Aside from doing nothing in response to mass shootings, one of America’s favorite pastimes is touting the virtues of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion. This is a melting pot after all, and post-racial America would never do things like hand pick a woefully underqualified racist to guide our nation or use a 9/11 commemoration ceremony to mock Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Muslim congresswoman.
Yet according to Reuters, the latter is exactly what happened on Wednesday, as Nicholas Haros, whose mother was killed on 9/11, channeled Orange Foolius himself and decided to come for Omar.
From Reuters:
Called up to read some of the names of the victims, Nicholas Haros, whose mother, Frances Haros, was killed in the attack, falsely suggested Omar was confused about the nature of the attack. Echoing Trump, Haros also questioned the Minnesota congresswoman’s patriotism.
“Madam, objectively speaking we know who and what was done,” Haros said, addressing Omar, who was not present at the ceremony. “There’s no uncertainty about that. Why your confusion? On that day 19 Islamic terrorists, members of al Qaeda, killed over 3,000 people and caused billions of dollars of damage. Is that clear?”
Haros’ clapback—if you can call it that—was in reference to a statement that Omar made in March about all the xenophobic bullshit and discriminatory behavior that the Muslim community endures daily.
“CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations] was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” she said at the time, during an annual banquet for CAIR.
Of course, conservatives used her remarks as an excuse to berate and belittle her further, while those of us with common sense knew better. But weary of the GOP’s penchant for hurling death threats and harassment at anything not white and male, Omar told Spencer and Chaz to chill and issued a clarification of her comments to USA Today:
“In my speech, I was talking about how our civil liberties as Muslims were being eroded after the horrific attacks of 9/11. […] I think there is a particular bias and a certain lens that people critique the words I use. And that is not a bias or a lens that I can get rid of with one answer, with one conversation.”
“To some people, it’s easy for them to not think of me as an American, as someone who would not have the same feelings as they did as we were being attacked on American soil,” Omar continued. “And that is really the essence of the conversation I was having. We felt the attack—we were attacked.”
I thought that was pretty obvious, but then again, I’m cursed with common sense.
9/11 affected all of us. We’ve all been forever changed.
As someone who was in the military at the time, I even had the luxury of being deployed to the belly of the beast in its immediate aftermath. So the sooner people like Nicholas Haros and his ilk understand that the sooner we’ll all be better for it.