...apparently doesn't care for people commenting unsympathetically on his (and Lydia McGrew's) fascist program to eliminate the Muslims. This fine comment by Dan Kaufman (Colorado) on the second post didn't last long:
awesome! now that's the kind of scathing satire of right-lunatics we need! soooo good and without even a hint of irony, it is really scary. keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars, friends!
On the other hand, this observation from one Jeff H. survived:
Even if all the sickening hate-mongering in the previous post were entirely correct, these policies would make Americans and America less, not more, safe. Like many Americans, especially on the political right, you show a breathtaking lack of awareness of how your actions look from the outside or just *why* Americans have a reputation as arrogant jackasses even among close allies like England and Canada, and are downright hated by many others (including, but by no means limited to, Muslim countries). If you want to GUARANTEE more 9/11s, there would be no better way to do that than to enact these policies.
Put to one side the fact that Culbreath and McGrew are obviously disgusting moral miscreants, the question is what explains their fall through the looking glass? Here is one speculative explanation: it is quite obvious that religious extremists of all sects can be prone to illiberal and dangerous behavior (as RAWA correctly observed about 9/11, "fundamentalism is the mortal enemy of all humanity"). But Culbreath and McGrew are quite obviously themselves religious extremists with an illiberal and dangerous vision of what the world should be like. Is branding all of Islam the threat a way of avoiding self-knowledge, i.e., a defense mechanism against the recognition that they themselves are as abohrrent as the fantastical vision of Islam they defame? (McGrew has even argued, previously, that since conservative Christians, especially those who homeschool, don't want society to interfere with the religious indoctrination of their children, these same conservative Christians should therefore oppose Muslim immigration, since (it is alleged) some Muslim parents mistreat their children in ways that would prompt societal interference in the family.) As I admit, this is speculation, but some causal explanation is required to make sense of these transparently irrational displays of bigotry and hatred.
Recent Comments