August 13, 2010
Kossack: 9/11 was "More About Optics than Actual Harm."
A blogger at the popular progressive blog Daily Kos has attempted to smear many Americans with a very wide brush of anti-Islamic bigotry, while at the same time espousing a decidedly bizarre progressive view of the worst terror attack in this nation's history.
...a new CNN poll that shows that 68% of the nation opposes the construction of the community center in Manhattan. The question asked was about a mosque which I find a little misleading, and it used the inflammatory "Ground Zero" name for the site of the Twin Towers, but that is not really the point. This new data shows a couple of things that we know already to be true. First off, the majority when asked their opinion will almost always be against the rights of a minority. This is a particular hot issue because of the 9/11 attacks where carried out by Muslims, but it is to be expected even if that were not the case.Muslims are only a small minority in the United States, with somewhere between 1.3 million and 7 million of our citizens being practitioners of this faith. This makes Muslims between .3% and 2.1% of the over all population. However world wide the followers of Islam are closer to 25% of the planetary population.
Given that they are such a small minority in this nation, it is odd that so many of our fellow citizens see them as such a threat. Yes, the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they were more about optics than actual harm. The economy was already taking a hit before the Twin Towers fell. The reaction of the nation to seeing two major buildings in New York fall on T.V. has boosted the attack out of proportion. While the loss of even a single life is to be condemned and the devastation these deaths caused the families of those killed, more than this number of teens are killed every year in car crashes. These are also tragic losses but we do not make the kind of high profile issue of it that the 9/11 attacks are.
It is this sort of disconnected, community-based reality that these elitists have fabricated for themselves that had led the majority of the nation to find these elitists not just out of touch, but dangerously out of step with the rest of the nation.
There is certainly plenty of room to debate whether or not the contested Islamic community center and mosque being proposed in lower Manhattan is appropriate. There is room to debate whether or not whether Islam, as a oppressive and intractably conjoined mixture of religion and a totalitarian political movement, is what the Founders meant to extend unlimited protections to under the First Amendment.
Trivializing the losses of 9/11, both personal and cultural, is not a way to win your argument.
I see.
So it wasn't seeing the Twin Towers fall killing over three thousand people -- well over the number at Pearl Harbor -- that was horrific.
No. It was the REACTION of "the nation" that was "out of proportion."
These people have a mental illness. They are in major Denial of what occurred.
Teen deaths from car accidents are not the PLANNED result of a deliberate ATTACK, you festering idiots.
Posted by: Bill Smith at August 13, 2010 11:06 AMBill, I think the blogger was saying that if we hadn't been able to watch the Twin Towers fall, then it wouldn't have been so horrific. Remember, the author points out the the worst part of 9/11 was that it was 'optic', meaning we were able to watch it.
It seems the blogger is trying to use the analogy of a tree falling in a forest, if no one is around, then it doesn't make a sound.
Very strange reasoning these leftists have.
Posted by: Kate at August 13, 2010 12:01 PMAmericans didn't watch the attack on Pearl Harbor unfold in real time. It didn't make for a more muted response.
Optics might have been the goal of the terrorists on 9/11. But to put a mosque there is rubbing salt in a wound. It would be akin to putting up a Shinto shrine on Oahu in 1943.
Posted by: brian at August 13, 2010 12:24 PMHow many members of a minority are able to kill off 3000 people in one fell swoop? 19. How many suiciders does it take to kill dozens in a mosque, on a bus, in a school? 1 or 2?
A potent and deadly minority, indeed.
Point one:
The Lmsm doesn't allow us to see those images anymore and hasn't since a couple of days after the killings.
Point two:
I suggest that sticking the witless fools that inhabit dk in a hundred story building, then setting the floors below them on fire would give them all a whole new out-look on the meaning of terror.
You know, cut Kos some slack. I think he's on to something.
After all, the battleships hit at Pearl Harbor were really kinda obsolete already, and did not play a major part in the war even after they returned to service. And the P-40s destroyed on the ground would have been replaced in a year or two. And Nagumo didn't even touch the oil tanks!
