Mind-Numbing but Unabashed Ignorance

Here is an item written by Larry Klayman for the Far-Right media site World Net Daily:

“As we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and rejoice in the greatness of His and the Father’s universe, we turn to the New Year. A traditional ritual is reflecting on the past year, and as Time Magazine does, anointing the most prominent person of 2015. Indeed, 2015 has been for all practical purposes the ‘Year of the Muslim.’ So I will satirically recognize the most influential “Muslim of the Year,” someone who has cleverly through various means, radically changed the world order and most furthered the Islamic caliphate based on the death of all infidels to Allah.

“The contestants were Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, leader of ISIS (Islamic State); Bashar al-Assad, the dictator president of Syria; Mullah Akhtar Mansour and Akhund, co-leaders of the Taliban; Sayed Hassan-Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah; Khaled Mashai, leader of Hamas; Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council for American Islamic Relations; and none other than our fraudulently twice-elected president, Barack Hussein Obama.

“It was a close contest. Initially, as in the Miss Universe pageant, the prize inadvertently was announced to have gone to two co-contestants: Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, supreme leader of Iran, and Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS–-one a Shiite and the other a Sunni Muslim, but both evil Islamic terrorists heading up major nations and terrorist groups who have wreaked deadly bloodthirsty havoc on Christians, Jews and other ‘non-believers.’ Need we say more about Iran, which carries out, supports and finances Islamic terrorism worldwide and now is on the verge of assembling atomic bombs with the delivery system to reach U.S. shores? ISIS speaks for itself, a brutal and well-financed terrorist organization that has captured huge swaths of the Middle East and is beheading Christians and Jews right and left, thus attempting to destroy our Judeo-Christian way of life and our infrastructure and defenses. And, it has Israel, the United States and Western Europe firmly in its sights. The Paris and San Bernardino bombings and shootings are just as warm-up act for these vicious Muslim fanatics.

“But when the card at the award ceremony for ‘Muslim of the Year’ announcing their victory was double checked and inspected by independent experts on terrorism, it was revealed that the prize was, in reality, meant for our own supreme leader, Barack Hussein Obama. . . .”

Time--Obama--Muslim of the Year

The rest of this manifoldly offensive nonsense can be found at: http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/muslim-of-the-year/#3HylhkepEd8kKHLB.99

Larry Klayman is a lawyer known for pursuing and promoting controversial causes through lawsuits. A summary of just the highlights of his career fills several pages of a Wikipedia post. Most notoriously, he took legal action to block the long-planned construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York. He also sued the Obama administration for “secretly allow[ing] the Ebola virus to enter the United States so it could be used against Americans of the ‘Caucasian race and Jewish-Christian religion.’” And, as one of the original “birthers,” he tried legally to prevent Obama’s inauguration as president by arguing that his foreign birth makes him ineligible to serve in the office. The best that can be said for Klayman is that he is consistent, for he has also expressed doubts about Ted Cruz’s eligibility for the office.

All of this “lunatic fringe” political paranoia would be darkly funny if it were not so tiresome and so politically calculated—and if it were not becoming increasingly accepted in our “mainstream” politics and “mainstream” media.

For the most part, the media has abjectly failed to identify and to denounce political extremism that has no justification but to perpetuate and to accentuate its own appeal. If one keeps reasserting the truth of something that is very clearly a lie, the “true believers” can continue to feel that they simply recognize a truth that everyone else is too confused or too deluded to accept. In effect, ignorance is celebrated as insight, and the circularity and insularity of this perspective makes it almost impervious to knowledge–to evidence, rationality, and actual thought. Worse, the media has somehow begun to regard the mere persistence and conspicuousness of such ignorance as a measure of its legitimacy.

Just to be clear, I do not think that it is likely that the percentage of ignorant voters is actually increasing; rather, the legitimizing of “lunatic fringe” political paranoia has simply emboldened the ignorant to revel more publicly in their ignorance. And those most directly benefitting from this exploitation of ignorance have been very happy to provide them with both the public opportunities and the political cover to do so.

 

 

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