When foundations and other flunkies are engaging in post-modern behavior modification campaigns, sometimes they lose sight of what they're going. I'm being charitable. I don't think they are even remotely aware of where the missing word belongs here:
So it seems that you're expected to pledge that any loud mook
double-parking in Teheran is also your fellow American.
I was alerted to this by way of an email I received requesting that we post a link to this campaign on this site. It was addressed politely, but so badly thought out, that I simple have to decline. It was sent by someone, it turns out, who comes to this as an academic feminist: a real student of not just sculpting images, but from a school of thought convinced that it isn't founded on the principle of class warfare. I suppose she told herself that she had to be especially nice to the ones who aren't on the usual mailing list of foundation types whose "work" is inherently unproductive in any real social or economic terms: raising "awareness" among those whose awareness and personae is a caricature to begin with.
Besides: I KNOW that American Muslims are my fellow Americans. My sense is that everyone else I know knows that as well. SO WHO exactly is this ritual crapola for? Judging by the youth and geographic ambiguity of the people who have linked to it, my guess is that it's supposed to fit the feel-okay-this-is-nice-nothingness crowd that is largely made up of college students from the US and abroad. My sense is also that the audience for the display it a foreign one in a bid to "better like us", despite the fact that they know where they need to immigrate to, to experience genuine freedom of though and conscience.
It also seems to be structured around outlook modification based on a false premise that Americans, in a conflict with near-east terrorism are at war with a religion, in preparation of some supposed "orgy of internecine violence" that will overcome whitey on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
Sorry, but that mental bugaboo is THEIR problem, not ours. We are no more at war with Islam, as we were at war with the Orthodox Church when we were shutting down Solbodan Milosevic. We are neither that stupid, or that inhumane to fit the profile that activism imagines the public to be, or perhaps needs us to be to justify their existence.
Like all of these campaigns, they are tacitly insulting and patronizing. Muslim Americans are my fellow Americans - that's a fact that doesn't need some sort of "pledge".
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