Well the answer, obviously, is Muslims.
I'm thinking about the difference between Serbs and Croats. The overwhelming majority of Americans, when we got involved in the Croatian war, could not tell the difference between a Serb and a Croat. Since they were white, the American Left, like the overwhelming majority of Americans couldn't raise any red herrings about race.
My friend Jim mentions the Daesh strategy and how Trump is playing into it by 'encouraging' Americans to hate Muslims. Well even if you give that statement full credibility, Daesh and other Islamic sects and forces in the region have a huge headstart on Donald Trump. Surely only American Muslims of a dainty persuasion have any need to fear their neighbors. We Americans aren't the ones who look with steely eyed determination to figure if one is Alawite, Sunni, Shi'a or Salafist. We're not so finely discriminatory. In the Middle East of course, such identification is much more likely to be a matter of life and death.
What's so damning about this, Jim, is that if the Daesh strategy is to frighten Americans into hating Muslims indiscriminately, it also presumes that Muslims will only have one direction to go towards safety, which is into the arms of Daesh. That means Daesh itself presumes the exact same amount of patriotism from American Muslims as do the worst haters - presicely none. And that killing Americans only helps to prove where such Muslim sentiments ultimately lie. Essentially Daesh expects that Muslims will find more protection in radicalization than in the ordinary defense of Constitutional laws.
I don't presume that Trump has suggested that Muslim citizens in America be marked and segregated. If he has, then that's easy enough to demonstrate. 'Fear mongering' is just politically incorrect talk.
A moratorium on immigration in light of this kind of war is just another new wrinkle in a new kind of war. Even if we stopped all immigration 100% how is this wrong?
Anyway, having read the article, it does reveal the prescience of those who said we should fight them over there before they gain a beachhead over here. But we know how to integrate people. Simply give them, as citizens, Constitutional liberty. American dissidents are just as much to blame as authentic haters precisely because they argue that there is no moral justification for a hard line in citizenship. it will come down to that. And the next President had better nail that down quickly. It's not a numbers problem, its a principles problem, and we cannot afford to be wishy washy. Either you pledge allegiance to the flag, and to the republic for which is stands, or you pledge alliegiance to your race, your tribe, your gender, your creed, your color, your religion. In otherwords, multiculturalism needs to be shown the door and replaced by Liberal Enlightenment Pluralism, as was always intended.
Aside from all that, flat destruction of Raqqa and a scorched earth strategy on all IS territory will destroy the base and eviscerate the base from which all potential IS recruits might draw inspiration. If IS has no homeland and no second standard then integration is would be jihadis's only non-suicidal option.
I am actually encouraged by the loudmouthed divisiveness of our diversity. Americans talk much more shit than a little and we entertain incredible fantasies of violent retribution. And yes when we do so it's with Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeves. All of us talk this kind of Quentin Tarentino talk from time to time. Getting medieval on somebody's ass is part of the lexicon. But it's also something Americans don't actually do, unless and until it's war. And war is something Americans don't enter into lightly.
So we will continue our loudmouth faux bigotry and insult people's mothers, telling them to kiss the ugliest parts of our body politic. But we won't do anything violent. We live deep in rhetorical hatred and violence every day, and we never forget the mentality. But American life is far too pleasant for us to take all that talk seriously. When somebody is actually crazy enough to put those words into action, we're all shocked. So it's difficult for most American to conceive of Daesh's motivations as anything but desperate, stupid insanity.
Search as you may for actual scientifically vetted statistics for the fatalities whose proximate cause is Islamophobia, you won't find it. (Until you do, and I place it here)
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