Light On Dark Water

I Expect They Do

In Boston Bombings, Muslims Hold Their Breath.

It's not unreasonable to consider it a strong possibility that the bomber is a radical Muslim. It's not only unreasonable, or rather abysmally stupid, but just plain wicked to start howling for Muslim blood. Things like this make you realize what a nightmare a pure and instantaneous democracy would be: about like the gladiator watchers at the Colosseum. 

Conservatives are a bit on edge, too. If this bomber turns out to be a right-wing nut, all conservatives will be tarred in the same way Muslims would be. Even if it's someone who's simply crazy, with no clear political agenda, the attempt will be made, as with the deranged young man who shot Gabby Gifford. 

These are uneasy times in the USA.

Maclin Horton

30 responses to “I Expect They Do”

  1. Grumpy

    Yeah I’m hoping it’s not a gun nut or an Obama hater.

    Reply
  2. Marianne

    I, too, hope it’s not a gun nut or Obama hater. Especially now that Obama’s push for gun legislation has failed. He’s not averse to demagoging an issue, so he might pull out all the stops, even further dividing the country.

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  3. Mac

    Me too. It would certainly further divide the country, whether Obama himself puts any effort into it or not.
    I often hear Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City bomber) described as a “right-wing Christian” though he explicitly repudiated Christianity (right-wing, yeah). I think Eric Rudolph (abortion clinic bomber) does, too, but I’m not 100% certain about that one.

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  4. Daniel Nichols

    No, Rudolph was a Christian, though of an aberrant “Identity” type. I think it interesting that these are the only two sorts of suspects: whitey righties or Muslim extremists….

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  5. Mac

    The picture seems a bit murky, judging by Wikepdia. Here’s what I thought I remembered from Rudolph:
    ‘In a letter to his parents from prison, Rudolph has written, “Many good people continue to send me money and books. Most of them have, of course, an agenda; mostly born-again Christians looking to save my soul. I suppose the assumption is made that because I’m in here I must be a ‘sinner’ in need of salvation, and they would be glad to sell me a ticket to heaven, hawking this salvation like peanuts at a ballgame. I do appreciate their charity, but I could really do without the condescension. They have been so nice I would hate to break it to them that I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible.”‘
    But there’s also this: “I was born a Catholic, and with forgiveness I hope to die one.”
    And apparently at least some association with Christian Identity. So…murky.
    I guess the Unabomber is about it for left-wing bombers in the past couple of decades. Colin Ferguson would have been classified as left-wing if the same sort of standard were applied to him as would be applied to a right-winger.

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  6. Daniel Nichols

    I’m not sure the Unabomber can be called “leftist”; he was pretty critical of the Left, and really was more in the line of an anarcho-primitivist, though he was critical of that movement’s romanticism, which ignored the reality of violence in hunter-gatherer cultures.

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  7. Mac

    I’m sorry, Daniel, but that actually made me laugh. Rather than argue the point, I’ll express the hope that you’ll make such careful distinctions next time someone you would consider a “whitey-righty” does something bad.

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  8. Daniel Nichols

    Oh, I make all sorts of distinctions on the right; I don’t like people generalizing about diverse groups, whether they are Muslims, leftists, or anarcho-primitivists, who are very different from, say, anarcho-capitalists.

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  9. Mac

    What made me laugh was your careful excising of him from the left, which I think is, broadly speaking, where he clearly fits, if we’re going to use those terms at all.

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  10. Grumpy

    O Dan I thought you were making a joke!

    Reply
  11. Art Deco

    http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/updates-on-aftermath-of-boston-marathon-explosions-2/
    It appears David Sirota may be disappointed.

    Reply
  12. Mac

    My heart most definitely does not bleed for Mr. Sirota and those of like mind.
    Late yesterday sometime I saw a headline on Google News about a security guard at MIT being shot, and briefly thought “MIT…Boston…hmmm” and then, “nah, probably no connection.” This morning–all this. I hope nobody else gets killed.

    Reply
  13. Mac

    Well, I’m glad they caught the second guy and nobody else has been killed.
    This thing almost has more of the vibe of a school shooting, Columbine-type-thing than of jihadist terrorism. Though there does seem to be some evidence that the older one was at least somewhat inclined to hardline Islam. But the reports are pretty untrustworthy at this point.

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  14. Janet

    Well, what were you listening to? Because what I heard was pretty damning.
    I think it’s fairly interesting that the media is trying it’s best not to mention that he is Islamic at all, when you can imagine how many times we would have heard the word “Catholic” if he had been.
    AMDG

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  15. Mac

    Not listening to anything, just random bits of news on the Internet. Not particularly the mainstream outlets, either. Drudge, for instance, has not been at all reticent about the Islamic connection. The older brother seems to have been devout at least, but he could be that without being violent. The younger…who knows?

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  16. Mac

    And yes, if this had been a Catholic, or some sort of right-winger, the media would be totally focused on that fact.
    Did you see where some NPR commentator noted that April is an important month for conservatives for various reasons including the fact that Hitler’s birthday is in April?

