Violations of Wheaton’s Law From Last Week

I assume most of you are familiar with Wheaton’s Law? I suppose it should be no surprise when national tragedy brings out the lawbreakers, as it did last week. If I were a smarter person, I would have turned off the internet for at least the first 48 hours after the bombing. Alas, instead I ended up spending too much time jumping back and forth between the news and social media sites. While this did help me to stay informed, it also resulted in a fair amount of rage…

6. The “lamestream media” was scared to say what we all knew: the terrorists were Muslim. Political correctness is literally killing us by blinding us to the real enemy!

Go to the FBI’s terrorism report here. Scroll down to the bottom, and start working your way back. How many of those terrorist attacks in the U.S. were committed by Islamic extremists, as opposed to environmental extremists, Jewish extremists, anti-abortion extremists, etc.? Seems to me that if you hear about a terrorist act in the U.S. and your first assumption is IT’S THE MUSLIMS!!!, you’re pretty much just showing off your ignorance and bigotry.

5. You never see Christians doing this stuff / Islam is the religion of hate.

Um … y’all know the KKK is a Christian organization, right? Not to mention the Westboro Baptists. Or the Army of God. Or Hutaree. We’ve got plenty of Christian hate, both historically and in the present day.

You can twist any religion into an excuse for hatred and violence. And while it’s been a long time since I attended Sunday school, aren’t Christians supposed to have that whole, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” thing going on?

And as long as we’re talking about hate, please see this quote from a December 2009 study published by Duke University about the backlash after 9/11:

  • Hate- crimes against Muslims rose from 28 in 2000 to 481 recorded incidents in 2001, and current levels remain about five times higher than prior to 9/11.

4. “I can’t believe that pair in the Boston bombing was NOT Towel Heads. They are Czechoslovakian. F*** Czechoslovakia!”

This is one of a depressingly large number of comments from people who don’t know the difference between Chechnya and the Czech Republic, but weren’t about to let ignorance stop them from spewing hate and racism.

3. I heard this thing on the internet, and even though I have no idea whether or not it’s true, I’m going to repost and retweet it to everyone I know!

There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation after something like this happens. In the first 48 hours, it felt like major news outlets were tripping over each other to get their facts wrong. We’re so hungry for facts–especially facts that might confirm our own biases and assumptions–that we end up spreading an awful lot of misinformation.

2. “I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine?” –Arkansas Rep. Nate Bell

Dude, I don’t care what your position is on gun control. You’re an asshole.

1. Pretentious, holier-than-thou bloggers getting up on their high horses to go on and on about other people’s dickish behavior.

Um…aw, crap.

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Because this was depressing, I’m working on a follow-up post giving examples of people being awesome in the aftermath of tragedy.