The following picture was posted to the Facebook page “Being Liberal” with the caption “Can you see the differences?” (h/t Jen).

Via Being Liberal on Facebook

I’m not a fan of the meme, in part because I think it takes some very complex issues and drastically oversimplifies them.

The top picture is Holly Fisher, a/k/a Holly Hobby Lobby, who posted a picture of herself in front of a Hobby Lobby in a “pro-life” t-shirt whikle holding a Chick-fil-A cup in July, pretty much just to piss off liberals. When people said that she forgot a flag, a Bible, and a gun, she obliged.

The bottom picture is Samantha Lewthwaite, a/k/a the White Widow, a British citizen who is suspected of being a member of the Somali group al-Shabaab, but is not affiliated with the Taliban in any known way.

I have nothing kind to say about either woman, but in a one-on-one fight, my money’s on the Brit. Anyway, the Taliban ≠ al-Shabaab. That’s the sort of mix-up people like Holly Fisher make.

On the one hand, the picture of Fisher was intended as a joke, albeit not a very funny one. The picture of Lewthwaite was probably intended as anything but a joke. It’s not entirely fair to compare them, from the standpoint of the individuals’ intents.

On the other hand, consider it from the standpoint of people who might see these two pictures in a different part of the world. Lewthwaite might be a murderer and a terrorist to us, and she might be both of those things in a legal sense, but not everyone sees her that way. (I do not intend that as a defense of her per se, but it is a universal truth throughout history that one person’s “terrorist” is another person’s “freedom fighter.”) Fisher might be a privileged little snot who thinks it’s funny to annoy certain people, but others might see this picture as emblematic of the country that sends drones to kill dozens of people in the hopes of getting one or two individuals deemed terrorists. Fisher herself might not be the one pulling the proverbial trigger, but then neither did the civilians killed in the drone strikes. If the overall distribution of American political views holds true, then it’s not unreasonable to assume that Fisher supports the efforts furthered by the drone strikes (to the extent that they “kill terrorists,” if not to the extent that anything Obama does is bad). From that perspective, it’s not at all unreasonable for someone in that part of the world to view this picture of Fisher with the same suspicion, or even disdain, with which we view the picture of Lewthwaite.

Maybe it’s not that we’re supposed to look at Fisher the way we already look at Lewthwaite. Maybe the lesson here is that the rest of the world looks at Fisher the way we look at Lewthwaite.

But yeah, from our perspective of knowing that Fisher is a hack, it’s totes unfair.