Thoughts on the San Francisco SUV Rampage

The usual wingnuts (no links--trust me, you're better off) have been trying, with their usual surfeit of hysteria and dearth of critical thinking, to spin the rampage in San Francisco into a 'freelance terrorist' attack. (They claim, among other things, that the driver (an Afghan-American) targeted Jews...even though the victims were completely random, with no common characteristic apart from (all but one) being pedestrians.)

Most of the time, shit this crazy isn't worth commenting on (unless you're Tbogg or SZ or the Sadly, No guys and can turn it into comedy gold); this time, it's (literally) too close to home. So. A few thoughts:

1. I keep thinking: How dare these dirtbags try to exploit our local tragedy for their own tawdry political ends? But of course, that's what they do. As furious as I am, I realize that what I feel must be just a tiny fraction of what a lot of New Yorkers have been feeling these past five years.


2. Malkin quotes a commenter at another wingnut blog:

   It’s good to be wrong about these things sometimes. Better that than that we have yet another freelance jihadi that the government isn’t being upfront about.

   Which succinctly sums up the 'accuse first, ask questions later' approach of...well, the whole goddamn wingnutosphere. And which is also a stunning display of self-aggrandizing obliviousness; these idiots really do think they're the only thing standing between us and the Islamie-commies (or whatever the fuck they call their bogeyman).


3. What Steve said:

   But here's the thing: Let's say, for the sake of argument, that this is a real phenomenon. Let's say there really are Muslims who are killing and wounding strangers in sudden attacks not because they're dangerous nutcases who've snapped but because ... well, I don't know how to finish that sentence.
   
   And that's the problem. What would be the source of this? And therefore, what would you do about it?

   Read the rest.


4. And further to what Steve said: a 'terrorist attack' that is ambiguous, that is not obviously a terror attack, is completely contrary to the logic of terror. Terrorism works when and because people know it's terrorism.


5. On the other hand, in another sense this really was a terror attack, one more event in a vast and long-running terror campaign against Americans. I'm talking, of course, about the terrorist war waged by drivers against pedestrians--which, as Maha notes, killed nearly twice as many Americans in 2001 as the 9/11 attacks. As I noted, all but one of the victims were pedestrians...and if that doesn't prove the point, I don't know what does. Every single day in San Francisco I risk being murdered by the fanatical jihadists trying to impose automofascism on America. Truly, they pose an existential threat to the nation, and America will not be safe until every last SUV driver is dragged away to an internment camp.

[That's all, folks]