It appears that threats and vandalism at mosques are at an all-time high. People are becoming uncivil, and even violent, regarding Muslims just going about their daily business. Recently, a California mosque experienced a fire believed to be arson, but a California Sikh temple has also been vandalized recently, too, as if by some person whose hate is too great to be less indiscriminate in their discrimination--reminiscent of the Wisconsin gurdwara that was shot up by a white supremacist, or the Indian man who was pushed to his death by a vicious woman in Queens who hated foreigners (and somehow believed that Hindu and Muslim were the same thing).
That I have examples of this kind of racist and pig-ignorant anti-Muslim, anti-foreigner, parochial dumbfuckery predating this election cycle alone means that Trump is not solely responsible for creating the environment within which this violence and stupidity exists. FOX Mushroom Farm, and many other right-wing outlets are no strangers to tapping into the vein of uninformed and possibly uninformable hate that resides in the minds of people who desperately want a target for their dissatisfaction about all the things. We can't pretend that Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney are entirely fringe characters, can we?
It's my opinion that nothing--nothing at all--is worth feeding the fears of the kind of people who bravely face a 1% or less group within their population with broken windows because they fear those people can take their whole country and way of life away from them.
It has happened before--but now is not then. We need to teach diversity--not fear. We need to teach how to be open-minded and strong--not narrow and scared. And the people who encourage fear and loathing need to be pantsed and ridden out of town on a rubber rail like the evil clowns they are. There is nothing good about this.
America is great when we understand our better traditions. E Pluribus Unum. Liberty. It fails hard when we abandon them.
3 comments:
... odious? Or am I too dense to get the joke?
The joke's original with The Bard. He puts the words "Comparisons are odorous" in the mouth of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. Comparisons, properly speaking, are odious. Sometimes, they just stink.
Greetings, Vixen. Right now it's a lazy Saturday and I'm having a cup of joe. Les Brigandes are in the woods down by the river below our back yard. God knows what they are eating down there.
MI5 is hiring 1200 new employees to try and keep up with the threats presented by Islamic terrorists. In France Le Pen under the authority of a good looking 26-year-old steely political leader has enormous power based on the natural anti-immigrant sentiments that occur in a healthy society when part of their population demonstrates they are bloodthirsty, psychopathic savages.
Incidentally, Hemingway's A Movable Feast is flying off the shelves in French translations in a somehow literary reaction to the horrible attacks. In the book he discusses his relationship with Gertrude Stein and your old friend Ezra Pound.
In the US we have been instructed that there are a minimum of a thousand terrorists embedded in the Muslim population. However, the FBI has told us that it takes 26 to 28 people to monitor one possible terrorist. As a consequence we are way behind the curve keeping up with the thousand we know about. I believe we may be able to monitor upwards towards 600, at the expense of tending to other forms of crime. Frankly, we should follow MI5 and be hiring a lot more FBI personnel, but of course this jacks up the federal budget at a time when we will soon be $20 trillion in debt. And astonishingly, some people in Congress feel a responsibility about the sinking ship.
For some reason beyond the thousand there are a lot of sympathizers among the Muslim population for terrorism just as there were a lot of sympathizers for the IRA among a lot of Americans who would never perpetrate attacks. One estimate is that perhaps 20% of the Muslim population has at least some sympathy and appreciation for those bold enough to actually ingeniously find a way to kill Americans.
In early November some Muslim kid in California knifed 4 other kids. His Muslim roommate suggests he was into terrorism.
Religion presents the believers with a spectrum. Lukewarm believers at one end and fervent believers at the other end. Each religion has its own characteristic behavior at the fervent end. Regrettably in Islam the more devout the Muslim becomes, the more it becomes an imperative and urgent to kill as many Westerners as they can. Islamic law suggests that when presented with a non-Muslim it is legitimate to kill them, or enslave them, or if you're feeling lighthearted, demand tribute.
Needless to say, these matters are hardly promising.
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