Can I call ’em or what?
On Sunday, I wrote about how the media and left-blogosphere were trying to move the Boston Bombing narrative to focus on what is wrong with how we treated the bombers as immigrants and away from the problem of Jihadism, Politically correct epistemic closure counterattacks Boston Marathon bombing reality:
As it became indisputable that the perpetrators were Chechen Muslims who expressed support for Jihad and al-Qaeda (although the full extent of their connections is not known), the narrative shifted.
Now the emerging narrative is that these killers were not part of a vast foreign conspiracy but isolated “lone wolves” who became disenchanted with American society, who were not fully integrated into society, who were unhappy with their lives here and thus became radicalized…
Framing the issue this way shifts the focus to American society, how the brothers’ became alienated by us, by our actions, how we need to look in the mirror not at jihadism….
If only we had been nicer, none of this would have happened.
In other words, it’s not them, it’s us. They were radicalized here, by us. Even if they don’t come right out and say it, that’s the implication.
Sure enough, it’s no longer an implication, it’s being stated out loud.
The bombers were just caught between two worlds, and our world did not sufficiently embrace them according to a Professor at American University, Opinion: Boston Bombings Show Muslims Between Worlds:
The suspected Boston bombers come from a Chechen tribal community that has been brutalized by the Russians in recent decades and from a Muslim community in the United States that has too often been impugned by the actions of a few….
Upon their arrival in the United States, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar joined a Muslim community that bore the scarlet letter of terrorism. Expecting hospitality, they felt alienated and disillusioned, even with all of the opportunities and privileges available to them as citizens of this country.
They opted for an act of violent nihilism, of devastation and death.
An author at Slate tells us that the bombers were just an example of The Reluctant American:
Those obsessively poring over emerging news about the Boston bombers should take a break from their iPhones and laptops and newspapers and read Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, (and see Mira Nair’s film version out later this week). The novel will go further in answering the general bewilderment about the Tsarnaev brothers than the little snippets of their lives we have so far, in answering the bigger mystery: “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?” as Obama put it….
To understand the Boston bombers, we need also to understand and be honest about ourselves, the ways in which we both take in and don’t take in people from other countries, the trickier side of the American dream.
Melissa Harris-Perry and others at MSNBC could not resist the urge to complain about us (Noah Rothman via Rick Moran h/t Debra Heine):
“They don’t have the privilege of being anonymous – ‘they,’ speaking of people of color or other minorities – we don’t know yet, but we fill in the blanks,” said Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson. “We fill in the blanks with what makes us feel the most comfortable that this was an exceptional, extraordinary case that happened because they are this.”
“I keep wondering: is it possible that there would ever be a discussion like, ‘oh, this is because of Ben Affleck and the connection between Boston and movies about violence?’” Harris-Perry asked. “And, of course, the answer is ‘no.’”
“Given that they’re Chechen, given that they are literally Caucasian, our very sense of connection to them is this framed up notion of, like, Islam making them into something that is non-[unintelligible],” Harris-Perry continued.
“The point is that it’s important to say, ‘that is not us,” Dyson agreed. “We want to demonize the other. We have to distance it from the dominant culture.”
We’re also to blame because of drone bombing of terrorists, NBC’s Brokaw Blames U.S. Drone Attacks for Motivating Islamic Terrorists:
It’s all so predictable. And it’s all so much easier than addressing the problem.
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