Let's just call them Daesh and end any confusion, since it appears that some liberty-loving, brown-people hating types can't distinguish between Isis of Egyptian lore and ISIS, the acronym assigned to the evil, powerhungry group terrorizing Syria.
Idaho Statesman reports:
A Denver-area store called Isis Books & Gifts wants the world to know its name comes from the Egyptian goddess of healing and motherhood and it isn't run by terrorists.
Co-owner Jeff Harrison said Wednesday that the suburban Denver shop has been vandalized five times in the past year or so, probably by people who mistake the name for ISIS, one of the acronyms for the Islamic State terrorist group.
The latest vandalism came last weekend when a store sign was smashed after the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people.
The store sells books and gifts related to spirituality, religion and healing.
"Isis is the name of an Egyptian goddess, 3,500 years old at least, the goddess of women and healing and childbirth — basically the antithesis of everything the terrorists are about," he said.
Harrison suspects the vandals are "some ignorant people believing that somehow the terrorists have a store, a gift store, in the middle of Denver, Colorado."
This story is almost stupid enough to be funny, but still not funny at the same time. Digby notes that the xenophobia is now at fever pitch:
All those Americans are not Republicans. But most of them are. The GOP base was well primed for Donald Trump with his talk of immigrant rapists and border walls and rounding up “bad people.” If he didn’t exist, the right wing media would have had to invent him.
Obviously this event in Paris was horrifying and people are understandably frightened. However, Americans have been through worse and we should have learned by now that the way to properly respond is to keep calm and carry on. But the first words that emerged from the Republican Party was a call to block any refugees from the middle east from coming to the U.S. by instantly cranking up the emotion around an issue that was already live among GOP voters.
