Sunday, September 12, 2010

Credit Where Credit's Due


I wouldn't go that far but...

Mark Potok of The Southern Poverty Law Center has been talking about a recent SPLC report on how anti-Muslim hate crimes have spiked as Islamophobic hysteria metastasizes into the mainstream. Potok places the blame not only on the fringe wackjobs themselves but fairly and squarely on a Republican establishment that obsequiously refuses to condemn bigotry because they're too busy pandering to the hate vote.

It's pretty disgusting watching c*nts like Boehner, for example, downplay Terry Jones' Koran burning by equating it with the Park 51 Islamic Center 'controversy'. And it's pitiful to see Newt Gingrich cashing in on hate by releasing DVDs and scoring lucrative speaking gigs warning us about the 'evils of Islam'. They are a disgrace to America and the concept of civilization itself.

But one Republican who does deserve praise, albeit retroactively, is George W. Bush. As the SPLC points out, Bush worked hard to stop us turning against Muslim Americans and Islam in general after 9-11. Whether it was all motivated by his ulterior motive of keeping the oil-rich sultans he had business dealings with happy, who can say. But the truth stands: current Republican attitudes to Islam would not have been tolerated under Bush. As Potok says:

One of the more interesting things [the report] shows is not only this massive spike in 2001, a 1,700 percent spike up, but then subsequently, a very rapid decline by about two-thirds the following year, just three and a half months later. I would attribute that very largely to the speeches that were given by President Bush at the time which called very proactively for people not to regard our enemies as Muslims or as Arabs, but as a very specific terrorist network al Qaida.


So there you have it. I never thought I'd live to see the day I almost miss Bush. It may be relative... kinda like missing the pain in your balls when someone stops kicking you there and starts punching you in the face instead... but it's there all the same.

Share/Save/Bookmark

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.