The Confidence Man reads with mounting horror and disdain the news that the FBI has been infiltrating mosques and Muslim community centers to monitor for radiation.
Leaving aside the issue that the Bushists have NEVER been serious about controlling nuclear proliferation, cracking down on Pakistan and various rogue international nuclear actors, or securing chemical and nuclear facilities in the US, we wish to conduct a little historical thought experiment.
Recall that, in the 1990s, the US was subject to a rash of terrorist acts perpetrated by, on the main, straight, Christian, Caucasian men: Oklahoma City, the Atlanta Olympic Village bombing, abortion clinic bombings, abortion doctor shootings and harassment, the Unabomber (granted, Ted K. was neither a Christian nor straight per se), the James Byrd and Matthew Shepard lynchings (among others), and Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Montana Freemen (these three being Federal assaults on terrorist threats as or more genuine than, say Vincent Padilla or the melt-the-Brooklyn-Bridge-with-soldering-irons ding-dongs), as well as various and sundry un- or under-reported incidents.
The country, at the time, was under assault by a loosely aggregated white/Christian-identity network no less organized or well-funded than al Qaeda -- and no less hostile to classic Western Liberal Enlightenment values of liberte, egalite, fraternite, et al.
Imagine, then, the reaction if Clinton and Reno had justifiably decided to infiltrate CHURCHES in the '90s to monitor radiation levels.
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