I don’t think that people who speculate about the identity of the Boston bomber are history’s greatest monsters. It’s natural to wonder about something like that. So I don’t mean this as criticism: Republicans’ reaction to the bombing is just another example of how they’ll find some reason or another to oppose comprehensive immigration reform. Here’s Laura Ingram (via), Steve King. They’re both assholes, but that’s not the point. The point is that conservatives just don’t want to do immigration reform.
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Lol
If the bomber turns out to be white, it just proves we need stronger voter ID laws.
jl
As I said in the comment that disappeared with the first edition of this post, unreasoning fear is their product. It is a high margin product line, and sales are brisk when the market for it is good. They are just doing a little drumming, is all. Grifters gotta grift.
schrodinger's cat
I don’t know whether Ingram knows this but to adjust your status (final hurdle in getting the Green Card) you are finger printed and photographed they do run a back ground check on you.
Trollhattan
I can’t think of a better recent example of the Republican mindset than Michele Bachmann being chased down a hallway while being asked about one of her many untruths, and responding with “Benghazi” while in full sprint.
“A noun, a verb and nine-eleven” is how they ALL work.
AxelFoley
Doug gotta be a brotha. I can’t see other front pagers, except maybe Elon, using Earth Wind & Fire in the thread title.
JPL
Without comment.. http://www.bostonmarathonconspiracy.com/
also, too. it’s a good thing
ranchandsyrup
Can’t waste a good crisis when there is evil to be done and media enablers champing at the bit to frame issues favorably.
c u n d gulag
GOP POV:
We don’t want to legislate immigration right now.
And we sure as hell don’t want to legislate gun control.
We’re too busy trying to immigrate wands into women’s vagina’s.
The slut’s!
So, guns can stay where they’re at, and w*tbacks can take a back seat – where we wish the “Blah” people still had to make room for them!
NotMax
Promoting fear of the Red Menace served the Republicans during the Cold War.
With that starkly sketched bogeyman evaporated, the search for what to use fear as a tool on has spread like a noxious stain to fear of everything.
Government of the panicked, by the panicked, for the panicked is not America and must never, never become America.
The Ancient Randonneur
I’m not so sure about that. They probably still want to build a fence along our southern border.
pseudonymous in nc
Steve King is just a stone-cold racist. Simple as that. It’s not as if he does much to hide it.
But it’s apparently not permitted to point this out, because he is an elected racist.
schrodinger's cat
The largest group of people getting green cards every year are spouses of US citizens (50% or more). So what next, are the anti-immigrant lunatics going to legislate who you can marry?
Face
And bigger tax cuts
jl
@c u n d gulag:
Their outreach program has just taken off, and it seems to be stalling and swerving out of control. And most GOPers don’t seem to be interested in getting out of the way.
I remember watching a video of that kind of thing happening in a war zone. Funny, the troops on the ground ran out of the way.
Odd GOP behavior.
Southern Beale
I think what’s stated in this Wired piece about Twitter rings true:
Yesterday some wingnut was on Twitter saying “Bush kept us safe for 8 years,” I forgot who it was, but you know, STFU, asshole. In such a rush to criticize Obama that he forgot that one time Bush didn’t keep us safe. When was that, oh yeah 9/11. Idiots.
I’ve got my thoughts on this but I’m keeping my mouth shut.
But I do have a question. Why hasn’t anyone come forward to claim responsibility? Isn’t that the point of terror attacks? To create mayhem and then crow about it? That’s what’s so weird to me. I’d have expected some group to have come forward by now. Which makes me think maybe it’s a lone nutter.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
Sorry, dude, but government of, by, and for the panicked is very much part of America, and it has been for a good long time. I don’t like it and would love to change it, but that’s the way things are.
Joey Maloney
@c u n d gulag:
Fxd.
JPL
TPM has a video of Fox News trying to interview the roommate of the Saudi National who is not a suspect at this time.
