Stats Report: Bigotry Edition

Ah, the internet.

I don’t know, though. Maybe this one is hard to explain.

To start with, it’s been an unusual day with high traffic to the blog. Hardly the highest, but still, nearly thirty-fold surge compared to the usual trickle of readers.

Naturally, this interested me.

Among the stats available to me are the search terms used to access the blog. It’s generally an interesting survey; we might be surprised how many people, this many years later, search for “nancy amons porn”; we hate to disappoint them, but life is what it is.

Yesterday, though, we posted a note on anti-Islamic bigotry in Virginia. No real surprise there, of course; after all, it’s a country club in Virginia. But the post did draw some hits (something like twenty-nine, if we must be specific; yes, quite impressive).

And it’s the list of terms that brought people to the post that snatches my attention:

• dahlberg pikrallidas

• muslim beating and country club of fairfax

• ed dahlberg

• edward dahlberg fairfax

• dahberg beat up stupid muslim [sic]

• ed dahlberg of clifton, va

• “ed dahlberg”

There are, of course, a couple others; there’s the people obsessed with one particular corrupt Washington State Patrol trooper, and the time I fretted about my liver after realizing the dosage of a painkiller.

But, yes, aside from those two, the rest of the search results had to do with Ed Dahlberg’s alleged assault against Mohammed Salim.

It’s one of those things that you wonder if someone is doing intentionally, for your benefit: “dahberg beat up stupid muslim”.

I mean, it even has the semi-literate typo.

Life goes on (for the living).

But, seriously, whether you’re a half-assed provocateur or a half-wit bigot, thank you for the chuckle. We appreciate it greatly.

Whack-A-Muslim on the Country Club Tip

Oh, the country club set. Who else can bring such proud drama to the American heritage?

An Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a cabdriver says a passenger he picked up early Friday at a Northern Virginia country club accused him of being a terrorist because he is Muslim, then fractured his jaw in an attack being described by Islamic activists as a hate crime.

Mohamed A. Salim says the passenger compared him to the men accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing 11 days earlier and threatened to kill him.

The Washington Post report from Joe Stephens and Justin Jouvenal reports that Ed Dahlberg, of Clifton, Virginia, has through his attorney released a statement asserting his innocence:

Ed Dahlberg of Clifton, who has been charged with misdemeanor assault, denied hitting Salim in a statement released by his attorney ….

…. Dahlberg’s attorney, Demetry Pikrallidas, said Dahlberg did not assault Salim. Even so, he said, Dahlberg wanted to apologize to anyone offended by his remarks. Dahlberg was profoundly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks, Pikrallidas said, and misunderstood Salim’s response to his questions.

Dahlberg “became rather emotional as the discussion turned to jihad and 9/11, and especially heated on the subject of jihadists who want to harm America,” Pikrallidas said in a statement.

Pikrallidas described Dahlberg as a “hardworking family man and a church-going person” who had been drinking but was not intoxicated. He stressed that Salim’s video shows the ride began with six minutes of friendly conversation.

Perhaps the first thing that stands out is the starkly different claims; Dahlberg did not, according to his attorney, strike Salim. The question therefore arises: When someone asks why you are punching him, if you’re not punching him, don’t tell them that you’re punching him because, “You’re a [expletive] Muslim.”

Just, you know. Simple advice that comes to mind.

Yes. Arkansas.

“If we can’t shoot them, we have to at least be firm in our threat to take immediate action against them politically, socially, and civically if they screw up on something this big. Personally, I think a gun is quicker and more merciful, but hey, we can’t. But we have to do something, we have to gain control of our representatives, if we don’t then what the hell are we doing as a party except having fundraiser dinners and meetings just to raise more money for future meetings and fundraisers, and giving money to empower and elect those who would betray us without having the control to keep them in line once we do?”

