Zinn’s chapter on the 2000 election and the war on terrorism was eye opening once again on the horrors of our government system and terrorism. My first surprise was how Bush was elected. It’s clear that Bush only won because of his advantage in the system. He had powerful people rooting for him that made it possible for him to win the Presidency. After the bombing of the World Trade Center, the fright of terrorism was high among Americans and it seems the response taken by the President to bomb Afganistan came out of that fear. This was just another instance in which the government acted almost too harshly, similar to Ford’s bombing of Cambodia. Although, the American citizens at home were much more aware of the cruel nature of things. I always thought the mentality among Americans after 9/11 was revenge, but the way Zinn puts it, that does not seem to be true. Many people disagreed with Bush, “urging that he not match violence with violence” (681). The view of the people was once again not in line with the government. The basis of democracy lies in the hand of the people, but with what we see in history, it seems as though the way the US has been run, it is often not so much of a democracy.
Meanwhile, The Intercept article by Meriam Elba highlights how Islamophobia has been around long before 9/11. The article was very informative and I gained a better understanding of the origins of Islamophobia and how it’s still very apparent in the world today. Something that surprised me was the conversation about black Muslims and how they are rarely represented in the media. I didn’t realize black Muslims make up a quarter of the Muslim population, and it’s obvious there is a reason for that. The media and language used by them and the government has put an image in our minds of what a Muslim is supposed to look and act like. This framework has created this Islamophobia feeling amongst American people, which needs to be broken down. I also found it interesting how Elba talks about Trump’s role in Islamophobia, and the direct correlation he plays to the apparent spread of it. His very campaign of “Make America Great Again” focuses on white supremacy, which is the complete opposite of what the nation as a whole should be doing, when trying to dismantle racism. When the country is being told by the leaders of the country and the press certain things about groups of people, their ability to be persuaded is increasingly high. This shows how the citizens, the people, need to be the ones to say something, as Zinn’s chapter showed before, democracy relies on the people, not the government.
I agree with you on how informative this article was! Elba’s points about black Muslims are interesting in that blackness lost its association with religion due to the Atlantic Slave Trade in the New World. As enslaved Africans were being reduced to something far less than human, they could not make justifiable claims to the Islam faith as their Arab and South Asian brethren who could demonstrate their whiteness to receive citizenship.
I always knew that a lot of Islamophobia sprung up from 9/11. However, I never realized how our anti-Islamic feelings started hundreds of years before.
I was surprised because I hadn’t known about how Bush won the election. A big part of history around 9/11 was how the United States responded to the attack with bombings. Bush was a proponent of a strong military force. If Gore was president, I wonder what the response would have been.
I also was surprised that people did not necessarily agree with the bombings, and some didn’t want to get revenge. Do you think that this was fear of another retaliation, or the desire for no more bloodshed?