This one follows a very familiar pattern. Here are the steps:
- Public figure makes a statement that's in line with what most people think, and say privately, but is considered beyond the pale for polite public discussion.
- Media goes into overdrive reporting the story, except that there is no story. The mere fact that he expressed the opinion is the story, portrayed of course as the utterance of forbidden words.
- Internet freaks out, except that the freakout is not so much about him being wrong as about the firestorm he should have known he'd invite by saying it, and this being proof that he is "not ready for prime time" or some such thing.
Bottom line: Don't say things that almost everyone agrees with, but that would never the less cause the Professional Outrage Industry to do its thing on social media.
So: If a Muslim were to somehow become president of the United States, do you think anyone might be concerned about that? Of course. Just about everyone would be, since it would be natural to question whether a Muslim would have mixed sympathies given the reality of who our global geopolitical enemies are. Or to put it another way, who the terrorists are. Given this fairly obvious concern, most Americans would think it a better idea to avoid putting a Muslim in the White House. They might not say it publicly because they would not want to invite a media s***storm, but convince them they would not be publicly upbraided for their point of view, heck yes, just about everyone admits they think what Ben Carson said on Meet the Press:
As idiotic as this freakout is, it's a really effective object lesson on the working of both media bias and the left's techniques for silencing those with points of view the left finds inconvenient.
It started with the invention of a non-existent thing called "Islamophobia." Now a phobia is the irrational fear of something that in reality is not a threat to you. Arachnophobia is the fear of spiders, as an example. If you've ever lived with someone who has Arachnophobia, you know you're going to spend a lot of time smushing those completely harmless little things because, no matter how much you insist Boris can't hurt anything or anyone, it makes no difference. It's irrational and you  know it. The person with the phobia might even understand on an intellectual level that it's irrational. But there it is, so you just have to deal with it.
But unlike spiders, Islamic terrorists present a very real threat. The left wants to present suspision of Islam as irrational just like the fear of spiders, elevators or Friday the 13th, because that not only forwards the narrative of conservatives as racists but also helps to justify left-wing policies of passivity toward the threat radical Islam represents.
The media's job is to accept this proposition completely and exercise news judgment as if it is 100 percent accurate. So when someone like Ben Carson says a Muslim president is not a good idea, the media don't have to write editorials disguised as news stories blatantly attacking him. They simply imply, by reporting the story at all, that Carson's words are weird, crazy and outlandish.
But of course they're not. Just about everyone in America understands that it would be a huge issue if a Muslim candidate were to get close to the presidency. The media would try to silence the discussion, but discomfort would be widespread over the prospect of a president with divided loyalties. It would be right to talk about it. It would be crazy
not to talk about it. But the left is desperate not to talk about it, and hopes that Internet freakouts like this will discourage anyone else who recognizes the legitimacy of the concern from speaking up and saying so.
That's what we've come to. A candidate who says out loud what almost everyone thinks gets destroyed for it, while the punditry excoriates him for, I guess, not having the shrewdness to know he should have said some sort of BS instead of saying what he really believes. All this is terrible, but here's what's worse: When one of these s***storms erupts, the voters reward the people who start it by rejecting the candidate who had the temerity to speak the truth.
