The Anchoress

After spending some time reading news, opinions and analysis from all over the web and in the blogosphere, I am struck by the way both the right and left lungs of ’sphere are in full-press hyperventilation over the breaking news of the last 20 hours or so.

The news is certainly serious. That a deadly terrorist attack has been thwarted seemingly as it was about to go down is no laughing matter, nor is the idea of missing Egyptian students, supposedly bound for Montana but turning up in Minnesota or going underground, altogether. (Note: 6 of the students have now been found.)

The news is serious…so why is so much that is being written and spewed forth so wretchedly unserious? Why am I getting such a strong sense that - for some, note, I say some on both the left and the right (and in the media) - this event is an excuse for extraordinarily reckless, demented and self-interested excess? There are people out there who seem too-happily energized by all this - by the thrusty adrenaline-rush of the breaking news, the drama of a credible threat - and who are apparently using the story as an excuse to let not their better selves but their baser ones, shine forth in full glaring (and all too predictable) brilliance?

Go to the lefty forums - I won’t link to them but you know how to find them (and Alexandra and Bainbridge are watching) - and you will read pretty much the following (paraphrased):

- I question the timing: Obviously this is a well-planned media manipulation by Bush & Company to take attention away from the defeat of Joe Lieberman and the mobilization of an invigorated Democrat party! Power to the people!

- Even if this isn’t Al Qaeda, this just proves that Bush & Halliburton have distracted our attention from the War on Terror by going after the Iraqi oil. The next time the so-called “terrorists” won’t be caught and Bush’s incurious inattention will finally show him for a moronic failure. If we’ve been safe for 5 years, it’s been by accident. Blair is Bush’s poodle. Bush is a nazi who will declare martial law and disallow elections; he’ll stay in power forever!

- Goodbye civil and human rights. We’ll have to give up our lipstick, now, in order to help the GOP scare the world into allowing them to stay in power. Muslim peoples are being profiled! Impeach Bush. Impeach Cheney. Go Lamont!

Go to the righty forums and you find a lot of this talk (paraphrased):

- When Oh When will Bush take a page from FDR and inter all Muslims and Middle-Easterners into concentration camps, or totally deport them all? All Muslims are evil! This will wake up those idiots who voted out Lieberman, though, maybe! President Bush is captive of the globalist PC one-worlders or he’d be doing the right thing!

- This just proves that we’ve been too soft in Iraq and we need to just bomb the hell out of everyone! The war on terror won’t be won until we make Mecca a wasteland!

- This is why we need sealed borders, even though these terrorists were Brit CITIZENS and the cell phone sellers are US CITIZENS, that doesn’t matter. Close the borders now! Impeach Bush. Impeach Cheney. Go Tancredo!

From still-too-blonde “journalist” Andrea Oh, NO- this-might-help-Bush Mitchell, as the news was breaking: (paraphrased) “Now, some may be annoyed to hear me say this, but you do have to look at the political ramifcations of this, I am sure Bush is thinking about how this helps him politically…”

From still-too-fake Harry Ah, YES how-can-we-use-this-to-hurt Bush Reid, as the news was breaking: (paraphrased) The president’s five years of policy failures are failing to keep Americans protected, because he’s a failure and he’s failed.

A pox on both houses and on Reid, Mitchell and many in Washington and in the press says I. A pox on their opportunism, their paranoia, their jingoism, their xenophobia, their extreme prejudice, their smug know-it-allism, their absolute know-nothingism, their love of the fever-swamp, their jump to cynicism, their eagerness to find fault with any and all solutions and with their barely-concealed glee through all of this.

On a day of serious news too many people - fixated upon their own agendas or their own obsessions - cannot bring themselves to put down the single-shot revolver they’ve been spinning for five freaking years and stop playing russian roulette with the national psyche. It’s pretty obvious that for some - adrenaline junkies who have been impatiently waiting for this “other shoe” to drop since 9/11, and feverish know-it-alls from both sides - today’s news is nothing more than a hot-dog-we’re-gonna-have-some-fun-now day for opportunism.

To take news such as we are hearing today and use it as political fodder, as a means to incite rather than bring insight, is unhelpful, immature and misguided. I figured this out after my first round of reading got me mad at some on the left for being so predictably unserious…and my second round got me mad at some on the right.

How about for the day, and for the immediate days before us, some of us drop the agendas, drop the cynicism, drop the paranoid theories, drop the conspiracy theories, drop the profound generalizations, drop the hate and drop the idea that what we are dealing with is easy, simple or uncomplicated, or that its solution may be found in the promotion or demotion of a man in Washington or a man in Britain (If only they would listen to you!)

