December 08, 2005
Culture
NYTimes article
Apparently Middle Easterners are the new Communists.
I'm not going to claim to know whether al-Arian is guilty or innocent, but that's not what concerns me at this point. Despite the fact that this is the Washington Post, the blatant bias of this article is evident by the headline: "Not Guilty Verdicts in Florida Terror Trial Are Setback for U.S."
The author, Eric Lichtblau, has obviously never heard of the right to a fair trial. I’m assuming that his first line of business would have been to throw them into a shoddy prison and have them routinely beaten until they finally confessed to being terrorists, whether they actually were in the first place or were a victim of circumstance, tired of getting the daylights beaten out of them and willing to say anything just to stop it all.
And this sort of mindset is what worries me. A lot of Americans have instinctively become more hostile to anyone who looks remotely Middle Eastern in descent. We have the likes of Larry the Cable Guy making a living off of a blatantly racist “comedy” schtick that refers to Arabs as “ragheads” and takes numerous potshots at all aspects of their culture, and his fans seem to absolutely love it.
Some people would argue that it’s merely comedy, which of course requires the performer to actually be funny in order for it to be classified as such. Maybe if the comedian was a Klansman and was making similar off-color comments about blacks, would it still be funny? It might be funny to some people, but to the spectator it’s nothing more than asinine remarks that pander to the lowest common denominator of humor, fired at a culture that is being increasingly used as a scapegoat by lesser-minded folk who are more than happy to pigeonhole all people of Arabic descent as suicide bombers and Islamic extremists.
The schism between those who view Middle Easterners as a misunderstood lot misrepresented by the reproachful actions of a few and those who are more than willing to skewer the entire race based on the reproachful actions of a few has never been more evident than now, especially in the South and Midwest, places that are sparsely populated by Middle Easterners, and for good reason: they have everything to fear from the populace that has no qualms about being depicted as anti-intellectual, blue-collar, tactless, cocksure people who shoot first and ask questions later. Additionally, the people with that sort of mindset are the ones who are wreaking the most havoc in our culture while simultaneously sponging the blame off of themselves and onto other cultures, religions, and even ideologies.
The ultra-conservative end can’t stand seeing or hearing about someone fucking as their children get pregnant at an early age and willfully indulge in sexual deviancy and promiscuity under their parents’ iron veil of chastity. They can’t stand obscenities, yet it’s perfectly fine to curse amongst friends and watch unbridled amounts of violence on television. Morals are the order of the day, but it’s okay to torture foreign prisoners as long as people don’t find out about it. All religions aside from Christianity are taboo, and there’s absolutely no way a Christian will abide having their territory encroached upon by someone of another faith. Gays can’t wed because it violates the sanctity of marriage, but it’s okay to beat your wife and get divorces every three years or less. And thinly-veiled racism is prevalent despite the Civil Rights movement, despite all the speeches that Martin Luther King Jr. made, despite the outing of Joe McCarthy as nothing more than a paranoid alcoholic who sought nothing more than recognition and the advancement of his own agenda, and despite the fact that we, as a culture, should be the ones to set an example and take the true moral high ground as dictated by common sense and a true concept of right and wrong, not whatever version of justice suits our agenda.
Following that example, it’s fairly obvious that the U.S. shouldn’t adopt such a xenophobic mentality. Doing so only makes us look like a lesser culture, like a gang of cavemen pounding around in the same social circles, afraid to broaden our horizons or understand another culture because of the actions of a small, misguided percentage. The U.S. isn’t judged by the criminals it imprisons in the contiguous states and thereabouts, but it is judged by the treatment of people they imprison in foreign countries, because we’re playing on their field. However, the current administration and its followers seem to treat the rest of the world as second-tier, a lesser place. And with that treatment comes the condescending attitude towards foreigners and the acceptance of a rabid drive to deem someone a terrorist without a proper investigation. It’s the McCarthy witch-hunts all over again.
Posted by Jake at December 8, 2005 07:19 AM
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