Let It Be A New Day

Tags

911, Alvaro Uribe, Asteroids, astronomy, Cedar Rapids, Columbia, Detroit, Facebook, Flint, fundamentalism, Georgetown, GOP, Iowa, Islamic faith, journalism, Muslims, Qur'an, religion, right wing, tea party, tolerance, urban renewal, voters

Praise be to whatever Goodness speaks in your heart this day! In response to hatred, there is love being expressed, tolerance overflowing and men and women of good will gather in friendship.

A couple of important notices:

First, for those living near the environs of Cedar Rapids, IA, please take note that an interfaith “Day of Remembrance, Unity and Respect” is scheduled for 9/11 at 1-2:30 pm at the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids, 2999 1st Ave NW, Cedar Rapids, IA. Members of the Islamic faith, Judaic faith, and Christian faith will gather for a few words and prayer. Please come if you can to show your support for tolerance, and unity in recall of our time of tragedy.

If you cannot attend, please consider this Facebook call for unity and tolerance. Dr. James McGrath has created a FB page called, “read the Qur’an day.” Please go and sign up. We cannot remain silent in the face of the hatred being expressed by a tiny minority. We must speak out. We are a nation of immigrants. Tolerance is what defines us.

I caught this over at National Catholic Reporter. Fr. John Dear, SJ, has written a post on the sad but true fact that what can only be described as dictator, Columbia’s former president, Alvaro Uribe, has accepted a teaching position at Georgetown University. Fr. Dear has a good history of both Uribe and Georgetown’s questionable dealings with the American war machine in the past. This is truly sad to hear. I certainly don’t deny that Uribe has a right speak his piece about whatever, but I surely think there were better choices for teaching our youth than one who has had such a close connection to warlords and other murdering types.

I was born in Flint Michigan and lived a considerable number of years in Detroit, so I know of what I speak. Both are ugly decrepit cities and nothing much can save them I suspect. Both largely grew to magnificence (or some semblance of that) through the age of the Automobile, now both rust away as the heyday of automotive power wanes.  The Boston Globe has an interesting article on how these declining cities deal with this. How to downsize? (Note: recently Detroit decided to go forward with wholesale demolition of old neighborhoods long abandoned–thousands of homes are involved so I understand) A truly innovative look at a problem.

To those of us who pay attention, the Teapartiers have always been an anomaly. A conglomeration of mostly uninformed folk, who rant about “our freedoms” while having little or no clear thinking about what the Constitution says or means. Ironically they are often “for” things that are in-opposite to long-standing constitutional norms. In essence, they are often willing to eviscerate the Constitution in the name of upholding it. DeWayne Wickham at USAToday has a great article about the new KnowNothing Party.

Oh and before I forget, let my say this: This refusal of most of the “high-ranking GOP leadership (read Palin, Boehner, Gingrich et al) to condemn the Qur’an burning is disgusting and amounts to an endorsement. They are willing to allow their hate spewing followers to believe they favor it rather than have the guts to stand up for what is right. So much for ethics. But then who ever assumed they had any?

And we see that John Sidney McCain is criticizing the President for allowing the tax cuts for the rich to expire. Oh but, darn, McCain voted against them when Bush proposed them? How to reconcile this old fart? Just another one of your vengeful acts isn’t it John? You hated Bush for beating you, and you hate Obama for beating you. You need to go sit in your chair and muse about the dust bunnies in the wind.

If I hasn’t come to you yet, it will. Which came first: the insipid vapid (id words you see) moronic lack of intellect of the average American, thus requiring constant feeding of irrelevant nonsense, OR the increasing laziness of the journalistic working man and woman, who has traded actual journalistic skill for a few tips from Entertainment Nightly. Huh? Well, D-Cap tackles this one.

Christian Beyer is a fine writer and thinker and knows fundamentalist Christianity from the inside. See his blog entry today: It’s time for Christians to declare jihad against Fundamentalism. Just an excellent read.

Sad to say, but perfectly predictable, the right-wing and GOP are using the upcoming 9/11 date to raise money and spread hate. They have been doing it for years, and plan to continue it seems.

