Remembering terrorism/Forgetting terrorism

This is a new license plate template available to Oklahoma drivers. As many commenters [1] point out on ThinkProgress's post concerning this world-historic monument to bad taste, there is something surreal about the state that suffered the Murrah Federal Building bombing to join the rest of the nation in pigeonholing terrorism as something only swarthy Arabs do. A "Global War Against Irrational Hatred of Government" would make about as much sense as this. Or "Global War Against Psychotically Aggrieved White Men." Or Oklahomans could just come out and say it: "Glad Of An Opportunity To Declare My Antipathy To Swarthy People."

Check out, too, the fascist semiotics. There's just so much argument packed into these simple graphic elements. The background is desert camo. As in: the only way to prevent terror is more soldiers. As in: If you're not ready to make war the swarthy in Iraq, for as long as the Unitary Executive says, then you betray the bald eagle. You're not quite American. You hate the victims of 9/11.

As someone who breathed in the ash of the 9/11 victims, living across the river in Brooklyn in 2001, whenever I hear people imply that, I feel like punching them in the face. But that's kind of the point of this object: dividing Americans, hating liberals, staging occasions for self-righteously reading them out of the national community. That's just what conservatives do. That's who they are.