Not really, but that could be the theme for the government’s new frontier in the war on terror.All last night I was glued to CNN’s coverage of an alleged Miami-based terrorist plot to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago. Throughout the coverage, Anderson Cooper and the cavalcade of CNN analysts that were brought on hammered on a number of points. The first, and most relevant was, that of the seven men arrested, all but one of them were American citizens. They used the phrase “home-grown” quite frequently. Also, they were all part of some unknown Muslim group. Additionally, Anderson Cooper repeated that they were black, except for one. Since CNN thought it was important, I started wondering. This one non-Black wasn’t white. The President is white, and we know that George W. Bush is not a terrorist (typed as sarcastically as possible). He probably wasn’t Middle Eastern. They already had the crazed-Muslim tie-in to the “War on Terrorism”. The U.S. government really hates Native Americans, but that didn’t seem right. Finally, it came to me — with all the news about North Korea lately, he was definitely of some Asian variety. This will help the Bush administration relate this incident to another one of the members of the Axis of Evil.
The US government has tried doing this sort of thing before — to create a “home-grown” terrorism scare. One day I attended a church service where the topic of discussion were these things called patriot groups. This was about 1999. At that time, a patriot group was a neo-Nazi group that lived out in the wilderness and had their own private armies. A few years later, with the passing of the US government’s PATRIOT ACT, the irony has not been lost on me. I guess the idea of home-grown terror couldn’t be sold at that time, because a lot of people live in “red state” wilderness, have guns and hang out with a bunch of people who also have guns. Additionally, the home-grown terrorism thing didn’t go over because the people who were labeled as potential home-grown terrorists included people who read the Bible, went to church, thought the Constitution was a good idea, had thoughts other than the government and media espoused, etc. It’s just like the little old lady getting frisked at an airport for being a threat to national security after 9/11. And strangely enough, people (particularly the Christian faithful) still vote for politicians who think that the typical American is a terrorist.
Anyhow, this wasn’t an unexpected turn of events. When the media machine starts propogating the idea of “home-grown black Islamic terrorists”, it’ll take off real well. According to Census figures, African-Americans number about thirteen percent of the American population. Since we live in a democracy, the majority rules. The government just needs to muster enough support for the Black terrorist theme. Not that I’m for that — I’m just saying what’s possible in this brave new world the US government claims to be saving us from.
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