How about for a little while, everyone stop throwing sand at each other, put the blunt intsruments away and maybe put the focus and energy to use against the real bully in the playground. Just for a little while, let’s say…just until we’ve got him on the ground, bleeding and crying and screaming “uncle.” Then we can go back to our little clan wars, we can get back to crowning our favorite ideological demagogues and fanatical princes and princesses and feeding our self-medicating and masturbatory darkling fantasies.

For now, I wish someone would grab both sides by the collars and smack their heads together…but then again, 9/11 was pretty dramatic, and it had no lasting effect. Today’s doings are pretty dramatic, but not enough to knock sense into the senseless.

I remember when Elder Son and Buster were little and constantly at odds, I one day finally had enough and declared that they would not be allowed to speak to each other for the next three days. In a few hours they were begging to be allowed to be “brothers” again. What will it take to get us begging to be “family” again?

If anything I have written reminds you of yourself, well…congratulations, it means you’re not too far gone in your hate to pull yourself back from the abyss where lie monsters and madness. Chances are, though, if you’re halfway-over-the-edge, what I have written will sound to you like “someone else.”

But if you recognise yourself - do what I did this afternoon - find a paper bag and breathe into it for a little while. Let’s let the unserious ones play in the mudpuddles while we re-dedicate ourselves to getting re-focused on what saves us - what serves our immediate needs in the dawn and day of the bully.

We can start being grownups by giving some attention to this muslim man, who writes about Muslims in the UK: In the end, I am not English. I am glad to be an American. I am incredibly sensitive to the things that are happening in England and I intend on making sure the same does not happen here…

These are difficult problems requiring careful resolution. Name-calling, Islamophobia, fear-mongering, blame-games, and victimization-complexes don’t help…

Ali’s failed attempt to demonstrate the existance of moderate Muslims by engaging in dialouge with an Ann Coulter forum (!) has been extensively and passionately chronicled at Mutnodjmet’s Musings, by a member of that forum. The “silent majority” of moderate Muslims need to begin speaking out, or - based on some of what I am reading at some rightwing forums - I am leery of what may be coming down the pike for them.

Ali is trying, and he and other moderate Muslims should be encouraged rather than shooed away and called names. We need to hear more moderate voices like his, because as Malkin demonstrates, we’re hearing too, too many of the Islamofascist Jihadis.

The problem of the 21st Century may well be a “clash of civilizations,” but there seem to be “clashes within clashes,” and the only thing I know for certain is that nothing will be accomplished by the indiscriminate, “scorched earth” targeting of “all Muslims” or the indiscriminate targeting of “all conservatives,” or “all liberals.” Nothing.

CLARIFICATION: I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not saying that nothing political may be noted in all of this. I am simply saying that when a story of this import and magnitude is being muddled by agendas and ideological cant, we are all being ill-served. By all means, it’ fair game to point out, as Ace does, here when a blog resolutely refuses to even discuss a story this big, because that refusal may itself be meaningful. It seems sound, to me, to observe, as John Hawkins does, that some on the left seem weary of fighting against terrorists who never tire out. I’m simply saying that if a forum or blog - on either side - is using this event like an incendiary device, using it for nothing but the advancement of hate and paranoia, then they should be looked upon as unserious and lacking in credibility. They should not be given attention and MORE credibility.

Ed Morrissey says it better and more succinctly than I: Do you want to know what the big story of the day really was? We beat the terrorists — again — and saved lives. Perhaps we could have spent the day reflecting on that and the need for continuing vigilance. The politics could have, and should have, waited for another day.

Related: None of this would be happening if Bush had not invaded Iraq.
Attacks Foiled Thanks to Tip from Muslim.

For thinking Christians who are into politics, DJ Drummond has a thoughtful piece up.

More info on terror past and present, classified and un:
Brutally Honest: What Happened to the Syrian “Musicians” from Northwest Flight 327
Jawa Report: Terror Plot Linked to Exiled Cleric
9/11 Review: Project Bojinka
Michelle Malkin: Dearbornistan terror arrests:
Gatewaypundit: Reuters uses Radical Islamist to critique Bush
Flopping Aces: links to a report on an interesting Pakistani by ABC’s Blotter.
California Conservative: 1984 is here
LGF: CAIR upset over President’s using word “Islamofascist”

Linking to this piece:
Sigmund Carl & Alfred recall the Gettysberg Address and wonder, ” Have we forgotten what it means to fight for something bigger than ourselves?” Bravo.
Lump on a blog wonders about terminology.
Unpartisan
Stubborn Facts