Earlier this week, I was reading Belle Waring’s hilarious take down of Richard Dawkins and the other Islamophobes about the whole Ahmed Mohamed clock incident, When a Policeman Asks You for a Correct Philosophy of Time, You Give It. I was going to post it as a quote. But then I came upon something she mentioned[1] from someone in the Dawkins crowd. And it is really telling because I’ve heard this kind of argumentation for my entire life. It is designed to sound open-minded, but as I will discuss, it is just the opposite. In fact, Fox News uses this same exact propaganda tool all the time:

Got that? He just doesn’t know. He’s not saying that anything nefarious was going on. He’s just asking questions. It just so happens that this is exactly what the slightly more educated Birthers say, “I don’t know where Obama was born; I’m just asking questions.” Similarly, James Inhofe doesn’t know that global warming is a hoax. He too is just asking questions. This is even true of Holocaust deniers. Obviously, none of this is true of the Little Brains. But anyone with the slightest intellectual sophistication grabs onto the “just asking questions” rhetoric.

Here’s what you need to know about this: there are literally an infinite number of questions that can be asked. The questions that you ask say a great deal about you. So this guy is just asking questions, because he can’t trust the news. If it had been news about a tsunami or a vote in Congress, well, then it wouldn’t occur to him to ask questions or even remember that he can’t trust the news. It’s sad. The guy is a classic example of what I call a subgenius: someone smart, but not incredibly smart, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

The main purpose of his article is to try to show — in a very very Alex Jones kind of way — that Mohamed did not build the clock. Mostly, his point is that it uses old electronics parts. As I noted when I first discussed it: I have done the same thing. I had an electronics lab filled with equipment. I assume Mohamed had old bits of electronics that could be scavenged. Not that it matters. Arguing with this guy would be exactly like arguing with 9/11 Truthers.

This spectacle is hilarious in a certain way. There are people who are classic Islamophobes: people who fear, hate, and distrust Muslims. But like all bigots, they don’t see themselves as bigots. So they come up with elaborate ways to justify their bigotry. But most of all, they are just open-minded. They are just asking questions.

[1] The site is currently down, but it is: clock | Tech Voice – Artvoice. Whether this is because of bad luck, a DDoS attack, or simply because there are lots of people like Richard Dawkins who just can’t get enough of this kind of thing, I can’t say. Here’s a copy: Google cache.

So there has been this whole dust-up about Ben Carson saying that a Muslim shouldn’t be president because, “I do not believe Sharia is consistent with the Constitution of this country.” And then Ted Cruz — Truest Defender of the Constitution™ — pointed out that there is no “religious test” for holding public office. As Martin Longman pointed out, this is true but hardly relevant: Carson wasn’t saying that Muslim’s shouldn’t have a legal right to be president — just that they shouldn’t be president in the same way that Nazis shouldn’t be president. And wouldn’t Ted Cruz agree with that vile comparison? I think he would.

PM Carpenter made a wonderful point about this. Carson also said, “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.” This is the very definition of bigotry: lumping all Muslims together. But this is also a mighty ironic thing coming from a guy who wears his Christianity on his political sleeve. And it’s not just him. All Republicans of recent years have gone out of their way to say that their Iron Age religious beliefs would be the basis of their presidencies.

But as I’ve written about too many times to list, modern American Christianity — and conservative Christianity most of all — is all about cultural signifying. There isn’t much theology going on. It is about Christianity being what the Good Guys believe in. And as such, it is tribal. And that’s why it is totally okay to dump all over Muslims, even if Islam and Christianity aren’t that different theologically. But it is more than that. Hatred of Muslims is pretty much the same as hatred of Mexicans. The Republican Party has the power it has because of deep-seated bigotry on the part of much of its base of voters.

Jonathan Chait wrote an excellent article Monday morning, How Conservatives Explain Away Republican Islamophobia. He mentioned several examples of Republicans making the argument that all this bigotry doesn’t say anything about their party. It’s really annoying, actually. I have no doubt whatsoever that people like Kevin Williamson aren’t personally against Muslims. But they are all firm supporters of the Republican Party as it is. And that is a party that depends upon courting these bigots with subtle and not-so-subtle rhetoric.

