Violations of Wheaton’s Law From Last Week
I assume most of you are familiar with Wheaton’s Law? I suppose it should be no surprise when national tragedy brings out the lawbreakers, as it did last week. If I were a smarter person, I would have turned off the internet for at least the first 48 hours after the bombing. Alas, instead I ended up spending too much time jumping back and forth between the news and social media sites. While this did help me to stay informed, it also resulted in a fair amount of rage…
6. The “lamestream media” was scared to say what we all knew: the terrorists were Muslim. Political correctness is literally killing us by blinding us to the real enemy!
Go to the FBI’s terrorism report here. Scroll down to the bottom, and start working your way back. How many of those terrorist attacks in the U.S. were committed by Islamic extremists, as opposed to environmental extremists, Jewish extremists, anti-abortion extremists, etc.? Seems to me that if you hear about a terrorist act in the U.S. and your first assumption is IT’S THE MUSLIMS!!!, you’re pretty much just showing off your ignorance and bigotry.
5. You never see Christians doing this stuff / Islam is the religion of hate.
Um … y’all know the KKK is a Christian organization, right? Not to mention the Westboro Baptists. Or the Army of God. Or Hutaree. We’ve got plenty of Christian hate, both historically and in the present day.
You can twist any religion into an excuse for hatred and violence. And while it’s been a long time since I attended Sunday school, aren’t Christians supposed to have that whole, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” thing going on?
And as long as we’re talking about hate, please see this quote from a December 2009 study published by Duke University about the backlash after 9/11:
- Hate- crimes against Muslims rose from 28 in 2000 to 481 recorded incidents in 2001, and current levels remain about five times higher than prior to 9/11.
4. “I can’t believe that pair in the Boston bombing was NOT Towel Heads. They are Czechoslovakian. F*** Czechoslovakia!”
This is one of a depressingly large number of comments from people who don’t know the difference between Chechnya and the Czech Republic, but weren’t about to let ignorance stop them from spewing hate and racism.
3. I heard this thing on the internet, and even though I have no idea whether or not it’s true, I’m going to repost and retweet it to everyone I know!
There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation after something like this happens. In the first 48 hours, it felt like major news outlets were tripping over each other to get their facts wrong. We’re so hungry for facts–especially facts that might confirm our own biases and assumptions–that we end up spreading an awful lot of misinformation.
2. “I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine?” –Arkansas Rep. Nate Bell
Dude, I don’t care what your position is on gun control. You’re an asshole.
1. Pretentious, holier-than-thou bloggers getting up on their high horses to go on and on about other people’s dickish behavior.
Um…aw, crap.
#
Because this was depressing, I’m working on a follow-up post giving examples of people being awesome in the aftermath of tragedy.
Katherine
April 22, 2013 @ 10:55 am
Did you see the image of the exchange between people from Syria and Boston?
https://twitter.com/MykeCole/status/326115610251644929/photo/1
(I’m a bad archivist and can’t find the original attribution though 🙁 )
This made me teary with bittersweet joy
Jim C. Hines
April 22, 2013 @ 11:01 am
I did, and yes!!!
Rob Wynne
April 22, 2013 @ 11:19 am
The Onion, as often is the case, nails #4 to the door of the courthouse:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-majority-of-americans-not-informed-enough-to,32124/
Anubis
April 22, 2013 @ 11:37 am
“I can’t believe that pair in the Boston bombing was NOT Towel Heads. They are Czechoslovakian. F*** Czechoslovakia!”
And neither do they know the difference between the Czech Republic and Czechoslovakia, it seems. Reminds me of that conservative German historian who in 2002 complained that the Soviet Union still hadn’t recognized the truthfulness of his account of the Battle of Berlin. Yes, in 2002.
Joshua D
April 22, 2013 @ 11:52 am
Marathon runners kept running to hospital after they finished the race to donate blood.
Joshua D
April 22, 2013 @ 11:53 am
Oh, forgot the link.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/16/boston-marathon-explosions-the-heroes-who-responded-to-the-blasts.html
Annalee
April 22, 2013 @ 11:58 am
A friend-of-a-friend who lives in Watertown tweeted about how when she found out about the lockdown, it made her wish she’d bought eggs, not guns. She received a bunch of @replies from jerkfaces basically telling her she deserved to get killed if the terrorist came to her house.
I sometimes engage in Mary-Sueish hero fantasies in which I get to use some skill of mine to save the day, too. But I try to refrain from doing so in public. I also don’t tend to think of my hobbies as moral imperatives that can right all wrongs, or go around telling people that if they don’t share my hobby, they deserve to be murdered. I really wish gun enthusiasts would get the memo on that one, filed as it is under ‘basic human decency.’
Alana Joli Abbott
April 22, 2013 @ 12:08 pm
I liked this one:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57580635/photograph-of-boston-police-officer-delivering-milk-to-family-during-lockdown-goes-viral/
Sean
April 22, 2013 @ 12:09 pm
I love you. I just wanted you to know. 🙂
emilygoddess
April 22, 2013 @ 12:11 pm
Don’t forget the tinhats crying “false flag!”, or the Mah Civil Liberties crowd complaining (from afar) about how we rolled over and welcomed martial law.
