The Always Aggrieved League

Part of the Right’s perpetual victim complex is, necessarily, the Blame Game, as you can’t be a victim without someone or something having victimized you. Conservatives who succumb to this phenomenon are constantly on the lookout for people and places at which to point an accusatory finger; always moving and circling like sharks, they must stay in perpetual motion for survival, lest their wounds have time to heal.

As they washed ashore, the tsunamis seem to have brought with them new lows for these cretins to stoop to. Rush Limbaugh’s Jan. 3 transcript (link via Digby) contains the following exchange:

CALLER: (Giggle) Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, 'Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I'm seeing all these bodies,' and then I see this picture on the Internet that was sent to me, and it was them carrying a body along in Sri Lanka, it said Galle, G-a-l-l-e, Sri Lanka and they had a crowd of people watching and this guy in the middle is standing there looking at the body wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

RUSH: I saw that picture.

CALLER: And I thought, it just validated the way I felt and I thought these are the same people that were the cheerleaders on 9/11, and we're going to go rebuild their world for them.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Now, I love President Bush. I respect him. I voted for him, but when I saw him come out and I realized they were asking for more money –

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: -- I got even madder, and I thought, 'I don't think we should be asked to give any more.’

It is unlikely (to put it mildly) that Sri Lankans were cheerleaders on 9/11, Islam drawing the smallest proportion of the four major religions on the island, 70% of which is Buddhist, 15% is Hindu, 8% is Christian, and 7% is Muslim. Additionally, Sri Lanka suffered, with India, 168 suicide bomber attacks between 1980 and 2000, each exacted by their most prominent terrorist group, LTTE, an effectively secular faction. (This number of attacks is more than 3 times the next highest occurrence—52 Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait, and Argentina combined). Being no stranger to such tragedy, the Sri Lankan people were unlikely to have celebrated the work of al-Qaida. In fact, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, there was an ongoing investigation into links between LTTE and al-Qaida:

[T]he LTTE’s relationship with al-Qaida was in focus to understand the latter’s mastery of suicide attacks even though most groups learn by trial and error. Before the September 11 attacks, al-Qaida had executed two successful suicide missions, the August 1998 East African Embassy bombings and the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. The sources said the links, which were first indicated in the early ’90s, are the first instance of an Islamist group collaborating with an essentially secular outfit.

Though I haven’t seen the picture referenced by Rush and his caller, I can imagine that among the entire population of Sri Lanka there are those who support Osama bin Laden. Nonetheless, even the briefest internet search to find out about Sri Lanka could have enlightened both Rush and his ditto-head about the more typical character (and demographics) of the island.

That’s just not the point, though. Rush and his caller had found someone at which to point their fingers. And for what reason? Because they felt guilty about not feeling charitable toward the victims of the tsunamis, and because they are angry at their beloved Bush (at whom they could never direct their anger) for giving their hard-earned tax dollars away to people with brown skin. (Using said monies to kill people with brown skin is a different story altogether.)

Even when victims of nothing but their own depraved selfishness and racism, they seek to blame others. It’s not that they’re isolationist, xenophobic fuckwits – it’s that they just don’t like giving money to terrorists who hate us for our freedom, that’s all. One Sri Lankan in an Osama t-shirt was enough for Rush and his caller to condemn an entire people and, in the process, justify their own indifference.

The prize, however, as always goes to the Religious Right, who are so audacious in their claims of victimhood and self-righteous finger-pointing that it evokes as much awe as disgust.

Appropriately tagged the homo-pocalyptic crowd by Pam of Pam’s House Blend, this group of heartwarming religious activists has determined that we can pin the blame for the tsunamis on gays and lesbians, and they have thoughtfully shared this information with us in some exceedingly creative ways:





Images via Pam’s House Blend. Circulated by Fred Phelps, the craziest son of a bitch I can think of. I won’t go into his résumé here, but if you don’t know who he is – check him out. Truly scary and insane stuff.


AMERICAblog also reports on conservative bastion of hate WorldNetDaily’s promotion of Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan’s view that the tsunamis were punishment from God for homosexuality and fornication committed by residents and tourists at Christmastime. The article’s title, Homosexuality, fornication cause of tsunami?, is so anathema to my rational, secular, scientific beliefs about how the world works that it may as well say Lightbulbs, squid cause of peach fuzz?.

How about this: No one is to blame for the tsunami, but we’re all responsible to help pick up the pieces. It’s certainly nothing you’ll ever hear from the Always Aggrieved League. They’re far too content blaming presumed terrorists for their own deficits of empathy and sodomites for bringing God’s wrath upon us. If only they spent less time on God’s will and more on the decidedly earthly pursuit of developing a will to pull themselves out of knuckle-dragging ignorance.