elfs | Gotta be shrill some days... (Reply)

Sometimes, you just have to point at something with outrage. Yesterday, Glenn Beck was interviewing Michael Scheuer, a former CIA official, and during the conversation Scheuer said this:

The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

Oh. My. Gods. How stupid do you have to be to earnestly hope for the deaths of millions of Americans? Especially when you're doing so to further your own vision of what America should be, your own political point of view? How different is Scheuer's pronunciation that "our only hope..." is mass murder, from Osama's declaration that America's only hope lies in mass conversion to Islam or death?

Good grief, these people are insane, aren't they?

Adam Serwer has it exactly right: "This is not unpatriotic. You can wish all manner of horrors on this country, but as long as these horrors might serve a specific political agenda, you're not being unpatriotic. Unpatriotic is a public health care plan. Unpatriotic is a judge modifying subprime mortgage loans to keep a roof over someone's head. Unpatriotic is phosphate free detergent. Patriotic is wishing for a terrorist attack on the United States."