Thursday, March 15, 2007

Sky: Not Falling, News at 11

At our local cheapo drug mart, where they seem to screw up every single one of Claire's prescriptions, there is a great wacko paperback for sale with a title like "The Islamic States of America". In the tradition of great American boilerplate paranoid ephemera, the book wonders how we will live when the Muslim radicals take over the United States. For me, it recalls those classic films like Red Dawn that convinced an 8-year old version of me that the Russians were going to invade, and that it was going to be awesome, action-packed excitement! Seriously, I was looking forward to the nuclear war when I was a kid because I watched so many movies that made it look thrilling. Finally, I'd get to use those Ninja throwing stars I bought from the back of a comic book! But, alas...

Anyway, I'm starting to wonder if these Warriors on Terror who talk so much about the "existential threat" that radical Islam poses to our very way of life aren't having the same sorts of childish fantasies that I did when I was an actual child. Does anyone seriously believe that a handful of Temple of Doom extras and their werewolf leader in some cave in Pakistan are going to destroy America? Or do they really just want to flatter themselves that their blog posts about how the Dixie Chicks are bitches are somehow making the world safe for all of us?

Anyway, this question from Thomas Mallon is going around the web, also via Andrew Sullivan:
"Are American writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that Islamofascism is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?"

You have to enjoy it when someone puts forth their own opinion as the cold hard truth that the rest of us just aren't ready to face. In response, I would ask: "Are American writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that lycanthropy is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?" Because, if they aren't, well then they must be friggin' crazy! Werewolves, man. They're fucking evil!

I mean, the real question is "Wouldn't it suck to live in a world in which the US had been overthrown by Al Quaida?" And the answer is: "Of course it would!" But it 'aint going to happen. I mean, look, maybe there will be another attack inside the US, and if so, it will definitely be horrible. But, terrorists will never defeat us. No chance. Pickpockets stand a better chance of overthrowing the United States. Anyway, Tom Gara is calling Bullshit and probably more of us should be. It probably should have been obvious on September 12th, 2001 that the sky isn't falling. But, it's never too late to recognize the obvious.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is, just about every other country is saying this:

"Are [our] writers, artists, and thinkers truly prepared to admit that [America] is a real, and even imminent, threat to everything they are accustomed to thinking, saying, and creating?"

Hell, *I* am saying something similar to that: "A-murr-ka" is a threat to "America"!

Rufus said...

You're sort of in the belly of the beast though, right? I mean, I have no idea what Texas is like (although I remember it being very flat), but I'm guessing that you run into more wingnuts than we do in the great white wimpy north!

I'm not so afraid of A-murr-ka anyway. I have a feeling that we're due for a serious paradign shift in this country. The war-nuts have run out of ideas and gotten stuck in the sand. I think it's time to leave them behind.

Anonymous said...

Yeah. Austin is the lone blue spot in Texas, but to be more accurate, central Austin is the lone blue spot. We're talking what...a 5-10 mile radius? from downtown Austin. It's beyond depressing. I also sense a cultural change in the air, but I like to keep my expectations low to avoid disillusionment. I was silly enough to have high hopes for the '04 election.

Greg von Winckel said...

America's well-being is jeopardized more by the ridiculously large trade imbalance and the mass outsourcing of jobs to overseas operations than it is directly threatened by terrorist operations.