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Monday, August 16, 2010

“Ground Zero Mosque” Is A Non Issue For Losers

Of course Cordoba House must be supported. Of course it is stupid racist bigotry to oppose it or stammer wishy-washily about it. Of course it isn’t even on, or beside, Ground Zero. Of course Muslims (not to mention non-religious folks and people of other faiths who happen not to be bigots) were among the victims on 9-11 and among their grieving families. Of course it is disgusting and stupid to pretend that terrorists speak for over a billion people of the Muslim faith, whether the terrorists declare themselves to do so or not.

Nevertheless, the "Ground Zero Mosque" (dun dun DUN) is a non-issue.

I do not mean by this to suggest it is a “culture issue” or a “symbolic issue,” like the endless skirmishes about abortion or affirmative action or capital punishment all are. I do not mean to suggest it is an organized deception media shills and corrupt politicians are paid to engage in to protect elite-incumbent profits at the expense of the public good like climate-change denialism or the gun lobby or the war on drugs all are.

No, the “Ground Zero Mosque” is a non-issue. There is no there there. It is noise, it is a spinning of wheels, it is flapping hands and flapping mouths, it is waiting out the clock, it is distraction. A non-issue filling the space where an issue might otherwise be.

Just as “Death Panels” were a non-issue. Just as “Flag Burning” was a non-issue.

It’s flim-flam artistry, it’s smoke and mirrors, no more.

That Republicans want to cut necessary effective popular government programs is an issue. That Republicans want to lower the quality of life of average Americans so that the richest of the rich can stay super-rich is an issue.

Whenever we dive into Republican non-issues like the “Ground Zero Mosque,” like “Death Panels,” like “Flag Burning,” Democrats lose. Even when they “win” they lose, not only because in "winning" we are treating non-issues as issues, but because we are collaborating with Republicans in directing everybody’s attention away from actual issues on which Republicans are losers.



The image is of the New York Dolls Strip Club, located according to TPM just a block from oh-so-sacred ground of the abandoned Burlington Coat Factory where the proposed Cordoba House is to be built blocks away from the site of the ruined World Trade Center site.

5 comments:

4grim said...

The problem is there is no way to get around the taunts because if there is no response then the public will rise and respond to the non-response as concession and then they still get their way. If only politicians could just say "yo, this is a greek horse" and everyone would just get it, it'd be great. Sadly, that is not how it is. Especially because of the way public education is espoused at the lower levels.

Dale Carrico said...

But of course we can get around taunts, we ignore the lion's share of taunts already, taunts ring out from all sides from endlessly many sources. If you track the original sources of these hateful and idiotic taunts in the lower depths of the wingnutosphere it becomes clear soon enough that the problem here is that by not applying factual, legal, professional standards when deciding what deserves our attention, in simply treating the objectively failed actually not particularly popular frankly idiotic Sarah Palin's facebook as a news source, or treating the disgraced hypocritical actually politically irrelevant wind-bag Newt Gingrich as some kind of eminence, corporate media trampoline this crap into public discourse and amplify it until it begins to exert its deranging force on the energies of our already disastrously addled over-stressed unrepresentative representatives, to the ruin of us all. The problem is not uneducated masses but profoundly cynical opportunistic "well-educated" elite-incumbents indulging in deception, spin, salesmanship, gamesmanship in the service of corrupt ends at the expense of the public good.

Chad Lott said...

I think the answer here is to fund an Islamic Themed Strip Club, drawing rage from both sides.

It's like when you put out a forest fire with dynamite.

Dale Carrico said...

Only one side would be outraged still.

jimf said...

"4grim" wrote:

> . . . Especially because of the way public education
> is espoused at the lower levels.

Yes. My fourth-grade teacher and my eighth-grade
social studies teacher were espouses, and they
were both incompetent.