Wednesday, November 01, 2017 7:27 PM
America’s Greatest Weakness (2017Nov01)
Today Trump said of the rent-a-truck terrorist, “We have to get tougher.” I’m unclear as to what we are supposed to get tougher towards. Excuse me for wondering what we can do about a 39-year-old Uzbek immigrant of seven years—who suddenly decides to travel to New York City, rents a truck, commits heinous, unspeakable vehicular homicide and assault on twenty strangers, hits a school bus, and jumps out of the truck with a BB gun shouting, “God is great!”
I believe one of New York’s Finest then immediately shot the guy. Someone tell me how you get tougher than that? Or faster? Insanity is such a thorny issue that we like to steer clear of it—preferring to speak in a criminal or political context. Yet were not these the actions of a madman?
Yes and no. In harsher places all around the world, including Uzbekistan, there is some wildness of culture—a clinging to a patriarchal fundamentalism that has never heard of such flighty ideas as ‘inclusion’ and ‘honest modern-day biology’—never mind ‘educating girls’ or ‘gay marriage’.
To such, we ‘first worlders‘ are not to be envied—we are demonic infidels who scorn the true faith (provided them by their Byzantine-minded village elder(s)). And that old fool may be some miserable, ignorant senior, more interested in his own power than anything else—but he has been the font of all their lore, since most of them had learned to talk.
We who have been blessed to be born in America often see no great difficulty in considering ourselves entirely free and equal—but, for those born in oppression, to embrace those ideas is akin to jumping off a cliff. Even many American-born shrink from true self-determination—it is no small thing to take complete responsibility for one’s life and deeds.
It cannot be purely political when a man goes berserk, as this terrorist did—there is madness there, too. Else how could anyone do such a thing? Yes, male Eastern European immigrants of a particular age group seem particularly vulnerable to Jihadist brainwashing—but that still doesn’t make that entire demographic automatically suspect. Remember, it takes a person who is unbalanced enough to be taken in—to the point of mass murder/suicide—by the indoctrination—regardless of where they’re from. These attacks are undeniably terrible—but there are still thousands of Uzbek-Americans who are just like you and me (American, that is).
Besides, the regular, old, rich, white guy who shot up Vegas, mere weeks ago, had a far greater body count—and he was from Florida or someplace. I simply cannot believe that Trump—supposedly an American, supposedly the leader of America, has just called for an end to inclusion. Did I really just hear an American president say, “Diversity is a nice idea—but it’s just not working.”—have I truly lived long enough to have my ears sullied so? Has this fucking idiot perused the census? America is diversity, Donald, you fuckwad—and its greatest weakness has always been goons like you, who refuse to accept that.
