There are many memorable scenes from that series, but one that stands out for me has Jim and his Dad, Rocky, in the California desert investigating a real estate scam. Rocky is patiently listening to one of the men explaining to him how there is going to be a lake and marina, and that he might want to get his name on a list of people that are going to be first in line. Rocky smiled as he listened.
Later, talking to his son he said “You know, Jimmy, there we were, standing right in the middle of the desert, and that man tried to sell me a boat.”
This comes to mind this morning because we often get sucked into things by slick salespeople. We need to stand back, like Rocky, and cast a disdainful eye. This link is to a website that chronicles acts of terrorism against Americans from 1975 up to and including 9/11. Counting Oklahoma City (168), which was committed by a Christian terrorist, the number comes to about 4,100.
Since 9/11, according to the FBI, there have been 125 terrorist plots or attacks in the United States. Of these, 45 were by Muslims, and 63 by American right wingers. This includes 36 by the anti-gubbmint anti-tax crowd, 27 by the KKK and white supremacists, and 3 by right-to-lifers.
I would guess that correlation between these right wing terrorists and ownership of Atlas Shrugged would be about 1.0. John Stuart Mill did not say that conservatives were stupid people, but did say that most stupid people were conservative. Not all who believe in Ayn Rand are crazy, but right-wing nuts are drawn to her like a magnet.
Then there’s the number of deaths that the American military has caused – I could go back to 1980, when Reagan first claimed that we were being victimized by Muslim terrorists, but instead go only to 1991 – the first Gulf War. Keep in mind that these figures are always disputed. The US does not count, and those who do count are often ridiculed or threatened to back down or back off. Studying these numbers is not a good career move.
Here’s the grisly toll:
First Gulf War, 1991: 158,000 (Source, Beth Daponte, Carnegie Mellon University – note, she has since backed off);
Iraq Sanction Regime: 500,000 (Source, Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor). Note – UNICEF put this number at 500,000 in 1995, while Garfield’s number covers the entire period 1991 to 2002. As always, it’s hard to know what’s real.
Afghanistan/Pakistan, 1991-present: ??? – 10,000? 100,000? Who knows? It seems that as little as we care about Iraqis, we care even less about Afghans and Pakistanis. There just aren’t any credible numbers out there right now, and may never be.
Iraq Invasion 2003 forward: Low: Iraq Body Count, 104,605 (midpoint); Middle: 655,000 (midpoint) (Johns Hopkins, 2006); High: Opinion Research Bureau, 2007 1,200,000 (midpoint).
OK, let’s add them up. Nah, let’s not. Also consider this – in 2008 Amnesty International estimated that 4.7 million Iraqis were displaced by the war, including 2 million refugee’s.
So, as I review this information for the umpteenth time, I am most interested in the dull thud it makes when it lands. There’s a mental block working here, one so powerful that American crimes of Stalinesque stature do not register. It’s the mindset known as “American exceptionalism.” It blocks out information, minimizes it, denies it, ignores it, or in rare cases, justifies it. People who do not like this information will read this, and it will not register, and the next time they come across the information, it will be brand new to them. That’s why I think of American exceptionalism as “American Alzheimer’s.”
So, like Rocky, I look out over this desert, and address my comments to the one or two who read this who actually embrace reality: “You know, Jimmy, there we were standing right in the middle of a massacre, and those men tried to tell me that Muslims did it.”
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PS: Number of people killed on 9/11: 2,977. Not 2,976. Not 2,978. 2,977. When people who matter die, we do indeed know how to count.
Piece of Mindful 