Plus, it is unlikely that we really could have used that fleet to fight our way across the Pacific to save the Philippines anyway.
Pearl Harbor was obviously more about optics than actual harm...
Posted by: Horatius at August 13, 2010 01:11 PMI represented the family of a 22 year old young woman who was on the second jet to crash into the tower. Tell me that 9-11 was all about optics.
The enduring grief at the loss of a very bright and able young woman has lasted for years with her parents.
I'd like to meet that little Kossack prick. We can settle it in an alley. I'm am old man now, but I think I'm angry enough to whale the living tar out of that little punk.
Posted by: Mike M. at August 13, 2010 02:01 PM
Kate:
No, I think the blogger was doing everything possible in his malleable reality world to minimize what actually did happen. I have news for you. Whether anyone is around or not, the tree is still DOWN. The harm is that it's down, not its sound.
As another commenter pointed out, Americans were enraged almost instantaneously upon hearing about Pearl Harbor. Men started beating down the doors of recruiting offices the very next day. They understood immediately what had happened without any news reel footage, or "optics." That came later. Libs may be swayed by imagery or lack of it, but rational people are affected by FACTS
As libs do, they blogger tries to alter reality by playing with language, in this case, by ridicule:
"…the INFLAMMATORY "Ground Zero" name for the site of the Twin Towers…"
We are supposed to feel foolish for feeling "inflamed," you see. Well, I don't.
He tries to minimize the very real threat that a few terrorists pose:
"…it is ODD that so many of our fellow citizens SEE THEM AS such a threat."
Wow. 19 of them killed over 3,000, but we are odd, and unduly influenced by the facts. BULL.
These are sick, strange people.
Posted by: Bill Smith at August 13, 2010 03:59 PMWhat is the little prick trying to say about the small portion of the US population being Muslim? Hey asswipe cancer starts out as a small part of a human body in the begining too. Islam is the cancer of the modern world and not a religion or a faith. It is enslavement and total subjugation of its followers. If we as a nation don't wake up and treat it as a cancer it will surely kill us all.
Posted by: inspectorudy at August 13, 2010 04:27 PMIslam isn't so much a religion as it is a political project. Any political project which aims at the destruction of our constitution should be suppressed, and its adherents detained or deported.
Posted by: David Davies at August 14, 2010 07:47 AMOK, let's play this game some more.
It wasn't the actual actions of the HUAC and Joe McCarthy that was so serious, it was the overreaction by the left about being pursued for sedition and treason.
And it wasn't the actual actions of Hoover and the FBI when they penetrated leftist organizations with the intention of promoting illegal activity, it was again the overreaction of the left to that minor occurance.
Finally, it wasn't Nixon's coverup of Watergate that was so serious, it was the overreaction of the Democrats and a few Republicans to those revelations that caused our first POTUS to resign.
Yeah, we can go a long way with this kind of argument...
Posted by: iconoclast at August 14, 2010 02:44 PM"HUAC and Joe McCarthy"
There you go again. House Un American Activities - Senator McCarthy.
I know in this climate is is hard to believe but the House and Senate had Democrats and Republicans who were against Communism.
Posted by: davod at August 14, 2010 03:10 PMNever forget that the libs were so worried about 9/11 having an effect on their election prospects that the first anniversary was billed as a day of giving and rememberance.
Posted by: davod at August 14, 2010 03:16 PMAnd as much as it pains the democom to admit it, McCarthy for the most part was correct.
Posted by: emdfl at August 14, 2010 08:46 PMI think the proposed mosque at Ground Zero is a danger to the country because of the message it sends.
It may be that the guy wanting to build the mosque has a right to do it but there are times when some things just should not be allowed.
Thomas Jefferson said it best: "A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." --Thomas Jefferson
Posted by: NevadaDailySteve at August 16, 2010 03:46 PMCopied the wrong quote and hit post before I noticed.
"[The] law of necessity and self-preservation... [render] the salus populi supreme over the written law." Thomas Jefferson.
Posted by: NevadaDailySteve at August 16, 2010 03:52 PM