As Rick Santorum said about the man who wanted us to do something about the problem of Muslims in this country, “People are entitled to their opinions. We have a First Amendment for a reason.” That’s very much like Ted Cruz’s statement about the religious test: no one questions the man’s right to say those things. The question is whether Republicans are willing to correct this kind of vile thinking. And they aren’t. And the reason they aren’t is the same reason that so much of the base believes this nonsense: the Republican Party has spent decades pushing it, because it is the only way to get more than 50% of the country to vote for its vile economic policies.

Over the weekend, Frank Rich wrote, The Importance of Donald Trump. He summed it up well:

All that Trump shows is that for most of the Republican base, the issue is just bigotry and a vague anger at the world. It isn’t about all the “great” ideas that the Republican Party has for solving America’s problems.

I wasn’t planning on writing about Ahmed Mohamed – the 14 year old boy who got arrested for bringing a digital clock he had built to school. The reason was that I didn’t think it needed comment. I pretty much was that kid, although I didn’t get into this kind of stuff until I was in college. But I built pretty much the same thing outside of class when I was taking digital electronics. It’s a lot of work even if it doesn’t take a great deal of creativity — a fact that I’m sure Mohamed would agree with. But actually getting it to work is totally awesome! And I showed it to everyone, even though no one was as thrilled as I was.

So I totally get the kid. But it didn’t seem worth talking about him because of course everyone would see this as an obvious injustice. It’s like the dentist who killed the lion: everyone agrees so it is really meaningless. It would be like writing an article, “Everyone Is Right: Hitler Was a Bad Guy” or “Mothers Are Necessary for the Continuance of the Species.” But apparently, I was wrong to assume that everyone would be in agreement that the treatment of Mohamed was totally wrong. I hadn’t remembered that Bill Maher existed.

Heather at Crooks & Liars wrote, Bill Maher Justifies 14-Year-Old Being Arrested for Bringing Clock to School. And the video she provided (below) is amazingly vile. Maher is making the argument that this is not racism or even bigotry against Muslims because it just so happens that the last 30 years Muslims have been blowing stuff up. Maher seems totally unaware that bigots at all times and in all places had reasons for their bigotry. Southern segregationists were certain that African Americans were less intelligent and more violent. They had to be kept away from “our women folk.”

But it was worse than Maher. Mark Cuban made repeated mention of something nefarious supposedly going on because during his phone call with Mohamed, his sister was in the background giving him answers to questions. Now this means nothing, other than that maybe a 14 year old nerd isn’t the most media savvy, and mostly feels comfortable talking tech. And that might have something to do with why he wasn’t (by the standards of Mark Cuban) communicative enough with his teachers. But his comments blow apart Maher’s notion that Mohamed is owed an apology. Cuban is implying that there is something behind this all — maybe a test to see if the school was properly guarded against an attack that Mohamed’s sister plans in the future?!

George Pataki was also there talking about “zero tolerance.” But they had already established that this never would have happened to a white kid. And the idea that this looks like a bomb is ridiculous. When I was a kid, my friends and I made bombs — although it might be more accurate to call them glorified firecrackers. But the thing about a bomb is that you need some material to explode. This was an empty case with a couple of circuit boards. If it “exploded,” the worst it would do is burn the hands of the person holding the box.

Heather pointed out something that gets to the very heart of this. She asked of the teachers and administrators, “If any of them actually believed that this kid brought a bomb to school, why wasn’t the school immediately evacuated?” And the answer is obvious: because none of them actually thought that. And rather than arresting Mohamed, why didn’t the police get a bomb expert while they simply detained the boy?

The problem here is exemplified with Maher, Cuban, and Pataki: they all find reasons to suspect a particular minority group. It wasn’t at all surprising that Jorges Ramos was the only one who made any sense. He has direct experience with the way the white majority makes up its own myths to justify its hatred of minority groups. History will not judge Maher as the brave truth teller he fancies himself on this issue. He will be seen as having a major blind spot about Muslims — kind of like Thomas Jefferson and slavery.