Trump and Muslims: The Problem of the Exceptional Case

Some years ago at a discussion at the liberal River Road Unitarian Church, in Bethesda, Maryland a speaker decried the fact that although Blacks constituted only 12% of the population they were over 25% of those in jail.
Someone from the audience observed: "Yes, that's because they commit 25% of the crime. Their presence in prison reflects their behavior in society."

Of course, that is arguable. Many factors likely contribute to the high incarceration rates for minority races, including a judicial system which is rigged against them, poor legal representation, but one of the factors is their own behavior. Politically incorrect as that may be, it is likely the truth.


You can argue about why minorities commit more crime: their feeling it's the only option they have to achieve wealth--so poverty, under education, impoverished family structure, drive decisions to do crime,  but in the end, Blacks likely do commit a disproportionate amount of the robberies, murders, and  other such crimes. "Black crimes" as Chris Rock says, and so they wind up in prison.

Now we move to the guys with the beards (or in the case of the Boston Marathon bombers, without beards) who are young Muslim men who decide to go crazy.

Just a couple of normal looking Boston guys.

 If we have 3 million Muslims in this country and half are male and many of those are young males, we are talking about likely 750,000 young Muslim males and out of that group we'll get maybe a thousand who are watching ISIS videos and smouldering with resentment because the bouncy blonde cheerleaders at their high schools and colleges have no interest in them or even taunt them, so they consider going out and blowing up a marathon race or running their truck into some bicyclists. (The latest Islamic ISIS maniac wannabe is only 5 feet tall; you can imagine where his resentment began.)

Calmly planting a bomb to kill those kids.

So Trump bellows, "close the borders,"   but of course, that horse is already out of the barn.  The Uzbekistan malcontents are already here. Closing the borders would not have screened out the Boston Marathon bombers or this latest whack job in New York City.


So you are down to "round 'em up." 

And where does that leave us, when we identify a suspect population?
It leads, logically to American concentration camps, like the ones that once house Japanese Americans?

Oh, that was sweet. All those innocent, loyal, industrious, Japanese immigrants who had no affinity for the Emperor but were caught in America as more or less hostages.

That's what we are talking about: You are a member of this group. White, Christian Americans look at you and question your loyalty.

Of course these same White, Christian Americans do not look at the White guy who drove his truck into a crowd in Charlottesville and see him as part of a suspect group. 
That White guy was the exception case.
We are not Ku Klux Klan just because we are White Christians.
The President suggested there was wrong on both sides in Charlottesville. (Wrong on both sides of that fender? )
But when it comes to Muslims, well they are all suspect.

The Problem of Young Bearded Muslims

"Men in Black" has a wonderful scene in which Will Smith is being tested in a rapid fire challenge, where he has to make an instantaneous decision who to shoot in a dark alley at 3 AM and three images are flashed before him:  A monster from outer space hanging from a street light, a monster holding a Kleenex and a sweet looking 8 year old White girl holding books on quantum physics. He shoots the girl. Every other candidate shoots the monsters.  When asked why he shot the girl, Will says, "She is the one who had no business being in that alley at 3 AM. The other two are just minding business."

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=men+in+black+shoot+the+girl+selection+scene&view=detail&mid=90E43AEBDD614711059590E43AEBDD6147110595&FORM=VIRE

He thought contrarian and he was correct.

The fact is, we all profile. Walking down a dark street at night, if we are White, we don't cross to the other side if we see a white haired lady in a prim suit walking toward us; we cross if we are approached by a big Black guy or maybe by a guy with a beard and one of those Muslim hats. Everyone's a little bit racist, especially when afraid. 

Bearded Muslim

Following the New York City murderous spree by a young, bearded Muslim from Uzbekistan, the Dotard thundered we have to keep these European problems (i.e. Muslims) out of the country and we can't afford to be "politically correct," which meant we cannot afford to deny profiling is a safety measure. We all profile, based on race, ethnicity, fear.

Bearded Jew

While Chris Coumo and the entire array of anti Trump media have howled that 99.9% of all American Muslims are horrified by this terrorist attack and would never do any such thing, that this man was admitted to the country 5 years ago and only became radicalized once he was here, so no vetting could have identified him as a problem because we was not a problem then, he misses the point.

Ran Down Dozens in Charlottesville, VA Beardless

If someone is going to go on line and watch videos from ISIS, it's not going to be your Black inner city kid or your white grandma. It's going to be the bearded kid from Uzbekistan--or maybe he won't have a beard, but he's Muslim, like the Uzbekistan Boston Bombers.

