Good catch. I’m pretty sure, when I was 14, I would have buckled to the pressure and have ended up in Gitmo if I were accused by the freaking government of a heinous crime and then denied counsel of any kind.
I say that because in high school I got off easy after an incident where I actually broke things in a rage I chose to wind myself up into for dumb “chivalrous” reasons involving willfully disregarding the truth in order for a better story.
In any case, Ahmed Mohamed is a much smarter person than I was at his age.
When you grow up brown in a country that hates you, you learn at home at your parents’ knees how to handle yourself for the inevitable conflict with white people in authority.
That’s the thing - they always treated it as a “hoax bomb” not “bomb hoax.” That is, no one, at any point thought it was a real bomb - they thought it was a harmless electronic device that a Muslim would have no reason to be carrying unless they were going to use it to convince someone it was a bomb. That is, it was never seen as anything but an object that might be used to create the illusion of a bomb. Except the owner at no point suggested that it was dangerous, and always insisted it was a clock - which is why the cops were badgering him to “admit” he intended to make people think it was a bomb at some future point. But since the only people suggesting that it might look like a bomb were the authorities, and within the school itself there was never any panic, fear or threat (except that posed by those authorities), there was no potential threat, and nothing to protect the children from except their own intervention.
My first reaction was to think how nice it would be if someone would say, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” and then I realized that it is being said, and not just by one person but by multiple voices.
The problem is it’s being drowned out by those who regard their lack of decency as a virtue.
And this, children, was another sign in the early 21st century that the period of American progress and expansionism was coming to an end as the growing technical ignorance and the rise of religious fundamentalism resulted in fewer and fewer Americans learning science and engineering, while students from the rest of the world populated their research facilities and took the knowledge home with them.
…Yes, Ahmed?
…Yes, Christian fundamentalism. I should have mentioned that.
And he will be back soon. Sanders, and the growing visibility of Russia in the ME. I guess Trump and Fiorina will fight one another to be chair of the new Un-American Activities Committee.
