the faces of “home grown” terror
As I have written about elsewhere in these pages America is a country that is easily terrorized. Shortly after the events of 9/11 when our first response was to first run around waiting flags and going shopping, and then starting wars in two Middle East countries, I asked “Are We Terrorized Yet?” And then, a couple of years ago in the midst of the exposure that, in our “surveillance state,” we have begun terrorizing ourselves, I answered that we surely are.
Which brings me to the current state of our being terrified. In the recent days following the horrific contacts on Parisians, we have been hearing from Representatives of that cute your species Republkanus Americanus, especially that sub-species that are seeking nomination to the American presidency, That we must shut our borders to any refugees from Syria or elsewhere in the middle east, lest we end up admitting those who would commit acts of terrorism upon us. But it is not just all of the Republican candidates for the presidency, it is also a large number of Republican state governors and many congressmen who have signed on to this nonsense. It appears that none of the perpetrators in Paris were from Syria, and certainly, in the United States, neither were McVeigh and the Unabomber. And, for that matter all of the 911 attackers were Saudis or Egyptians.
But those are facts, a form of knowledge to which the Republicans are impervious. They do not get to make such ridiculous, un-American immigration policies that admit “only Christian Syrians,” as some Republican politicians have recommended. Furthermore, it is not the states that make immigration policy but the federal government and the president as rightly the states have no say in where those refugees that are admitted can move and settle.
What seems clear here is that the Republicans are doubly terrorized: not only buy those terrorists who murdered Parisians, Yazidis, Beiruti’s and others, but by the American Tea Party, a xenophobic political terrorist organization that strikes even greater terror in their un-humanitarian hearts. They are far more a terror to American values and our constitution than any Syrian refugee could ever be.