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  17. Paul

    I had to goggle “David Sirota”. The first thing to turn up was a piece in the Wall Street Journal making a big thing about the bombers being Caucasian.

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  18. Paul

    Or even “google”.

    Reply
  19. Paul

    The BBC website and Dutch and Belgian newspapers have been my main sources of news lately, and I haven’t gone out of my way to look for news about the Boston bombing. Now, though, I’ve just wasted most of a morning reading and watching domestic American online news coverage and am pretty startled at some of the things I’ve come across. The sorts of tendentious (and inappropriately political) comment and speculation that seem to be required don’t really strike me as conducive to any kind of understanding or insight into what is actually happening.
    If the gravity of the story means the journalists are displaying more gravitas than otherwise, what you have to put up with by way of journalistic cluelessness must be pretty dire. One particularly mindless comment on NBC stays with me, but if there was a prize for bad journalism I think the line from Alice in Wonderland applies: “Everybody has won”.
    Of course, it is possible that they are shell-shocked and responding at random. That could also account for it.

    Reply
  20. Mac

    “The sorts of tendentious (and inappropriately political) comment and speculation that seem to be required don’t really strike me as conducive to any kind of understanding or insight into what is actually happening.”
    Indeed not. I’m often tempted to think that there is an active effort to obscure, though I think really it’s a combination of incompetence, indifference, and in some cases where left-liberal ideology is involved, a very deliberate suppresion of some facts and exaggeration of others. Does the name “Kermit Gosnell” mean anything to you?
    Yes, we do have to put up with a lot by way of journalistic cluelessness. Although a great many of us just don’t pay much attention to the major media anymore.
    If that particularly mindless comment was made by a TV person in the midst of trying to fill up air time, it might be somewhat forgivable. If it was in print, much less so. I can imagine saying some weird things if I should be placed in that position.
    I assumed this was the David Sirota piece that Art was referring to.

    Reply
  21. Louise

    I can never quite get over the fact that there are people in the world called “Kermit.”

    Reply
  22. Grumpy

    Two things made me laugh (and I wouldn’t go to confession about either)
    1) someone said a boat was a pretty feeble getaway vehicle
    2) the embassy of the Czech Republic is DC issued a statement that Chechyna is not the Czech Republic.
    I don’t blame the Czechs. ‘Chech’ sounds the same as ‘Czech’. Probably about 55% (?) of Americans don’t know the difference.

    Reply
  23. janet

    I’m rather frustrated about the Gosnell case because just as it, and the fact that it had been surpressed were beginning to get attention, these two huge stories broke, not to mention someone trying to poison the president and my senator, and gave the media a legitimate excuse for ignoring Gosnell–at least in their eyes.
    Of course the truth is that more people died in more horrendous ways in Gosnell’s “clinic.”
    AMDG

    Reply
  24. Mac

    I haven’t followed it that closely myself, or posted about it, because it’s just too appalling. It’s like reading about Dr. Mengele’s experiments. But that certainly wouldn’t have stopped the press from reporting on it if it had been something they could blame on the right (some are belatedly trying–it’s all the result of pro-lifers bothering the abortionists, etc.)

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  25. Mac

    I hadn’t heard the first of those, Grumpy, but I’m laughing now. A boat on a trailer in a back yard…
    I had heard the Czech/Checyn confusion, and I laughed, too. It had not occurred to me till someone on Facebook posted an explanation of the difference, apparently responding to people who didn’t.

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  26. Janet

    Yes, that’s why I hadn’t posted anything about it either. I was horrible enough navigating through my Fb newsfeed, even without going to the links.
    AMDG

    Reply
  27. Louise

    The Gosnell atrocities are too horrendous for my currently fairly fragile psyche to cope with. But they should have been widely reported.
    The media can be terribly wicked.

    Reply
  28. Grumpy

    I was too squeamish to click on any of the links I got on the case. I feel a bit hypocritical because I reposted one FB link I got without reading it. I felt morally obliged, in case there was one person out there who would read it. You can see why the press didn’t cover it, if that’s how a very average prolifer feels.

    Reply
  29. Mac

    When I say “too appalling,” I really meant something closer to what Louise said: I can’t bear to think much about it.
    “You can see why the press didn’t cover it, if that’s how a very average prolifer feels.”
    I don’t think that explains it. Try a thought experiment where somebody involved in a cause highly disfavored by the media does something as bad. Imagine, say, if Eric Rudolph, instead of setting a bomb at an abortion clinic, had kidnapped and tortured to death several clinic workers. Possibly many of the very many resulting news stories would have omitted the worst details, but you can bet it would have been a huge story.
    The James Byrd killing comes pretty close to being an actual example: there were some horrible details to it that I didn’t encounter at first, but there was certainly no lack of coverage. The main thing is that the Gosnell case doesn’t “fit the narrative.”

    Reply
  30. Mac

    Well, there is certainly no doubt whatsoever now that this was a jihadist deal.
    And now there’s this: Boston Bomb Suspect Eyed in murder of a friend: “their throats were slashed right out of an al Qaeda training video”.

    Reply

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