Assassination Plot
According to ABC7 News, there was a plot to assassinate Barack Obama and several other African Americans. The plot was disrupted, but this is really frightening.
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what fucking idiots. Seriously.
It makes me sick that we have people like this still. God, get over yourself.
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers puts forward an interesting question about this story, or specifically about the way it's being covered:
Read through all the news articles about this plot, and you'll find one word conspicuous by its absence.
Terrorism.
As PZ puts it, "Doesn't it strike you as peculiar that white homegrown right-wing fascist killers are somehow exempt from being called what they are — terrorists?"
I'm not sure how serious the threat was, since their plans were pretty nutty, even for wannabe assassins. But it doesn't really make a difference to me if the threat was serious. It's just scary that people like this still exist, even if the plan would have been impossible to carry out.
Cactus Wren, I agree. These murders would have been hate crimes, and I've always seen hate crimes as acts of terrorism. Hate crimes send a wave of fear in everyone of a particular group of people across the entire nation that other crimes simply don't. I mean, if someone murders their next door neighbor, people in the neighborhood might be freaked out by it, but nobody on the other side of the country is going to be afraid of their own next door neighbor. But if an African American is murdered by racists, that scares all African Americans everywhere, because racism is everywhere.
I heard about that, and I couldn't help but cry. It was so disgusting... oh my goodness, if God does exist, I hope he gives those horrible men justice.
Wow, Cactus Wren, I LOVE PZ Myers. He totally nails this.
I actually find that more threatening than the terrorists themselves. Sure, it's scary that people are like this, but I refuse to feel actually threatened by these two kids, 18 and 20, who put pictures on MYSPACE of them holding guns? How stupid can you get? Not exactly covert about things. I would be a lot more worried for the other 101 people, not Obama, since even they didn't think they'd be able to get to him.
How do people get like this? They had everything ahead of them.
I had a friend on LiveJournal who is a registered Democrat, but is voting for McCain. I knew that and had no problem with it because it was her business and she respected my voting for Obama without criticizing me for it. Yesterday she posted the AP release of that story with this to say about it:
"Hate to say I told you so."
I immediately unfriended her. I thought it was just sick and completely inappropriate.