"Men are apt to mistake the strength of
their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind
resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic." -William E. Gladstone
I am still insanely upset about the treatment of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14 year old boy arrested by the City of Irving Police department and suspended by his school, MacArthur High School, for three days following an incident that is utterly asinine. Part of what makes me so disgusted with the incident is the fact that both the police department, town and school have completely justified their actions by using modern day events to play on the fears and insecurities of our nation. The same tactics used by politicians, but I will get into that later. I am bothered even more because the kid, and he is literally a child, 14 years old, never lied about what is was, never even tried to pass it off as something else. Mostly because it there was nothing to pass it off as and secondly because he is a naive child who depends on adults, like all children, to make the right decisions and to treat them fairly. He experienced none of those things and I have yet to hear an "I am sorry" from any party. Only justification. At the very least say, "We may have overreacted" and the most, "I am sorry, we overreacted, and we apologize that we humiliated you, assumed the worst in you, and put you and your family through something you did not deserve. You are a smart kid with a bright future."
What really gets me is that if the teacher was so disturbed by what it might have been, and asked, which it looks like they did and he said clock, then why did that teacher then ask the student how it works. If he says it is a clock and can tell you how he made it, it probably is a harmless clock. Furthermore, why in the world are so many people jumping to the defense of the school, teacher and police. This was a fourteen year old boy in what we can assume in his first few weeks at a high school, and yet they automatically assumed he was doing something wrong. Something scary. People are using all sorts of scary logic to justify everything this school did and quite honestly it terrifies the hell out of me for many reason.
The first is that, the child never represented his invention as anything other than what it was, so every argument about people getting punished for fake guns, or pop-tarts that look like guns, or any other anecdotal justification in that sense just does not make logical sense. He never represented it as a fake bomb, he never said it was anything other than a clock. The laws of semantics are absolutely clear on this one. The irony of post-modernism is that now people, who despised it at its origination, use it to define things they want to fit their own narratives, regardless of the fact that there is an actual truth to it. YOU CANNOT DO THAT IT IS ILLOGICAL. He said clock, it was a clock, even to many untrained eyes it does not look like a bomb. It has no relational stories about where kids bring in fake guns, or knives or anything of the sort. He brought in a clock and stated as such. We all need to bone up on logic 101 and reading comprehension.
"A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational." Definition of Phobia
The second is in regards to the first, because I cannot figure out a scenario where there is remotely any justification for treating a 14 year old child they way he was treated, I can only condense this down to well, the color of his skin, his name, and his religion. Believe me, I am trying to see the other side. But the facts remain, the school was never evacuated, he was not allowed to call his parents, another teacher in the building knew it was a clock, the boy only ever said it was clock. It cannot be that we are so jaded as a society that we do not give our kids, even our proven overachiever kids the benefit of the doubt. Because, if that is the case then every kid in the nation is subject to this kind of treatment and if that is the case then everyone should be scared as hell for their own children. I have worked a lot with teenage kids and I just do not see that being the case however. It really burns me that the teacher, nor anyone at the school asked him how it worked or how he built it. If it was not really a clock he would not be able to have a conversation about it. But that would involve a sort of trust that this kid, born in America, was not granted.
To me it feels like it was about humiliation. Small minded men exerting their power over a young boy, who neither lied nor threatened anyone. That just disgusts me and the what compounds my emotions is that not one adult yet has come out and said maybe we should say sorry. But what can we expect from a town of a quarter of a million people who elect an openly Islamophobic mayor. (As noted here, http://www.carbonated.tv/news/texas-irving-mayor-beth-van-duyne-islamophobia-sharia-court, here, http://houston.cbslocal.com/2015/09/17/irving-mayor-edits-facebook-post-about-ahmed-mohameds-arrest/, and here, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/irving-school-district-ahmed-mohamed ) Therein lies the crux of this problem. Our nations is hurtling down a dangerous path. A path that our founding fathers and those who came after did not fight for. A path that our presidential candidates and other politicans court in earnest as evident of Mr. Trump's latest town hall. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/us/politics/donald-trump-obama-muslim.html?_r=0 It has nothing to do with not correcting him about Obama, it is to wacko to even acknowledge but to sit by and laugh while an ignorant jerk asks pretty much when the Muslim population from this country is going to be expelled is beyond disgusting. If Trump had any decency he would not have the man escorted out. Instead he says, "We are going to work that." WTF people. Lets get our heads out of our crazy holes. I have ZERO tolerance for Islamophobia or any other hate mongering ideals that proliferating too many people in this country, unchecked. Small minds breed hate-
"When the leaders choose to make themselves
bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction
of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers
instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people." -Edmund Burke
Here is the get down to it facts. The facts that matter, that matter not only logically, but as human beings with emotions. With the ability to think emphatically and sympathetically and if you cannot, I am sorry but you are animal. Literally. If you do not have intellect great enough to gain knowledge about something you irrationally fear, if you do not have the courage to come face-to-face with what you do not know, then you are nothing more than an ostrich with its head in hole of ignorance. There are estimated 1.57 billion people of the Islamic faith in the world that is still only 23% of the whole entire population of the world, of that, there are 2.77 million in the United States. Folks, that is giant, 0.9% of our population of over 300 million people. If you are having trouble comprehending that, it is less than 1%. I cannot believe how threatened people feel by less than 1% of our population in the United States. Furthermore, from the limited amount of research I have been able to do, I have ran across figures anywhere from 93%-88% of the worlds Islamic population do NOT support extremism, making the varying amount of figures of 5%-10% of the worlds Islamic population as supporting or actively participating in extremist activity. The fact of the matter remains is that different people use different questions and yardsticks to measure. Lets use one of those easy anecdotal ones we so love in the United States, out of all the recent mass shootings CNN reported that over 64% were committed by white males, 16% by African American males, 9% by Asian Americans, with the small amount left by Latinos, Native Americans and unknown. But, yeah, watch out for a new 14 year old freshman and a clock.
When you look at the rhetoric, the misconceptions, the playing on an irrational fear of others, then yeah, maybe I can get grown-ups treating a 14 year old boy as a threat. But I can't. I am a human being and in him I see all the new freshman at the high school I was lucky to work at for a while. I see the ones that struggle to adjust to life as a high schooler. I see my nephew and pray to whatever is out there, that he is never treated this way stripped of dignity and pride of accomplishment. I see all the people I am lucky enough to know who practice the Islamic faith and my heart breaks that hey have to hear the shit that comes out of the mouth of the ignorant and uneducated population of this country. It destroys me that people like Mr. Trump and others in his position refuse to stand up for an important segment of our population. This segment who wakes up every morning just like you and goes to work, sends their kids to school and contributes to this society. I am frustrated that people take the word of someone else and lets hate infiltrate their hearts based on flawed facts, logic, and reasoning. And for what, because it feeds a rhetoric of built-up fear, fear of the other? "But what is liberty without wisdom, and
without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is
folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."- Edmund Burke
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