I do not have the solution to what you do about terrorism, home grown, imported or otherwise. But Trump has a point which liberals have got to answer. If we have a community from which terrorists, some terrorists at least, have been visibly grown, we have to come up with a response which reassures the potential targets of these maniacs while preserving the ideal of diversity.

Bearded Terrorists White Supremicist Style: Boys will be Boys

It is no wonder that Trump relished the name of the immigration program, "Diversity Immigration."  See what diversity gets us?

Bearded Traitor

Of course, as we have seen, diversity enriches us, as it does in Brooklyn and throughout our country. It is the real strength of America, we look different; we may speak different languages at home, but when we go to work or get on the subway, we live and function harmoniously together.  We are the Starship Enterprise and this enterprise should go forth boldly where others fear to tread.

Bearded Liberator

But first we have to think of an answer to Trump's expostulations of fear and loathing.

Bearded Hero

The Addictive Joy of Shallow Pleasures: Twitter

My son warned me not to get into Twitter. Too addictive. 
Oh, I thought, that's a bit overwrought.

But then I saw its effects firsthand, in the person of my good friend, Obadiah Youngblood, who has recently started up a Twitter account and he now staggers around, face drained, pallid, unable to attend to the necessities of life. 

It's much like that Mark Twain story, "A Literary Nightmare: Punch Brothers Punch," in which the narrator learns a little ditty and cannot get it out of his mind until he passes it on to another person, who is then ensnared.

So it is with Twitter. Once you get the bug, apparently,  it's hard to get rid of it, to get off the site. The Tweet has consumed his days, and wrecked his nights. 

Poor Obadiah is a wreck. He's stopped painting, stopped eating, just sits in front of his computer all day firing off 140 characters at his favorite people. He has become obadiah youngblood@obadiahyoungbl and he is contained in that universe, unable to break free, trapped in a tar pit. 

He follows Donald Trump, who provides him with a steady stream of things to react to.
He likes David Simon, the creator of "The Wire" but has been disappointed at how Simon rants and sputters and curses Fox News and Trump in a surprisingly profane and unimaginative way.

Obadiah's work, when he was still able to work

Mostly, he responds to Trump, having no illusion that Trump will actually read his Tweets, but he is thrilled when others, people he has no connection with in any other way, press a button and a little red heart appears to indicate they liked his Tweet. 

He has found a community of Trump belittlers. 
He could have found the same thing on Redditt Progressive, a throng of ranting folks expostulating about the Constitutional crisis, expressing fear for the republic, decrying narcissism, nativism, racism, misogyny, boorishness, bloviating, all sorts of things contained in Trump. 

There is something salutary, however, about being able to respond to the verbal incontinence of the Chief Executive, more or less in real time, with others listening. What other President has allowed for so much more or less direct contact with the White House? 
Well, not really direct contact. It's a one way conversation, really. You feel you are replying, but he does not hear you. It's like talking to a TV screen.

It does consume the energy of the opposition, and it gives people a sense they are having an effect, a delusion, of course.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Tweet, but somehow, they seem impersonal, more rote.  Trump has the immediacy of the village fool. You can't take him seriously, but you know he believes whatever it is he is trying to say. His eruptions, "Fake News" and "Lying Democrats" are so empty of content, you have to believe they are at least, heart felt. 

Obadiah seems to think if he can just craft the absolute perfect response to a Trump Tweet, it will so puncture and deflate him, he will simply pop and collapse and vanish  from the scene, like the Judge in Roger Rabbit, who is consumed by the Dip. 

But, of course, you cannot deflate or shame or defeat the Pink Puffer. You are talking to someone who cannot hear you.

Taking a Knee vs Sieg Heil!

When Colin Kapernick took a knee at the playing of the national anthem at an NFL football game, he probably did not know that he was entering a Twilight Zone of principled resistance which dated back to early anti Nazi protests in American past.

2016

There were two Supreme Court cases which addressed the symbolic actions of citizens to protest a prevailing rule seeking to enforce patriotism on the citizens of this nation.

1968

The first case was the 1943 case West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, in which children were expelled from public school for refusing to pledge allegiance to the flag. These children were Jevovah's witnesses and they had been taught such a pledge spoken, or rather recited, before a flag was tantamount to violating the Biblical proscription from God against worshiping graven images.  Their father supported them right up to the Supreme Court.  

