Josh Marshall has a rather tortured email from a reader about all the different reasons people might oppose the Islamic Coat Center and how they’re all different in terms of moral clarity or something.
You see, rock-ribbed conservatives oppose it because of their justifiable but perhaps unfortunate fear of Islam (they’re not crazy mind you, “Clash Of Civilizations” is high-brow stuff). More thoughtful observers say it shouldn’t be built because it hurts many people’s feelings. The truly serious say that the genius of this right-center NASCAR nation is that it brow-beats alien immigrant groups into becoming Real Murkins and that Koran-buring and harassment of Puerto Rican construction workers is just part of this perfectly healthy brow-beating.
I can’t help but be reminded of opposition to climate change legislation. True conservative partisans claim that global warming is not happening, that the heavy snow on the eastern seaboard this winter proves that global temperatures cannot be rising. More reflective centrists say that global warming is happening but it’s not because of human activity, it’s because of sunspots or wandering poles. Conservative intellectuals say that it is happening, but we should wait until good old-fashioned American ingenuity finds a way to solve it without taxes or caps. Principled moderates say the government has to do something, but that anything Democrats propose is insufficiently Burkean.
There is literally no issue I know of where things don’t work out this way.
Yutsano
I’m at the point of saying just build the fucker and see if the wingnuts have the balls to do anything about it once it’s done. It’s just another bright shiny object they can use to make themselves feel superior. Give them what they really want, and it doesn’t stop there. They will do anything they can to roll back civil rights progress in this country any way they can. But they need a solid win in the column first.
Cacti
Why beat around the bush about it.
The majority of wingers oppose Mosques in general because they know Jesus has a bigger c*ck than Allah.
It’s the old “my daddy can beat up your daddy” but with invisible sky dudes acting as proxies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: I disagree. They oppose mosques because brown people use them.
JohnR
I’m impressed! That may be the most erudite yet succinct explanation of the range of knee-jerk anti-liberalism that I’ve ever seen.
DougJ
@JohnR:
Thank you. (I hope you weren’t being sarcastic.)
Restrung
Joe Lieberman sucks.
Ed Marshall
Man, I don’t know, but that picture of that old bitch at the protest with the “waterboarding instructor” t-shirt and the poster about “sharia pelosi” and “wire her jaw” just pushes my buttons. I think if I ran into such a person I’d wind up with an assault charge on an elderly woman I’d have to try and explain for the rest of my life.
Ed Marshall
I probably would physically attack a man wearing that t-shirt and be happy to explain to anyone why I did it.
Restrung
I don’t know about erudite, but I’ll second on succinct. And the comparison is a new twist to me. Kinda opened a rich new vein…
KG
What honestly amazes me is that two groups of people can see the same thing and come to such drastically different conclusions. I’ve got a friend from law school that is still deep into the movement. I was looking at her facebook page the other day and it’s stuff like “while the Quran burner is an idiot we should stand up for his first amendment right” and “the GZ mosque is an affront to the American way of life .” I just don’t get it, at all
Adam Lang
We’ll blame furriners for just about anything.
MattR
So basically the writer of the letter TPM posted says that he is not offended by the mosque and he believes that most people who oppose the mosque are not offended by it, but are opposed because there are others who are offended. Unfortunately, he completely skims over any discussion about whether or not it is reasonable for those others to take offense or even who those “others” are. That seems to be a key part that is missing from every discussion of the Cordoba House. People like the writer of that letter are perfectly willing to offend Muslims in order to avoid offending some other nebulous group without offering any justification for why one is OK but the other is not.
Guster
The Overton corridor.
jeffreyw
Pork roast is coming along nicely.
Larry Signor
This is so stupid. We are talking about Americans who want to build a house of religious worship on property they own. They don’t have the same rights as the Burlington Coat Factory? Probably best not to discuss peoples or animals’ rights in the same comment as BCF. Fuck the assholes. Build your mosque and my best wishes to you folks.
Walker
The term for this phenomenom is apologists.
El Cid
Look, maybe a lot of libruls don’t understand why me and my buddies felt like we had to beat the shit out of that guy who looked Mexican with baseball bats in front of his kid, but we represent true working American stress under economic strain and we happen to be incredibly fearful that people who looked like that guy might be destroying our culture over time. These things are part of America, and you may not like them, but it’s who we are.
Restrung
not funny
Mark S.
That, I believe, was Chunky Bobo’s argument, who has actually made me appreciate the job Daddy Bobo does. Not that Brooks isn’t a moron, but his job is to reassure liberal readers of the New York Times and viewers of the News Hour that all conservatives aren’t drooling idiots.
Chunky isn’t a drooling idiot, but his lack of empathy betrays him as a smug, complacent asshole. The last column I read of his had to do with gay marriage. He shot holes through the usual conservative objections but at the end still opposed it, because, I guess, it didn’t really affect him and that’s what conservatives do.
