February 23, 2004
Sometimes, the Wing Nuts are Turned to the Left

And from the "a foil hat a day keeps the feds at bay" corner we have this worthy post from a clothing store that didn't much like who was searching for what on their website:

It seems that the anti-terrorist division of our government is spending its time (and our tax dollars) doing web searches on people who disagree with their politics and have the audacity to say so on t-shirts.

Which of course lead to one of the better examples of affirming the consequent I've seen in awhile:

Progressive clothing = potential terrorist?

No you paranoid hippy freak, it only means someone working at DHS (and other various federal organizations) took a look at your site. Last time I checked, that wasn't illegal. We get visits all the time from people in Saudi Arabia. Does that mean we're a terrorist target?

Of course, this isn't much different than what the right-wing loonies were shrieking about during the run-up to the "impeach Clinton" fiasco. It's like belief is a circle... if you place yourself as far in one direction as you can, you end up meeting people coming from the other direction.

To me, as an unabashed member of said Great Right Wing Conspiracy, the pattern looks like an idle (and ideological) intern was poking around one afternoon and stumbled across your site. They then forwarded the link around to some buddies in a "hey, look! Another milquetoast left wing looney who thinks buttons make a difference!"* kind of spirit. Said buds then took a look and were, presumably, amused.

I know it's a lot more fun to think a bunch of modern-day Plumbers are plotting to tape up your door lock tonight, but the sad truth is you have about as much proof for your scenario as I do for mine. To put it in a more hippie-compatible way: Nixon was the president who had the enemies list and gave Liddy a job. Bush is quite simply no Nixon.

Posted by scott at February 23, 2004 10:57 AM

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