Mr. King and Mr. McDonough each took pains on Sunday to say that he had no quarrel with the other. “We welcome any involvement in the issue,” Mr. McDonough said of the hearings. “It’s an important issue.”
No, actually, it’s not. At least, not in the way the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings on “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and That Community’s Response” suppose that it is.
The United States is a populous country with a lot of guns. As with any population, some segment of the population is unstable, for lack of a better term; at any given point in time, some number of people are close to deciding to kill a bunch of strangers for the sake of avenging Muslims/becoming famous/stopping government sponsored grammar-based mind control/saving fetuses. Periodically, one of these people goes off. If that person is a Muslim, they’re a terrorist; random white guys are crazy or ‘tax protester[s].’
This is certainly a problem or ‘important issue’ for our society, but it’s not the issue Representative King wants to address in his little hearings, nor is it the problem addressed by the security apparatus’s long list of foiled plots that they themselves instigated.
What he have here is a great way to win a few votes from constituents scared of monsters hiding under their beds.