Yutsano
@Mark S.:
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence. And no one sensible column from him is not sufficient.
Bobby Thomson
Thanks for posting this. When I saw that e-mail, it made me want to rip the e-mailer’s legs off and beat him with the bloody stump. Fuck it. I’m going full Godwin. There’s nothing admirable at all about good Germans. Nothing.
+4
Mike in NC
It’s an article of faith among the far right that global warming is a hoax designed to harm the free market, just as every Republican I know believes that Social Security is nothing but an elaborate Ponzi scheme designed to keep down rugged individualists like themselves. They hate the government but at the same time love the perks and other benefits derived from working for the CIA/FBI/DOD or other federal agency. Government spending is always waste unless it goes to building bombs to drop on people with funny names and dark skin.
In that case he needs to step up his game. Assholes at the WaPo like George Will, Kathleen Parker, and Charles Krauthammer should keep him working 24/7.
General Stuck
Wingnuts gotta have an enemy, and more than one is even better. It’s what gets them up in the morning. Today it’s Muslims, tomorrow, back to soshulists, then scientists, and around it goes. Who can I hate and defeat today? With the Islamic center near the towers, it’s a two-fer. One of the worlds great religions, and the American constitution.
CT
It’s fascinating that Josh headlined the post containing that e-mail, “Interesting Point,” because I can’t think of a less interesting point.
DougJ
@CT:
He has awful taste in reader email. That’s one place where Andrew Sullivan actually beats him.
DougJ
@Ed Marshall:
I finally saw that picture on TPM. Unbelievable.
sparky
well, yes–this is the coordinated marketing plan of ideas, if you will. and yes, they do do this much better than anyone else, for they understand that they are selling notions, not actual policy.
and the other side of the “establishment” pretty much just wants to avoid catastrophe not actually change anything, so there’s not really much of an actual opposition.
PaminBB
Remember, they are not constrained by this reality thing that tends to influence most of us,
The extra-reality option opens things up – in theory. Of course as a rule you need to be a male who is pale and privileged (wealthy) to be eligible for the extra-reality option.
Mark S.
@Ed Marshall:
Here’s a hippie I would approve of punching
Also, Pam Geller is not aging gracefully.
mvr
And it makes me want to cry . . .
El Cid
@Mike in NC: Plus not to mention that many conservatives know that if there is global warming it’s caused by the Sun, because, you know, talk radio hosts know about the Sun gettin’ hotter but ain’t no damn pointy-head scientists what ever studied the Sun and looked at how hot it was. I mean, how would anyone ever know how hot the Sun is, and whether or not it was gettin’ hotter? You’d have to like, have, big eyeglasses or something to look way out there. Or maybe some sort of magic box we could put in space to look at the Sun. No, no, there’s no way to measure that sort of stuff, we just have to know it’s happening because Al Gore is fat.
El Cid
@Mark S.:
It’s the evil inside that makes them ugly.
Uloborus
@El Cid:
It does. Hate carves people. They become withered and leathery.
Evie
Funny, because I read his email post in my RSS reader and then yours. I was thinking how absurd the distinctions were and was surprised JM considered them valid. But your post said it better than me.
It’s all one big rationalization — *I’m* not offended, but I’m concerned *others* might be. Reminds me of that ubiquitous poll 2-fer in the last election. “Would you vote for an AA?” Yes. “Do you think others would vote for an AA?” No.
Nethead Jay
@Mark S.: To borrow a line from Olbermann: That person is an idiot! (the “hippie”, but applies to Pammiekins too).
jetan
“Let it go, Jake…..It’s Chinatown.”
aimai
@Guster:
My god, Guster, that’s it. Brilliant.
aimai
Robert Waldmann
What about Koran burning ? The mustached pastor seems to have managed to combine evil, stupidity and extreme weakness.
This is an honest effort to think of an example. The exception very much proves the rule.
scarshapedstar
The neocons said amongst themselves that we had to invade Iraq because it was a great business opportunity.
The neocons told us that we had to invade Iraq in order to democratize the Middle East.
The thoughtful mustaches said we had to tell Iraqis to Suck It.
Fox News said that we had to prevent Saddam from supplying WMDs to Al Qaeda.
Glenn Reynolds said “STEPHEN DEN BESTE: IF WE SAVE THE WORLD FROM BALSA WOOD WMDS THEN WE WILL GET ALL THE WOMEN AND NO LIBERAL WILL EVER GET LAID AGAIN.
Heh, indeed.”
RobW
They don’t have the same rights as the Burlington Coat Factory?
Observe that Burlington Coat Factory is a large corporation and the question kind of answers itself, doesn’t it?