The "Ground Zero" Mosque Debacle

No one should have to apologize or feel guilty for a crime that (1) they had nothing to do with and (2) has victimized them as much as anyone else in this country. Should Jews who lost family members in the Holocaust demand that the churches in Jerusalem be torn down since most (if not all) of the German soldiers responsible for sending Jews to the gas chambers in the camps were Christian? By what stretch of logic do Muslims, including those who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center on 9/11, share a collective guilt by association with the perpetrators of that crime?

The only thing that is driving this controversy, in my view, is the bad faith of its proponents. The crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan have not changed the world for the better. The economy continues to limp along. Health care "reform" has changed nothing. People are feeling sorry for themselves and looking for someone to blame. The "Ground Zero" mosque debacle is part of the prevailing psychopathology of everyday life in the heart of the Empire. Bigotry ought not to be dignified as a form of "sensitivity." It is time for the opponents of the proposed Islamic Center (and its lukewarm supporters, like one BHO) to buck up and turn their ire upon the true enemies of this country: the militarized corporatocracy that runs it.