Call ’em ALL evil, not just the Muslims

Like clockwork, the conservative spin machine is out to make sure we all know that the San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook, was a terrorist. His wife, too.

Based on what we know so far, I don’t necessarily disagree with that assessment. Not even a little bit.

What is preposterous, though, is the ease with which a Muslim American is labeled a terrorist when good old white Christian mass murderers like Robert Lewis Dear (the Planned Parenthood shooter) and Dylann Roof (the Charleston, S.C. church shooter) just don’t draw the same designation from conservatives.

What it looks like is that conservatives are saying that one must be a Muslim to be a terrorist or that one has to have been radicalized in the Middle East to be a terrorist. It’s as if one cannot be both white and a terrorist.

How many reports have you heard about the mental health of Syed Farook? I’ve watched the news in an endless loop on multiple networks and I haven’t heard one mention of it. I heard all about the possibility that his trip to Saudi Arabia radicalized him and the makes and models of his guns, but the possibility that he was mentally ill never happened to come up.

As I look up at the television screen right now, the headline on Fox News reads, “San Bernardino attack raises concerns for more terror.” Again, I’m not saying this is wrong, but understand this — when Roof shot and killed nine men and women at Emanuel AME Church, every single black church in America was on high alert for weeks.

When Dear killed three and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic last week, it raised safety concerns for women’s health centers all over the nation.

The point is not that Americans should go easy on radical Islam, but that violent white supremacists, fundamental Christians and radical Muslims should be treated with the same seriousness.

They aren’t.