It's not really a big shock that they're thinking this, is it? It's the same instinct they showed after 9/11, when they seemed as concerned about the (mostly imaginary) blowback against Muslims as they did about the actual attack. This is pretty standard thinking among left-wingers and their media allies, who will talk amongst themselves about how those simpleton Americans will want to start burning down mosques or whatever.
I guess it just shows how much they think this narrative has gone mainstream that one of them, Salon's David Sirota, is so unafraid to go ahead and put it on the record:
Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.
See? It's going to be awfully tough to enact domestic policies that reflect the lack of a threat from Islamic terrorists if it turns out there actually is such a threat. And it's annoyingly difficult for the left to deny the existence of said threat when Islamic terrorists complicate their agenda by actually going ahead and committing acts of terror.
Jerks! We're trying to advance an agenda here and you idiots keep blowing people up.
The only thing I hope about the identity of the perp or perps is that it becomes known, and that we deal in facts rather than politically fueled speculation. Some pundit speculating about Tax Day, etc., is the antithesis of good reporting. You know nothing so you make something up and talk about it as if it's something. And we don't need politicians wringing their hands about the influence of talk radio or whatever, when we might end up discovering - like we did with Jared Loughner - that it's just a lunatic.
And whoever did it, and whatever their motives, it doesn't reflect on the legitimate policy agenda of anyone who is pursuing ideas in a peaceful manner. If the bomber is an extreme left-winger, that's not something to hang around Barack Obama's neck. You debate the merits of his ideas. You don't associate him with someone on the extreme fringes of the spectrum who did something he would never do. And the same is true if it's some neo-right wing, conspiracy-mongering Alex Jones listener. That guy has nothing to do with supply-side economics or deregulation.
I'd like to think that in either case, political and media figures would refrain from trying to make the stretch of a connection, although I'm not confident. And it certainly says something about the thinking of the left that Sirota so openly hopes for a white American as the perp. It shows that he's gearing up already for the game to be played as it usually is.
Which reminds me: Isn't it illegal to be in possession of a bomb like this? Why isn't bomb control working?
