Choose wisdom over Trump

Pol­i­tics and big­otry over death – that is the max­im of the Orlan­do mas­sacre, extend­ing to the bat­tle­field of the high­ly polar­ized Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. 49 civil­ians in a gay night­club gunned down by a man of Afghan descent — it has become the apt recipe for Repub­li­can can­di­date Don­ald Trump to reboot his hate pol­i­tics against the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. With the sup­port and bless­ing of the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, Trump has insu­lat­ed the tragedy in America’s vin­tage ‘ter­ror’ nar­ra­tive – which has hurt Mus­lim Amer­i­cans ever since 9/11. Repub­li­cans have irre­spon­si­bly glossed over how a mon­ster can eas­i­ly acquire an assault rifle and end human life at will – empha­siz­ing that arm­ing more and more Amer­i­can cit­i­zens is key to pre­vent­ing such tragedies.

The nar­ra­tive is bol­stered by 3 basic argu­ments. One, Omar Mateen was of Afghan descent, even though he was born and brought up in the Unit­ed States. Two, the mas­sacre was an intel­li­gence fail­ure where he was on the FBI watch list and an open inves­ti­ga­tion was closed against him. Three, and the most ridicu­lous argu­ment from Fox News, a ban on assault weapons would not work as Mateen could have used a ‘crock pot’ to car­ry out the mas­sacre.

First­ly, no one’s race makes him or her a mass mur­der­er. Mateen was an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen and had no ties to Afghanistan. He nev­er trav­elled to the Mid­dle East to even sug­gest any links with ter­ror groups. Only the colour of his skin and his name allowed him to fit into a ‘ter­ror’ pro­file. The same for­mu­la ignores cas­es where the shoot­er is a white ‘Chris­t­ian’ like Dylann Roof who car­ried out the Charleston church mas­sacre killing 9 peo­ple in June 2015 and Adam Lan­za who car­ried out the Sandy Hook ele­men­tary school mas­sacre in Decem­ber 2012, killing 28 peo­ple includ­ing 20 chil­dren. These shoot­ers are seen as psy­chopaths, poster boys of a bro­ken com­mu­ni­ty, but Mateen is a ter­ror­ist.

Orlan­do was not even an intel­li­gence fail­ure. Omar Mateen did not drop off the FBI watch list because of snooz­ing agents — there was no evi­dence against him. The file on Mateen was closed as he had not joined any ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, did­n’t attend­ed a ter­ror train­ing camp, or com­mu­ni­cat­ed with ter­ror oper­a­tives about any plots. Sus­pects can­not be held for crimes they have not com­mit­ted, and even a per­fect law and order sys­tem can­not pre­vent crime, as it can nev­er pre­dict it with absolute cer­tain­ty. It is a trade off we make for lib­er­ty.

The argu­ment of the gun lob­by oscil­lates between absurd extremes: Any form of reg­u­la­tion is equiv­a­lent to total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment con­trol while on the oth­er hand it is argued that gun reg­u­la­tion nev­er works. It is baf­fling how that case with­stands scruti­ny. By the same log­ic, drug laws should be sus­pend­ed as they con­tin­ue to be freely avail­able, and immi­gra­tion rules should be scrapped as peo­ple con­tin­ue to enter the Unit­ed States ille­gal­ly. The rhetoric becomes dan­ger­ous when Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates like Trump say that the Paris attack could have been avert­ed if the vic­tims were armed. As a ludi­crous safe­ty mea­sure, he has even advo­cat­ed that peo­ple be allowed to car­ry con­cealed weapons in clubs.

On the oth­er side of the debate, Hillary Clin­ton has tak­en a stand against the hate mon­ger­ing, promis­ing stronger gun con­trol if elect­ed Pres­i­dent. She has empha­sized that ter­ror should nev­er shake a nation’s faith in plu­ral­i­ty adding that greater uni­ty and accep­tance is key to pre­vent the mar­gin­al­iza­tion that fuels the ter­ror ide­ol­o­gy.
This mes­sage is now being tak­en for­ward by Mus­lim Democ­rats in Flori­da, who have teamed up with gay rights activists to counter the vit­ri­ol of the Repub­li­can camp. The 2016 elec­tions is the first time the Flori­da Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cau­cus. In the wake of the Orlan­do mas­sacre, the group is cham­pi­oning a unique polit­i­cal pitch to gal­va­nize an alliance with the gay com­mu­ni­ty, high­light­ing that both groups are reg­u­lar­ly mis­un­der­stood and sub­ject to dis­crim­i­na­tion, also find­ing com­mon ground in oppos­ing Trump’s ascen­sion to the White House. The Amer­i­can Mus­lim Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cau­cus aims to ral­ly the 700,000 mem­ber Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty in Flori­da against the Repub­li­can can­di­date, where only 200,000 are cur­rent­ly reg­is­tered to vote.

Oppo­nents have dubbed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s sup­port to the Mus­lim cau­cus in Flori­da as its inabil­i­ty to address ‘rad­i­cal Islam’, but the group’s polit­i­cal push is the need of the hour in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. It is a nec­es­sary force to bol­ster Hillary Clinton’s nar­ra­tive for stronger gun reg­u­la­tion against the ven­omous and divi­sive lan­guage of the Repub­li­cans and NRA who have used the Orlan­do tragedy to spread fear and fan com­mu­nal hatred. It is potent for the ide­o­log­i­cal counter to emanate from the state where the ter­ror attack took place, and ral­ly Mus­lim vot­ers in Flori­da under the Demo­c­ra­t­ic ban­ner to send out a pow­er­ful mes­sage against Don­ald Trump’s pol­i­tick­ing. The polit­i­cal bloc can also boost the Democ­rats in a state, which has reg­u­lar­ly seen close Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.

The Orlan­do tragedy has revealed the bare bones of the two pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns and the char­ac­ter of their lead­ers. As both sides con­tin­ue to lock horns till Novem­ber, Hillary Clin­ton will con­tin­ue to look more like a states­man, a pan Amer­i­can and uni­fy­ing leader fit to occu­py the White House. Trump mean­while will slow­ly be
exposed as a fool­hardy cow­boy who’s nar­ra­tive of a divid­ed Amer­i­ca has done noth­ing more than erode the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Repub­li­cans, mak­ing social pari­ahs of par­ty lead­ers and vot­ers alike.