them why.
[“It’s not racist, I can tell you that right now”: Confederate flag’s meaning a total mystery to teens fighting to fly it, Salon, September 18, 2015]
Got that? Flag = harmful and threatening. Briefcase bomb mockup = “cool clock.”
The world is upside down. As the curse of Babel reaches maturity there will be a complete collapse of understandable communication leading to anarchy and the downfall of Babylon. Sodom and Gomorrah had it easy compared to what is about to be unleashed. Folks like Greg and John will get to see it first hand prior to being engulfed it it’s madness.