—Chris Nogy

Chris Nogy is not happy. Indeed, the man formerly most famous for being married to a Benton County, Arkansas, Republican Party official has earned a new feather for his cap. John Celock explains for The Huffington Post:

Chris Nogy, the husband of a Republican Party official in Arkansas, suggested it was a shame that voters couldn’t just threaten to shoot GOP state legislators who voted for the state’s Medicaid expansion ….

…. Nogy did not similarly target Democratic lawmakers “as bullet backstops,” he wrote, because in voting for Medicaid expansion, they were simply doing what their party wanted them to do.

PoliticsUSA.com reports that Chris Nogy is the husband of the Benton County GOP secretary, Leigh Nogy. Benton County is located in the northwest part of Arkansas, bordering Missouri and Oklahoma.

In his essay, Nogy described Medicaid expansion as a “threat domestic” and said that Republicans “need to get a LOT tougher if we are ever to assure that events like those that took place this week don’t happen again.” He noted that his 13-year-daughter was returning a $200 scholarship and plaque from the Arkansas Federation of Republican Women in protest.

The angry essay has already drawn criticism from fellow Republicans. The Benton County Republican Party condemned it, saying that they do not support shooting Republican lawmakers. And Lt. Gov. Mark Darr (R) tweeted, “The party that gets rid of its crazies first will be the long term majority party in Arkansas,” according to The Arkansas Times.

So far, Nogy is not backing down, though it is worth noting that, sadly, extreme strangeness is hardly a rare phenomenon among Arkansas Republicans. Celock notes that last year, “it was revealed that former state Rep. Charlie Fuqua, who was seeking a return to the Legislature, had written that he wanted to give parents the right to have the state government kill ‘rebellious children,’ and he suggested expelling all Muslims from the country.” And we ought not forget Rep. John Hubbard, who last year published a book arguing, among other things, that—

The institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.

Yes. Arkansas.

Sigh.

Juxtapositions

Juxtapositions are often fun. Dramatic sarcasm, all sorts of punch lines. It does help, though, if the pairings are not arbitrary.

So let’s give it a try.

David Horsey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for SeattlePI.com, considered yesterday the domestic politics of the American role in Libya. And while the article actually is quite interesting, part of his advice for liberals struck me as odd:

… the vision of neo-cons like Paul Wolfowitz was not as wrongheaded as many on the left contend. In the 1990s, Wolfowitz and others in conservative think tanks developed their own domino theory: a move toward democracy in one Arab country would lead to a toppling of dictators in many Arab countries. Yes, trumped up excuses were used to justify the Iraq War in an attempt to start the dominoes falling, but that does not change the reality that the theory has proven to be correct.

The idea of a domino effect is not in itself absurd, that much is true. But Wolfowitz, PNAC, and other neoconservative hawks pushed for a belligerent imperium; the idea that the United States could foment this change through belligerent agitation of the Muslim world is a bit less clear. Indeed, the proposition at least equally risked increasing anti-American sentiments not only in those nations, but also at home and around the world.

We might, then, juxtapose Horsey’s proposition against a certain other notion—that the Arab Spring came about in large part because of economics. In April, the Financial Times opined:

The fundamental dysfunction of Arab countries is that of the rentier state. In oil- and gas-rich countries, natural resources return far more than it costs to extract them. Capturing and controlling this surplus – economic rent – is the chief source of enrichment, hence both the means and the end of power. Meanwhile the tragedy of resource-poor Arab countries is that they create rent artificially when nature has given them none. Monopolies, regulation and bullying all serve to limit access to productive activity, which generates fantastic rewards for a favoured few at the cost of holding back whole nations.

Whatever the source of the rent, the rentier economy is a vicious cycle in which the concentration of economic opportunity and that of political power fuel one another. This is why dignity and livelihood are inseparable in the demands of the excluded Arab majorities that have finally raised their voice. It is also why the political revolutions across the region will succeed only if matched by economic transformations. Even as Egypt and Tunisia grope for political transitions, the economic challenge is urgent.