David McElroy

For those who are committed to the idea that Muslims are evil, the vicious school attack in Peshawar, Pakistan, must be confusing, because it doesn’t fit their script.

Nearly 150 people are known dead in the attack so far — almost all of them children. For Pakistanis, this is the equivalent of about five or six of the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. We were traumatized in this country when 20 children and six adults were killed by a mentally ill man two years ago. The tragedy for my Pakistani friends is far more deadly.

It’s natural for us to see tragedies close to us as more serious than tragedies on the other side of the world. Tragedies in which the victims look like us seem more important to us than those where the victims belong to some other group. But imagine a school attack like this — with at least 132 children intentionally slaughtered — in California or Ohio or Alabama or New Jersey.

This is a tragedy that’s hard for us to comprehend, because we haven’t faced one bigger than this since Sept. 11, 2001.

For those who see the world in terms of “evil Muslims” vs. “good westerners,” the Peshawar massacre doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t fit within their understanding. Instead, the attackers and the victims were all Muslims. If you start to understand the significance of that, you can see the error that many people make in seeing Muslims — all Muslims — as their enemies.

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The University of Alabama at Birmingham announced this week that it’s shutting down its football program. All 17 fans are really upset about it.

For 20 years, UAB football has struggled to attract fans and donors. For the most part, its attendance has been a joke. The photo above is a fair representation of what it’s like to see a game at 71,000-seat Legion Field.

For last year’s football season, the Blazers averaged 11,589 tickets sold, but anyone who thinks there were that many people actually there is lying to himself. As part of that average number sold, however, the city of Birmingham bought 5,000 tickets for each game, costing city taxpayers $225,000. So fewer than 7,000 tickets were actually sold on average if you don’t count the tickets the city bought for politicians to give away. The 11,589 average was the second lowest in all of big-time college football last year.

The program has been a joke.

Now that the university has announced plans to shut the football program down, news stories are filled with outrage about this alleged travesty. The president of the Birmingham City Council called rumors of the impending shutdown “an attack on the city of Birmingham.” Many supporters of UAB claim that a powerful trustee of the University of Alabama system — the son of former Alabama Coach Bear Bryant — engineered the shutdown out of revenge for a letter written 20 years ago by UAB’s former basketball coach and athletic director.

All of these stories are silly and speculative. Even if they were true, though, they’re irrelevant. All that matters is that Alabama taxpayers are subsidizing this rather large hole in the ground to the tune of $20 million a year.

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Take a look at this picture. It reveals the decision of the Ferguson grand jury. Tell me what you see.

I’m writing this before the grand jury decision is announced, but click here for the obligatory link I’ll add. By the time you read this, many people are outraged. I don’t have a clue what the decision will be, but I can guarantee that something about it — and the aftermath of its announcement — will confirm the worst of what millions of people believe.

If Officer Darren Wilson is indicted, it would confirm for many people that cops are killers and deserve to be attacked. For others, it would confirm that civilized society is under assault by those who are being allowed to destroy it — and that our valiant protectors are being harmed.

If Wilson is not indicted, it would confirm for many people that an evil and corrupt system is willing to let white cops murder young black men without accountability. For others, the aftermath would confirm that they need to prepare for a race war against lawless hoodlums.

It’s not a pretty picture. I suspect things are going to get ugly.

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