{"id":3713,"date":"2011-01-31T08:46:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T08:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/01\/what-explosives-at-a-michigan-mosque.html"},"modified":"2011-01-31T08:46:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T08:46:00","slug":"what-explosives-at-a-michigan-mosque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/01\/what-explosives-at-a-michigan-mosque.html","title":{"rendered":"What explosives at a Michigan Mosque?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
M-80 Fireworks<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Explosives?\u00a0 Read the story here<\/a>.\u00a0 Unless there was something in addition to what was mentioned, and the police asked the reporter not to report it, I\u2019m missing the \u2018explosives\u2019 that could destroy the Mosque.\u00a0 Class C fireworks are consumer type, those sold to individuals as opposed to fireworks sold to companies that put on neighborhood and city displays.\u00a0 Nor do I consider M-80s an \u2018explosive\u2019.\u00a0 Oh, they can cause harm alright.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not saying the fellow shouldn\u2019t have been arrested, wasn\u2019t trying to cause harm, or was not aiming his intents at the Mosque.\u00a0 Of course he\u2019s innocent until proven guilty.\u00a0 But again, unless there were devices not mentioned in the story, I wouldn\u2019t consider an \u2018undisclosed\u2019 amount of M-80 firecrackers to be what you call an explosive.\u00a0 When we think explosives, let\u2019s face it, we think of Oklahoma City.\u00a0 We think of cars or trucks loaded and ready to wipe out a city block.\u00a0 M-80s could certainly harm people, and do a significant amount of property damage.\u00a0 For that reason alone, it is a serious story and needs to be looked into.\u00a0 But \u2018explosives\u2019?\u00a0 Couldn\u2019t they simply have\u00a0said \u201dMan arrested with quantities of illegal fireworks?\u201d\u00a0 That would have been more accurate.<\/p>\n

Now for the analysis.\u00a0 Why the headline?\u00a0 Did the copy editor not know what M-80s are? Perhaps.\u00a0 They are illegal after all.\u00a0 But perhaps the individual writing the headline thought \u2018explosives\u2019 was, well, more explosive.\u00a0 It evokes.\u00a0 It conjures up a notion.\u00a0 My first mental picture was of a vehicle rigged to detonate outside of a Mosque, drums of explosive liquids connected to a fuse.\u00a0 And I can\u2019t help but wonder if that\u2019s exactly what the headline writer wanted me to think. <\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Why would someone \u2013 if I\u2019m reading this correctly \u2013 want me to think of Oklahoma City or, less likely, the various attempts by Muslim citizens to destroy larges swaths of lower Manhattan?\u00a0 Assuming I\u2019m right, that there was a method to the headline writer\u2019s madness, I think the answer comes from The Joker.\u00a0 The Dark Knight<\/em> has been running for the last few weekends on a host of cable channels.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had the chance to revisit the film, Christopher Nolan\u2019s talent for a good yarn, the various actors and characters with which we are so familiar, and of course, the late, great Heath Ledger\u2019s penultimate performance as the clown prince of crime himself. <\/p>\n

At the end of the movie, the Joker is disappointed in the failure of Gotham City\u2019s residents to turn on one another.\u00a0 Having put two boatloads of residents and criminals at the mercy of one another, he apparently imagined that one of them would destroy the ferry carrying the others in an attempt to save themselves from certain death.\u00a0 Well, not to spoil the movie if you haven\u2019t seen it (STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN\u201dT) \u2013<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 Turns out, both the citizens and the boat full of criminals are not willing to slaughter hundreds of people they don\u2019t know, even if it means losing their own lives.\u00a0 Of course, the Joker has one more card up his sleeve, but you\u2019ll have to watch the movie to see what happens next.\u00a0 The point is, he was trying to show that the people of Gotham, when push came to shove, were as ready to sink to his level, to kill indiscriminately.\u00a0 And they didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

And that brings me back to firecrackers and mosques and media reports and\u00a0whether pigs have wings.\u00a0 In case you haven\u2019t noticed, and many on the Left side of the ideological aisle \u2013 and not a few Catholic apologists \u2013 haven\u2019t, the tendency in America is to see everything\u00a0about our country\u00a0in the worst possible light.\u00a0 The\u00a0glass isn\u2019t half empty, it\u2019s empty.\u00a0 The lens is cracked and darkened.\u00a0 Ours is a\u00a0sad nation\u00a0of racism, imperialism, butchery and slaughter.\u00a0 We massacred Indians by the billions,\u00a0owned slaves by the billions, dropped atomic bombs on babies by the billions.\u00a0 We don\u2019t do, think, or say anything about our country what that we must remind ourselves forever about the\u00a0unforgivable sins of our fathers.<\/p>\n

