The Politics of Diversion

What's amazing is how well it works, especially when people are desperate and angry for completely different reasons. Diversion means, that you, as political opinion-maker, invent something to rile the boobs, so that they don't blame you when you steal them blind.

It worked in the segregated South: just keep those N--s down and we'll be all right--me on my plantation, you in your shack. It worked with Commies; it worked with gays; it worked with Latinos. And now it works with Muslims. Diversion is like three-card Monte, where the player hides the high card in plain sight, and draws the bettor with his diversionary hand.

Don't pay any attention to losing your unemployment: scream and shout about those Mooslim terrorists. Don't even think that my vote against extending unemployment insurance had anything to do with you: just gotta stop those Mooslims. Lost your house? Rail at those Mooslims, not at me, although I voted to protect the banks--against you.

This uproar about the Muslim-sponsored community center, two blocks away and invisible from the still-unfinished "Ground Zero" site, jostling a strip club on the same block, this is diversionary politics at its most pernicious. Republicans like Newt Gingrich, and blowhards like Rush Limbaugh, blat vicious idiocy about Muslims, while these same "patriots" urge American troops to "win the hearts and minds" of--Muslims!--in Afghanistan, Iraq and the whole Middle East.

Do these people have a brain in their heads? What they have is an extraordinary amount of short-sighted political opportunism. Do they not think about consequences? What happens if they win the elections and want to promote their dirty little wars? They'll find they've made them inordinately worse and more dangerous for Americans.

Of course, Osama bin Laden is going to take advantage. He gets well-publicized "proof" that the US is conducting a crusade against Islam. All Muslims, even Muslim-Americans, he'll helpfully point out, should join al Qaeda and strike a blow against the anti-Muslim American Empire. Even American leaders, like Minority Leader Boehner, bray full-throated against Islam. And those who claimed they are Islam's friends, stand silent, or writhe in ambiguous retreat.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole manufactured controversy is the spinelessness of people who know better, especially Obama. After an eloquent defense of freedom of worship, before Muslims celebrating Eid at the White House, Obama backed away from defending the Muslim community center. Senate leader, Reid, whimpered that maybe it should be built someplace else.

The only way to combat this political fraud is to hammer real issues: jobs and the economy, and reveal what these gangsters voted for: greater misery, and inaction--and keeping taxes low for the wealthy.

Except for Mayor Bloomberg, "the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity--What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"