Roger Moore
@pseudonymous in nc:
FTFY.
Shortstop
When I read that quote from King earlier, I felt pure poutrage, and I thought I was way past that with him.
f space that
@Southern Beale: I don’t think recall any of the big attacks perpetrated by anti-gov types claiming responsibility. Maybe some of them did.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: Conservatives would absolutely love to legislate who you can marry. It’s part of their whole small government platform.
Gravenstone
@JPL: A friend pointed that out on FB last night. Whether she was the perpetrator, or simply passing it along, I approved.
Joey Maloney
@f space that: Not before he was caught.
Gravenstone
@schrodinger’s cat: They’d only be joining hands with the homophobic wing of the Republicans, so why not?
Trollhattan
@JPL:
Oh it gets better, The Globe published their address. Think dude’s going to need to move now? Sheesh.
Redshirt
Don’t worry, they’ve got it figured all out. If it turns out to be some good old white boys, “FALSE FLAG!”. Anyone else, “OBUMMER SLEPT ON JOB BENGHAZI MUSLIM!”
They can’t lose!
Southern Beale
@f space that:
Me neither. I remember that security guard in Atlanta basically had his life ruined until it was finally established he had nothing to do with it, it was really anti-government nutter Eric Rudolph.
JPL
@Trollhattan: That is just sick.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
McVeigh didn’t claim responsibility or have any plans to do so, IIRC. I’m guessing (just a guess, mind you) that this emanated from the same kind of Turner Diaries infected assholes, which means they’re sitting back and waiting for the race war to erupt, because that’s totally what the book predicted.
Has anyone ever looked at parallels between The Turner Diaries and the Left Behind books? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of them since they’re both apocalyptic works, but I don’t want to infect my brain with that tripe.
Omnes Omnibus
@Southern Beale: Werebear (h/t) linked to this article in an earlier thread.
NotMax
@Roger Moore
Respectfully (and stridently) disagree. Uncertain, yes. Wary, yes. Shocked, yes. Panicked, no.
Not residing in a major metropolitan area for a long time now perhaps colors my perspective, but NYC, L.A., Chicago, D.C. and Boston are not necessarily indicative of the country entire.
Paraphrasing Lincoln again: You can panic some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t panic all of the people all of the time.
schrodinger's cat
[email protected]
Did you read Brook’s latest. It is pure gibberish. Apparently
human beings are discontinuous but animals are continuous. WTF is he talking about?
dslak
@schrodinger’s cat: He’s still butthurt about Nate Silver. He may never recover.
shortstop
@NotMax: Hmmm, my experience has been the exact opposite. Here in my major metropolis, no one freaked out after 9/11 thinking it was going to happen to us, despite our having some rather large and highly symbolic targets. Neither did people in NYC, SF, LA, etc., as far as I could tell by talking to plenty of folks living there (and judging by the way they voted).
Meanwhile, way too many people in small towns and rural areas seemed convinced that Al Qaeda wanted nothing more than to blow up the Fort Wayne post office or the Tuscumbia city hall.
ETA: I’d also add that the all fear, all the time format of Fox News, the NRA and conservative Christian leadership plays directly into red America’s addiction to panic. Half of the U.S. apparently doesn’t feel alive unless it’s terrified all the time.
fuckwit
The more I read about this, the MO, the construction of the bomb, the more it smells like good-ol’-boy American Redneck Engineering.
Sounds like it was cooked up by the kind of asshole who cooks meth.
My money is all in the authorities finding that the leader of the perpetrators has a spider-web tattoo, a history of being at anti-abortion and anti-gun-regulation protests, a “tree of liberty” bumper sticker on his pick-em-up truck, a history of refusing to pay taxes, and “WHITE MAN NATIVE BORN” on his Facebook status.
But, whomever it was, please just find the fuckers and convict them. I want the sons-of-bitches in maximum security federal prison forever.
Unfortunately, good police work is time-consuming and methodical. It might be months or years before this gets resolved. Just as long as it gets resolved.