TinHat Wearer
April 22, 2013 @ 12:25 pm
I’ll wait in my tin hat sitting on my porch with my AK47 in hand…LOL!!! Really though, I do not even own a gun..let alone a freaking tin hat,
but I watch and learn 🙂
History has a funny way of repeating itself…
sara
April 22, 2013 @ 2:11 pm
That has only led them to aim their wrath at immigrants in general.
Emily
April 22, 2013 @ 2:54 pm
I hadn’t heard the Czechoslovakia/Chechnya confusion one, and I have to confess, it makes me laugh. I live in a city with many residents descended from Czech/Slovak immigrants, and all I can picture now is a giant kolache on a murderous rampage. I don’t mean this in *any way* to minimize the very real pain that those affected are suffering (nor the pain of those in West, Texas, also a community of Czech/Slovak immigrants–yay kolaches!!), but man, the Fightin’ Kolaches would be a truly superior mascot.
lkeke35
April 22, 2013 @ 4:12 pm
“I sometimes engage in Mary-Sueish hero fantasies in which I get to use some skill of mine to save the day, too. But I try to refrain from doing so in public. I also don’t tend to think of my hobbies as moral imperatives that can right all wrongs, or go around telling people that if they don’t share my hobby, they deserve to be murdered. I really wish gun enthusiasts would get the memo on that one, filed as it is under ‘basic human decency.’”
Annalee; I don’t understand it. That’s an attitude completely foreign to me.
Also, wishing for eggs makes perfect sense to me as a gun has little or no nutritional value if you are locked down in your house with no food for seveal days. (Although, I suppose you could use the gun to rob your unarmed neighbors when the hunger really starts to hit.)
Andrew Trembley
April 22, 2013 @ 5:25 pm
The best part? They’re caucasian. Dagestan and Chechneya are in north Caucasus.
Jim C. Hines » People Being Awesome in the Aftermath of Boston
April 23, 2013 @ 9:30 am
[…] Violations of Wheaton’s Law From Last Week […]
James Cheatham
April 27, 2013 @ 9:01 pm
Ok, jumping into the game late, but you bring up a lot of good points but I have a bit of a spin on each.
6. The “lamestream media” was scared to say what we all knew: the terrorists were Muslim. Political correctness is literally killing us by blinding us to the real enemy!
This is about as moronic as they come. I don’t believe McVeigh or Jewel were muslim yet both were bombers right here in the U.S. Frankly I and several of my friends (either military or ex-military) automatically assumed they were domestic terrorists of that type for multiple reasons including the fact that they didn’t produce a higher body count. The fact is, nutbars come from all over the place. Also, how many more people die daily due to drunk drivers? Let’s keep things in perspective. I worry more about crossing the street than I do a terrorist bombing.
5. You never see Christians doing this stuff / Islam is the religion of hate.
Love this one, shows a total lack of historic knowledge. Again, McVeigh and Jewel weren’t religiously motivated, but I believe in the ’70’s several medical centers were bombed by christians because of the whole abortion thing. The IRA bombed London all the time for their Catholic fellowship and even athiests (ok, communists really) have been known to use bombing historically in their efforts to bring about change. Again, Islam doesn’t have a monopoly on hate. Having visited several Muslim rich countries it’s amazing how the people seem to be pretty much the same as everywhere else I’ve been. The majority want to get up, got to work and feed their family.
4. “I can’t believe that pair in the Boston bombing was NOT Towel Heads. They are Czechoslovakian. F*** Czechoslovakia!”
Stupidity is amplified by the internet.
3. I heard this thing on the internet, and even though I have no idea whether or not it’s true, I’m going to repost and retweet it to everyone I know!
I believe it was Mark Twain who pointed out that a lie could travel halfway round the world before the truth could get it’s pants on. The internet is it’s sneakers.
2. “I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine?” -Arkansas Rep. Nate Bell
I’m against gun control, but I can see how stupid this is. One prime point, what happens when you get a bunch of scared, trigger happy idiots with guns in an environment like this?
1. Pretentious, holier-than-thou bloggers getting up on their high horses to go on and on about other people’s dickish behavior.
-Well, I’m as guilty as anyone on this, but what’s the internet for?
One final point and the only real original pontificating I’m doing here. Why is it when some nutbar (jerk, a-hole or whatever you want to call them) blows up a bomb at a group of people the media starts screaming for calm and you see lots of articles on how (in this instance) Islam is a religion of peace, and how we need to think calmly before taking action yet a nutbar shoots up a group of people and the same media is painting every gun owner as a nutbar wannabe ready to crack at any moment and kill you, your kids and every puppy they can get their hands on? (Ok, I know the answer to that, people aren’t going to go around committing hate-crimes on gun owners, doesn’t mean I have to approve though.)
ULTRAGOTHA
April 29, 2013 @ 12:56 am
James, Richard Jewel never bombed anyone. You have bought into the reprehensible FBI/media misinformation. The Centennial Park bombing atrocity was committed by Eric Rudolf, along with three other bombings.
James Cheatham
April 29, 2013 @ 8:05 am
Either way, still makes my point, it wasn’t Muslims who did it. Point is, religion is an excuse not a cause for hate and every one of them has done their part to create mayhem throughout history.