Wake up, America

[kat_chan]

I've been growing increasingly frustrated with the manufactured controversy of the Not-at-Ground Zero Not-Really-a-Mosque. But the right-wing nutjobs continually tell half-truths or outright lies about the Park51 community center project. Back in the late spring when the permitting process began there was no controversy over this. Then some of

Comments

[zelest]

...seriously, that is even being discussed? America is a great country... but sometimes I wonder. I wonder what happened to the pride in cultural diversity in The Big Apple... The Melting Pot... and all the other ways of describing New York.

[chaptal]

A lot of the discussion about this is coming from middle America and not Manhattan. When 9/11 is concerned, the right seem to take hold of it and wrap themselves in the politics. The people who actually live there, are still perceived as being out of touch with mainstream America.

The right wing is using its base as a tool to rile people up just before the November elections.

[kat_chan]

Most of it, yes. But now they've whipped up the NYPD and FDNY folks, particularly the ones who lost family and/or friends in the Towers, and they're people who should be a lot more in touch with what the real plans are for Park51. And, yes, it is a matter of the right wing using the issue to rile up their base for the elections, since nothing else has seemed to work so far. Not repeal of the health care bill, not anti-tax hysteria, not opposition to same-sex marriage. They've got nothing left but to try and fall back on the immigration and 9/11 standbys.

[kat_chan]

Well, the "melting pot" is more of an analogy about America, in general. That said, yes it is being discussed. Just like 100 years ago they tried to keep the Italians and Slavics out. Or 40 years before that, when they were trying to keep the Chinese out. Or the way they're trying to keep the Mexicans out today. We talk a good game about diversity, but in reality...it's not all that we try to claim.

[moominmuppet]

My normally mid-line liberal neighbor was totally hoodwinked by this bullshit; I set her right on it the other day, but she fully believed that they were planning on building a mosque _in_ Ground Zero. *headdesk* We had a good conversation about spin and manipulation, though. She couldn't understand why that's what she'd heard if that wasn't the truth.

[kat_chan]

That's what she'd heard because that's what the right wing put out there. And they put it out on the TV and the internet. And people who don't seek out multiple sources, or at the very least one source that isn't full of lies and manipulation, are susceptible to the Big Lie; a lie repeated so often that it takes on the sheen of the truth, especially when not disputed quickly or frequently enough

[mizuno_youko]

I feel the same way about this "controversy." Ugh.