Syed Farook as American as apple pie [View all]

[ellenrr]

"Syed Farooq is an American: Let’s stop the Muslim vs. Christian debate and take a look at ourselves"

"His terrible deed does not spring from an unknowable foreign culture. It is violence endemic to the United States."

"Dear compatriots:

There’s a connection between the supposed deviance of Farooq’s shooting and your endless, adamant justification of U.S. bloodletting throughout the world.

To put it plainly: thinking about violent behavior as something innately foreign is a terrific rationale for delivering violence to foreign places.
...
Is it too difficult to recognize the many problems of a discourse that relies so heavily on demonization to generate support? The demagogue can enact violence only when his audience refuses to recognize the violent nature of demagoguery.

Politicians love nothing more than a frightened, uninformed citizenry. It’s how they convince us to cosign our dispossession. People who discern gray areas and have the ability to reason through propaganda are their most undesirable clients. The United States cannot be a functional democracy if we make ourselves so compliant.
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Let’s explore these questions together. We’ll surely be surprised by what we learn through the simple act of listening. Before we do, though, I ask you to remember that I am proudly Arab but legally American, and I refuse to entertain the possibility that either category invalidates the other.

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/03/syed_farooq_is_an_american_lets_stop_the_muslim_vs_christian_debate_and_take_a_look_at_ourselves/