So naturally, when the\u00a09\/11 attacks occurred, our\u00a0Pavlovian response was, \u201cThat was horrible!\u00a0 What did we do to make them hate us that much?\u201d\u00a0 From there, we immediately feared\u00a0what this country, founded on, and perpetuated in, racism, bigotry, ignorance, and brutality, would do to our Muslim neighbors.\u00a0\u00a0For weeks and months we heard discussions about how\u00a0we\u00a0must show restraint.\u00a0 How we must avoid lashing out and butchering those who may be Arab, or Muslim, or anything not like us.\u00a0 We feared that the Bush administration would react like\u00a0Roosevelt, and round up Muslim citizens by the millions, shipping them off to secret concentration camps in the Nevada deserts.\u00a0 We\u00a0imagined hordes of mindless\u00a0rednecks, shambling about like so many extras just eloped from the set of The Walking Dead<\/em>, going from door to door, seeking out hapless residents of Middle East descent.\u00a0 In short, we imagined that those horrible stories we\u2019ve told ourselves about America and its past were not only true, but inevitable.<\/p>\n

And yet, almost ten years later, there has\u00a0been almost no backlash against Muslims, Arabs, or anyone of Middle\u00a0Eastern descent.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying there was none.\u00a0 There was, especially in the days and weeks after 9\/11: vandalism, threats, some off color verbal\u00a0assaults.\u00a0 There were even a few cases of threats of violence and assaults.\u00a0 But as of now, not one Muslim has been killed because he or she was a Muslim.\u00a0 Not one that I\u2019m aware of.\u00a0 Out of 300 million Americans, said to be racist, ignorant, bigoted thugs descended from a nation of bigotry, not one of millions of Muslims has been killed solely on the basis of being Muslim.<\/p>\n

Now, Muslims since 9\/11 have killed other Americans.\u00a0 And multiple attempts by Muslims to kill many more have been thwarted.\u00a0 But despite story after story of Muslims cowering in back alleys in fear of their lives,\u00a0despite story after story telling us that crimes against Muslims are exploding all over our country (without actual examples), and despite the fact that we are continually reminded of our sad history and\u00a0inevitable violent attitudes toward minorities, Muslims remain safer here than in the\u00a0nations of the Islamic world.\u00a0\u00a0In short, the death camps and endless mobs that were to fall upon the\u00a0American Muslim community never happened.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

And I get the feeling sometimes that the media \u2013 one of the\u00a0prime proponents of the \u2018America\u00a0Sucks\u2019 mentality \u2013 has yet to get over that.\u00a0 Having seen the carnage of 9\/11, and reflected on its dire appraisal of the American nation, they thought, \u2018And here we go!\u2019 And they waited, and waited, and waited, and waited \u2013 to no avail. Their worst nightmares never happened.\u00a0 No murders, butchery, slaughter \u2013 nothing. So each and every time something happens, each and every time a Muslim makes an accusation, each time a Muslim\u00a0group says it fears for its life, each time someone is caught doing anything to\u00a0anyone that is Muslim, the national media is there.\u00a0 Not only is it there to give the story more attention than it will for anything short\u00a0of the Super Bowl, but\u00a0I can\u2019t help\u00a0but think it\u2019s there to fluff the stories a little.\u00a0\u00a0To make them sing, if you will.\u00a0 Sing of racists and bigots, of angry mobs and violence.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Therefore\u00a0a man\u00a0who, if reports are true, is obviously off the deep end and\u00a0obviously needs arrested, just isn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 It\u2019s not enough that the worst this nation of imperialists, Islamaphobes, homophobes, anti-Semites, racists, and sexists can muster is a\u00a0vehicle filled with firecrackers.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 It has to be more.\u00a0 It has to be \u2018explosives\u2019.\u00a0 For if we aren\u2019t continually shown the errors of our ways, if our sins are not forever before us, we might someday stop and say, \u201cYou know, considering 9\/11 and everything since, we Americans have done pretty darn good, haven\u2019t we?\u00a0 And that might mean some of those things upon which our country was founded weren\u2019t that bad after all.\u201d\u00a0 For people who want nothing more than to burn down the foundations of our country, such a revelation could be disastrous.<\/p>\n

Again, I realize that there could be more.\u00a0 Maybe there were drums of gasoline or other hazardous chemicals in his vehicle.\u00a0 Maybe there were crates of TNT.\u00a0 Maybe the media isn\u2019t saying this because we all know how restrained the media can be when it comes to holding back on stories in case of copy-cats.\u00a0 But if not, then the above theory is the one I\u2019m going with unless I am shown a reasonable alternative.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M-80 Fireworks Explosives?\u00a0 Read the story here.\u00a0 Unless there was something in addition to what was mentioned, and the police asked the reporter not to report it, I\u2019m missing the \u2018explosives\u2019 that could destroy the Mosque.\u00a0 Class C fireworks are consumer type, those sold to individuals as opposed to fireworks sold to companies that put […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat explosives at a Michigan Mosque?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"M-80 FireworksExplosives?  Read the story here.  Unless there was something in addition to what was mentioned, and the police asked the reporter\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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