NotMax
@shortstop
That’s mostly short-term, instant (over)reaction to the fomenting of fear by those in authority, coupled with inflating what was still unknown about actors and motivations in the immediate aftermath, as opposed to the changes in environment and conditions still in force.
I may well be wrong, but my understanding is that one cannot enter most office buildings in a big city without giving I.D., for example.
The pendulum does swing, and eventually will.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I think people in smaller town have always been more afraid of crime/terrorism/”those people”/etc. than people in cities. Anecdata alert: I know of people in central Wisconsin who are terrified of the gangs in Wausau so they won’t go into the “city” (pop. ~40,000). Milwaukee, Madison, and Chicago are dangerous in their eyes beyond comprehension. And yes, the do support concealed carry because of the dangers in the county seat of Marathon County. And just in case any FIBs want to start mocking, I know people from the western suburbs who won’t go into the city anymore because it is too dangerous.
Ted & Hellen
Not really getting how it would be uncivil to speculate as to the identity of the bomber(s).
Shortstop
@NotMax: But it didn’t go away after that short term; it only dissipated a little. Who’s still quaking in their boots about Islamic radicals wanting to “change our way of living,” kill us, impose sharia? Not big-city folks. Not blue-state politicians. You’re not getting it on Maui, but it’s happening in plenty of southern, western and midwestern small towns.
And fear of terrorism is only part of it: as I mentioned above, the media and organizations like the NRA make their living off stoking rural and suburban fears of “urban problems”: black and brown people, other (and non) religions, immigrants, LGBT people…basically of The Other and of some nebulous idea that The Other = Crime and Immediate Danger. To my mind, that kind of paralyzing chickenshittery is way worse than casually passing through a metal detector without giving it a second thought, then getting on with your non-terrified day.
artem1s
@Omnes Omnibus:
I grew up in a very rural area. Most of my family can’t comprehend why I’m not terrified of living in an urban area (Cleveland’s not really a big city). Pretty much I think it stems from having read ‘In Cold Blood’ when I was 8 or 10. I’ve always been far more ‘afraid’ of sleeping alone in my mom’s house in east bumfck than I ever have been in the city. Relativity works. They just can’t separate what they see on TV from the reality that most violent crime comes from people you know, not random acts.
VidaLoca
@Omnes Omnibus:
I assume you mean the western suburbs of Chicago here, but I know people from the western suburbs of Milwaukee who won’t go downtown anymore because they believe it’s too dangerous. They’ve completely given themselves over to fear.
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca: Yeah, that was for the FIBs, but I would guess that the same kind of people start appearing around Brookfield.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus:
I love big cities, the areas most tourists frequent are probably among the safest places on earth.
David Koch
This is why Rubio is fucked.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: And outside the tourist area, most cities are pretty safe if one uses one’s head. There are situations and places to avoid, of course. OTOH, I would be careful about approaching some places in the rural regions. Meth cookers and pot growers don’t necessarily take too kindly to visitors.
Shortstop
@artem1s: I always have to remind my country-dwelling sister that in almost all homicides, the victim knows his/her attacker. She complains mightily about having to risk her life to visit me in the city; I finally got so tired of the whining that I told her I was afraid to come to her house on a heavily wooded, lonely road lest The Hookman get me. (Anyone remember that old (su)burban legend?)
Shortstop
@VidaLoca: isn’t that funny? What do suburbs have to offer but proximity to the city? Without it, they’d just be semi-isolated rural towns.
satby
Former Chi-towner now living the rural nightmare and at the bottom of all the fear about how “dangerous” urban areas are is racism and jingoism. Nothing more. Even when Chicago was “the murder capital of the country” I never locked my doors and neither did most of my neighbors. But here in real Murrika they all lock everything up, and each house practically bristles with guns. And meth is all over the place. I just laugh.
AA+ Bonds
And it’s wise to keep it to your fucking self.