Smell the Reichstag burning

Let’s pretend for the moment that we lived in a hypothetical alternate universe in which Donald Trump actually gave a rat’s ass about preventing terrorism. In that alternate reality, what would he do?

Well, the first thing he would do is issue a travel ban against Saudi Arabia. After all, that’s where the terrorists who killed actual Americans came from in 2001.

But of course we don’t live in that Disney-esque fantasy. We live in a world in which Donald Trump has business interests in Saudi Arabia.

So why is he being so transparent? I think he actually wants us to know that he doesn’t give a damn about any real threat of terrorism. That is why he has pointedly, ostentatiously, excluded Saudi Arabia from his Potemkin travel ban. Instead of implementing an effective policy, the ban includes only hapless Islamic countries that have never posed any threat to the U.S.

The message is clear: It’s not about actual threats of terrorism. It’s about stoking American Islamophobia — even if Trump’s irresponsible policies allow actual terrorists to enter our shores.

I suspect it’s even worse than that. The Trump administration doesn’t really want to prevent international terrorism against the U.S. Otherwise, Saudi Arabia would have been first on their list.

Rather, they optimizing for an actual terrorist attack, because then they can declare a state of emergency — all in the name of defending our country. An effective policy to prevent errorist attacks would totally mess with that plan.

Put your nose in the air and inhale. You can practically smell the Reichstag burning.

One thought on “Smell the Reichstag burning”

  1. The sad thing with using Godwin’s infamous point is that, when the wolf finally come, no one listen.

    (I’m currious if we could use a matching alternative the human brain will never be desensitize about, surely not something historically real and finite, maybe more a traumatic pop culture child reference. In the future A.I. might change texts to match descriptions with their reader’s emotional map, like A.R. for their environment).

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