There’s a rather telling detail in a piece in Politico on the reactions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to the attacks on 9/11.
In a television interview only a few hours after the twin towers collapsed in flames, Trump managed to work in a strange little boast about his real-estate empire:
“40 Wall Street,” he said, referring to his 71-story building blocks away from the now-collapsed twin towers, “actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan … And now it’s the tallest.”
Trump will always be Trump, I guess.
But the Politico story does note that aside from this little bit of brand-building, Trump was actually rather restrained in his response that day, at least by normal Trumpian standards:
A decade and a half before pledging to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS and proposing a deportation force and a Muslim ban, Trump didn’t talk about retribution or leap to conclusions about who was responsible. In fact, he avoided identifying potential enemies—any terrorist organization or Muslims in general.
We live in what is, in many ways, a much uglier America today, and Trump has been one of the leading enablers of this ugliness.
As Mic noted in a post yesterday, Islamophobia is much worse today than it was on 9/11/2001, and hate crimes against Muslims are on the upswing.
Immediately after 9/11, there was a significant rise in anti-Muslim activity.According to the FBI, in 2001 anti-Islamic hate crimes spiked by 1,600 percent with 481 incidents. CAIR noted another surge in 2006 — the reason for it remains unclear. Another spike followed the Park51 controversy in 2010, in which New York City considered building a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero.
But the highest concentration of anti-Muslim crimes came at the end of 2015. According to CAIR’s latest report, 78 mosques were targeted for vandalism that year — more incidents than they had documented in any one year since they started tracking in 2009. Compare this to 2014, when CAIR only documented 22 similar incidents, or 2013, when they documented 20. The 2015 spike came after the attacks at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris and around the same time Donald Trump infamously proposed that the country should ban Muslims from entering until we “figure out what’s going on.”
Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that in 2014 while the rate of hate crimes overall had fallen compared with the previous year, hate crimes against Muslims saw a 14 percent increase.
Emphasis mine.
The vicious attacks against Muslims have continued apace this year. The latest: an attack on two Muslim mothers in Brooklyn last Thursday. The New York Daily News reports:
A bigoted Brooklyn woman launched a sickening attack on two Muslim women pushing their babies in strollers — punching them in the face and trying to pull off their hijabs, prosecutors said Friday.
Emirjeta Xhelili, 32, hurled Islamophobic insults as she pounced on the two victims near her Bath Beach home about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, authorities said.
“Get the f–k out of here,” Xhelili, 32, allegedly yelled at the pair, according to prosecutors. “Get the f–k out of America, b—–s.” …
Brooklyn prosecutors said her attack included an attempt to knock over a stroller carrying a 15-month-old baby.
Happily, the baby (and both mothers) are ok, and Xhelili was quickly arrested.
The alleged attacker is, of course, a Trump supporter. The Daily News notes that
Her vile social media musings include several bizarre tweets cheering the candidacy of Donald Trump.
“America is the ark of Noah,” one reads. “Trump’s gonna win.”
Such is life in America fifteen years after 9/11.
H/T — Raw Story/Liberaland for highlighting the Trump quote.
Kupo is right on the money! I love the Far Side too, when we had to put our dog down when I was in middle school all I did was read those comics for about a week straight.
John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes:
http://img01.deviantart.net/f73b/i/2007/300/2/d/john_calvin_and_thomas_hobbes_by_spacecoyote.jpg
@ kupo & kittycartel
I should have guessed. Calvin is a bit of a role model to me. And I love Far Side. Use a lot of them in the animal rights stuff.
“Remember me? Kenya 1965?” etc.
@kupo
Thousand dong stare? :p
And the deer in the woods, berating itself to think, think who could possibly have a motive to be coming after it …
Here’s something I thought you guys might find amusing. For reasons I’m having to go through some old Al Qaeda documents. I’ve just got to a bit in the translation where they refer to Fox News.
How bad is your news organisation that Al Qaeda think you’re dodgy?!
One of the worst things the Tory government have done is to ruin things for volunteer workers, especially those in the arts and charities. For very many people, experience is a steppingstone to bigger things, and as most libraries, museums and galleries are non profit, they like to employ students and hobbyists who are passionate about the subject matter. For example, local geological museum has a couple of paid full timers and a lot of passionate amateurs, and after I graduated, I started volunteering at the Pallant gallery in Chichester, who greatly appreciated the time I put in. All the libraries on the IOW are now run by retired people. The problem now is that people doing this kind of work whilst claiming JSA are being told that they have to make themselves available for paid work, even if it is Workfare or a zero hour position, thus providing a multinational like Tesco, Starbucks or McDonald’s with a worker they don’t even have to pay, whilst robbing a charity of a dedicated and valuable team member. Being told that you have removed yourself from the jobs market by volunteering, at this risk of sanctions and being sent on mandatory courses run by quangos is counter productive. The same thing happens to people who work in charity shops, as well as helpers for special needs clients and on arts projects. When Cameron was crowing about the ‘Big Society’ and volunteer work, he only meant that people who had retired and had money in the bank. What he got wrong was the volunteers would be young people, wanting to do something they love to benefit society rather than chasing paid employment with industries which do not fulfill them, and which take advantage of them.