Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time: 'Trump Is ISIS's Greatest Triumph'

December 12th, 2015 10:51 PM

The Trump-hating media is displaying all the usual blindness. They don’t realize their own rhetorical excess, so they sound like Trump in reverse. See Time magazine once again granting their web space to wild hyperbole from former NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The headline? "What Donald Trump and ISIS Have in Common: The 2016 candidate has more in common with the terrorist group than he does with America.”

Hey Kareem: that’s another op-ed airball that lands about 50 feet from the hole.

Abdul-Jabbar began with a wild flourish:

The terrorist campaign against American ideals is winning. Fear is rampant. Gun sales are soaring. Hate crimes are increasing. Bearded hipsters are being mistaken for Muslims. And 83 percent of voters believe a large-scale terrorist attack is likely here in the near future. Some Americans are now so afraid that they are willing to trade in the sacred beliefs that define America for some vague promises of security from the very people who are spreading the terror. “Go ahead and burn the Constitution — just don’t hurt me at the mall.” That’s how effective this terrorism is.

I’m not talking about ISIS. I’m talking about Donald Trump.

This is not hyperbole. Not a metaphor.

Fact check, please: That IS hyperbole! Comparing a billionaire presidential candidate to someone who murders co-workers at a Christmas party should be flagged for Roughing the Candidate. Or, to use Kareem’s own sport, it’s a flagrant foul. But he’s not stopping:

Trump is ISIS’s greatest triumph: the perfect Manchurian Candidate who, instead of offering specific and realistic policies, preys on the fears of the public, doing ISIS’s job for them. Even fellow Republican Jeb Bush acknowledged Trump’s goal is “to manipulate people’s angst and fears.”

Only later does Kareem get around to acknowledging that he’s flailing wildly. Okay, he’s not a murderer, he’s only guilty of “hate crimes” with his speech:

While Trump is not slaughtering innocent people, he is exploiting such acts of violence to create terror here to coerce support. As I have written before, his acts could be interpreted as hate crimes. He sounds the shrill alarm of impending doomsday even though since 9/11, about 30 Americans a year have been killed in terrorist attacks worldwide — as The Atlantic pointed out, “roughly the same number as are crushed to death each year by collapsing furniture.” Trump’s irresponsible, inflammatory rhetoric and deliberate propagation of misinformation have created a frightened and hostile atmosphere that could embolden people to violence. He’s the swaggering guy in old Westerns buying drinks for everyone in the saloon while whipping them up for a lynching.

Then he came around to his own fellow Muslims: “Trump’s latest enemy du jour are Muslims. He’s the schoolyard bully rallying classmates to make fun of the skinny kid with glasses.” Sorry, Kareem: It seems the skinny kid with the glasses just shot 35 people in San Bernardino. So you’ve got your bullies confused.

Abdul-Jabbar concludes in a typical liberal way, by using a Yeats poem called “The Second Coming” to smear Trump as “something much darker and sinister” than Jesus Christ:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

When I read the description of the beast, it’s “gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” I can’t help but think of Trump and his cynical strategy of using misinformation, half-truths and deception in order to gain access to a position that should only be held by those who would be repulsed by that strategy.