We are ruled, really, by monsters.
Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck on Thursday blamed the President's handling of the 2011 terrorist attack in Benghazi for Americans' distrust of Syrian refugees today.
And by "Americans," he must mean the voices echoing inside his own head, because if there's really any "Americans" out there who were not at all racists until one particular attack on America's foreign diplomats in a long string of them, and one conspicuously not in Syria, rallied them to the dangers of the Brown Menace, then fuck them. These are not people worth getting the votes of. It is far more likely that the only such "American" Ken Buck knows who feels that way is Ken Buck himself, and even more likely that Ken Buck's opinions on refugees after "Benghazi"—whether they are fleeing violence in Syria or in Central America—are exactly the same as his opinions were before "Benghazi,” and for ten years prior to that.
If you are denying safe haven to Syrian war refugees fleeing ISIS, which we have all obligingly dubbed the Middle East's own Hitler just to drive home the point of just how violent, barbaric, and genocidal they are, because of an attack in France by French citizens and an attack in Libya by terrorists then you have lost the damn plot. You are a fool. You are a very racist and provably un-"Christian" fool.
“One of the reasons Americans are distrustful at this point. We have a president who after the murder of an ambassador in Benghazi and the murder of three heroes in Benghazi … told the American people that the attack was the result of a video," Buck said. "You have a secretary of state that immediately identified that it was not the result of a video that it was the result of a video, that it was a result of a well-planned attack.”
Oh my God, sir, will you at long last shut your ignorant head hole. Yes, there was a video that was resulting in regional protests at the time. Yes, the State Department and intelligence services originally believed, in the heat of the moment, that the attack was an outgrowth of those protests. Yes, they very soon afterward learned that was in fact a planned assault. Not only is this the most amount of time, taxpayer money and general dripping blowhardism ever spent on someone being wrong on a Sunday talk show, it comes from a rank of people who consider spouting provably false bullshit on the Sunday talk shows to be a high art. We give politicians like Ken Buck high marks, in the punditry, when they go on the Sunday talk shows and ladle on self-serving bullshit until the moderator's head can barely be seen above the pile. We praise them outright for it.
Rep. Ken Buck does not want vetted Syrian families to gain safe haven from ISIS here because he is racist. Shut up, I don't want to hear it—there is no line of thought that goes from "Benghazi" to "not even orphaned toddlers" that is not the result of racism or psychopathy. Shut up. America is already planning to take in only a bare handful of refugees compared to other, more civilized, nations, and even that is sending our new American xenophobes into fits of foaming, trembling, pants-wetting fear and rage.
Again, I say: Shut up about America being a Christian nation. Shut up, shut all the way up about family values and the sanctity of life and the inherent exceptionalism of America. At long last, shut up.