Gone Round The Bend

If you thought the Wingers were going to simply accept yesterday's Holocaust Museum shooting by having an introspective moment on the perils of bigotry, the advocation of violence, and the preaching of hate daily, well...you'd be wrong, it's still Islam's fault!

Much is being made by Muslims and their many defenders on the left--and the ignoramus "conservatives" at Hot Air (who lecture us that hate has no ideological bounds, which I already learned not from those clueless ones, but from Sarah Palin e-mails wishing me cancer)--that the shooter of several people (one now dead) at the U.S. Holocaust Museum is not a Muslim but a White guy, James W. Von Brunn, who is a neo-Nazi.

But that is a distinction without a difference. In fact, it is because of Muslims--who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels--that neo-Nazis feel comfortable--far more comfortable!--manifesting their views about Jews. Until 9/11 and our resulting new tolerance for Islam, the neo-Nazi types were marginalized and howling at the wind. We know who has been targeting Jewish museums and centers affiliated with Jews in recent years. And it hasn't been, in general, 89-year-old White guys.

Mr. Von Brunn has been on this planet for 89 years, and he didn't feel comfortable shooting up a Holocaust museum until now--this new era of "tolerance," in which we must tolerate the most extremist Muslim behaviors and sentiments. It's, in general, not 89-year-old White guys telling people at churches worldwide and in religious schools that the Jews are the devil incarnate, a filthy tribe, the sons of pigs and monkeys, subhuman, etc.

No, it's guys with names like Mohammed and Ahmed on our own American streets who make Mr. Von Brunn far more at ease in 2009 than he was even in 1999 to attack places associated with the Jews. They created the comfort zone for James W. Brunn to engage in today's shooting.

The rash of anti-Semitic attacks in America, with a frequency unheard of in previous contemporary U.S. history--on synagogues all over the country, a Jewish community center in Seattle, and now this Holocaust museum--have all happened since 9/11 and our new tolerance for Islam and all of its intolerant extremism. This is no coincidence. It is a correlation.

Now keep in mind Debbie Schlussel has her own nationally syndicated radio show and newspaper column. She's using this to basically say that yesterday's shooting was caused by tolerance of Islam. If you honestly believe that, there's nothing I can do for you.

It simply hasn't occured to Debbie here that preaching knee-jerk reactionary blind hatred of a group of people for being different puts her squarely in the same box as Von Brunn.

Not only that, but blaming "excessive tolerance" for the events of the last few months is insane, considering there's a much obvious agent of cause here: the reactionary knee-jerk hatred preached by Schlussel and taken to heart by Von Brunn has come bubbling to the surface thanks to the election of one Barack Obama. It's the irrational hatred of the President that is much more likely to be causing nutjobs like Von Brunn to take physical action.

But that would be an admission of culpability for people like Deb. As Jeffrey Goldberg puts it:

White Christians have done an excellent job being anti-Semitic for several hundred years -- almost a couple of thousand, actually -- without any help whatsoever from Muslims.

The hate goes way back, folks. When somebody tries to say "Hey, let's not hate each other so much" it's like pouring water on a grease fire.

We continue to reap the whirlwind, America. It's going to be a long four years.