Justice Robert Jackson, who later served as the American lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials wrote a stinging opinion, reversing early decisions and rejecting Felix Frankfuter's dissent. Nobody in this country should be made to speak. The first amendment ensures not just the freedom to speak; it preserves the freedom to remain silent. 
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us."
Justice Robert Jackson
Remember 1943: America was in the midst of fighting a war against Nazi Germany, and for many across the land the practice which had been widely introduced of instructing school children to recite the pledge--and in those days, they not only recited the pledge but they stretched out one arm toward the flag--looked way too much like the Nazi practice of Seig Heil!  

American children: Seig Heil!

There followed a case in 1971, when the state of New Hampshire, in the midst of the way in Vietnam, decided to change it's state license plates to replace "Scenic New Hampshire" with "Live Free or Die," which prompted another Jehovah's witness to tape over the "Or Die" objecting this violated his religion. Others taped over the whole sentence, saying it was a subterfuge to force New Hampshire citizens to support the War, which supposedly, and arguably was being fought for "freedom."

Group think, the forced conformity of behavior and angry reactions to symbolic protests against symbolic conformity have been with us throughout our lifetimes. 
The American Olympic champions who raised their fist as Black Americans and bowed their heads as the American flag was raised and the anthem played were thrown out of the 1968 Olympics because in the face of the ultimate in jingoistic expression of "patriotism" their mute gesture spoke of their dismay at the way Blacks were treated in America, where they were still being lynched, denied mortgage loans by federal government agencies, beaten by police and drafted to fight in Vietnam, when, as Mohammad Ali said, they had no argument with them Viet Cong. We are all oppressed by the white man.

So now it's Trump and the white supremacists and the super patriots who think patriotism is a gesture, but President Heel Spurs, the commander in chief, does not think patriotism includes the willingness to resist injustice.

Oh, Donnie We Hardly Knew Ye

Buried in her article on Mike Pence are snippets about Donald Trump which Mad Dog, for one, found intriguing.

Who knew, for instance, that when Pence interviewed for the VP job, Trump asked him about the outgoing governor of Indiana whose wife had an affair with another man but then reconciled and the governor took her back. Trump told Pence he could not understand how a man could ever sleep with a woman who he knew had slept with another man when they were married. 

Of all the things you might think to ask your next VP about, Trump brought up something that had to do with sex, possessiveness, the concept of the stained woman?

Trump reportedly liked Pence because to Trump, Pence had the good looks, "right out of central casting" to look like a President.

Again, what is on the surface is what Trump talks about.

And then, surprisingly, at least to Mad Dog, Trump needles Pence about Pence's antipathy toward homosexuals. Trump, apparently, has nothing much against homosexuals. Somehow, doesn't fit the profile, the Klu Klux Klan, mega macho, Incredible Hulk, super male thing.

The other thing Trump derides Pence about, behind his back is his religiosity. He asks people who visit Pence whether Mike asked them to pray with him.

You just know, "Praying Pence" is going to slip out of Trump's mouth some day.

But, as W.C. Fields once said, you can't speak too poorly of a man if he hates dogs and children, and in Trump's case, how bad could the guy be, if he derides religion and homophobia?

And, oh by the way, has it ever occurred to you how much the Donald resembles the pink puffer fish? Really, he is pink and whenever he wants to impress, he puffs himself up, and at core, he is very toxic and not good eating.

Really, why is he not "President Pink Puffer?"

Cut Taxes! Simplify!

George W. Bush famously responded to a question during a Presidential debate which asked about his plan to cut taxes: "Your plan would cut taxes most for the rich."
"Yes," he shrugged. "You cut taxes for the people who pay taxes."

What he was saying, of course, was people at the lower brackets paid relatively small numbers, so the relief they would get from cutting income taxes was small.


Of course, low wage earners pay other taxes, not income taxes, which hurt their pocketbooks more--gas taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, real estate taxes--but those taxes are not nearly as obnoxious for some reason, as the income tax.


Rich people avoid income taxes with a variety of ploys, and as Warren Buffet said, he pays a lesser rate than his secretary--got to be something wrong with that.

But the fact remains, if the upper 10% own 83% of the nation's wealth, they or their properties are the only source of revenue and they've got to pay taxes.
In taxation as in robbing banks, you have to go where the money is. And one look at that pie graph (above) shows where the money is.

Build The Wall!

Of course, I assumed, Mr. Trump was smart enough to know that building an actual wall was absurd, that once elected, he would say he was not to be taken literally, but he was to be taken seriously; he was serious about using technology like drones and cameras to watch the Mexican border.


But, no, apparently, he wants to see something like the Berlin wall, with watchtowers and Stassi border guards with machine guns.

Say what?