Ya know there is just plenty of crap to worry about. I worry a lot about that seething mega volcano just waiting to erupt in Yellowstone. That will take most all of us out. I worry about the state of our magnetic field, without which we will all be toast in days. Well, now I gotta worry about asteroids again! I thought we had that one all taken care of with an array of telescopes all searching for any misdirected balls of iron. (Jupiter with its super-massive gravity well is largely to blame–just so you know where to direct your ire.) Turns out NASA which runs this safety program is RUNNING OUT OF MONEY.

So I figure, we should perhaps set up a citizens brigade or something. You can leave your name and number and the night you would like to take your watch. Don’t push. Sharp eyes and a pair of field binoculars are required.

What’s on the stove: chili today. Oh I know it’s early, but I was hungry for some, and I made it really good and hot, and with some fresh corn bread. HA!

Related Articles

• Islamophobia After 9/11: Enough, Already (beliefnet.com)

History Will Not Be Kind

Tags

GOP, Ground Zero, hatred, History, Muslims, Newt Gingrich, Obama, racism, religious intolerance, religious right, right wingnuts, Sarah Palin, teabaggers

Hatred and bigotry have had an illustrious career in America. It  did not originate here of course, earliest man soon found an angry god to blame for snow storms and drought.

But American has certainly refined the concept better than most places in the world, if only because we have been oh so willing to transfer our aggressive fears and hatreds to so many different groups.

Religious hatred is not new. In fact, it prompted today’s religious right’s most reviled amendment–the first, which mandates a clear non-involvement of government with religious practices. At it’s inception the new United States of America was a collection of states each, for the most part, with their laws and practices that excluded (and often road out of town and sometimes executed) such groups as Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and Anabaptists.

What those who champion “our Christian origins”  forget, is that the Pilgrims didn’t come to these shores to establish a community of religious tolerance, but rather to establish a  practice of their version of Christianity without interference from other “papist” types.

We soon moved on from religion however, and took up the banner of “non-humanity.” By that I mean, peoples who were not white anglophiles were soon relegated to non-human status. This included native peoples, and then Africans, but came to include Italians, Irish, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans, and Latinos from anywhere. 

All of these groups, to one degree or another, found the going tough in America where they were shunned, segregated, consigned to the lowest jobs and least pay. White American strutted as superior in every way. (Certainly we were not alone in this. Britain and much of Western Europe also played this game.)

Class, in America at least, has been down played, but there is little doubt that the upper echelons of our society have felt “entitled” to their privilege largely due to their superior breeding and determination. Ask any nouveau-rich just how long it takes to break into the blue blood of our major eastern cities. (Boston would be a key case in point.) No, it has been largely the working and working poor who continually have declared that we are a country of equality of opportunity.

So, I am not surprised nor shocked at the ugly and vicious attacks upon  the Muslim community in this country. The rabble have been assured that it is always okay to blame someone other than themselves for their perceived woes.

Yet, the rhetoric coming from our so-called educated leadership is most troubling. Words and arguments drip from their jaws that one would have thought more likely to be from the minds of the KKK and other white-rights militia groups. We are used to that kind of ugliness and we have learned to turn a deaf ear as the best defense. Shun and ignore has been our winning motto.

Today, however, we find those whom we would not expect saying simply awful things. People like Newt Gingrich spew hatred with abandon against Muslims. Ditto Sarah (that woman is an idiot) Palin, though she can be forgiven to a degree since she is so ill-educated in public affairs.

But, and here is the irony, these are the same folks who rant and rail day in and day out that Obama and company are “destroying our freedoms.” One of those freedoms, they declare  that is on the brink of destruction, is their ability to practice their religion.

Clearly, they do not offer this right to others. In reality they are really saying that Obama is not George Bush, who at least mouthed his preference for Christian rights as the best. Obama, following the Constitution, refuses to support efforts to raise Christianity above other faiths, and in fact has made it most clear in his remarks about the Islamic Center proposed in NYC, that government has no business voicing any “advice” about where a religious building is erected.

And that is perhaps the key point to be realized here. The extreme religious right, and it’s congressional and pundit minions, are not really about our freedoms at all. They are about instituting a “Christian” government in the US as they define it. They are about shredding the US Constitution whenever it becomes necessary to accomplish that goal. They are about revising history to “prove” their point of view.

People like Gingrich and Palin, have no real intent to alter the the Constitution, I suspect. They have a strong intention to use the mob mentality of the religious right and all the  tea bagger unfocused anger to gain power for themselves. That in some sense is all the more egregious. As one of Gingrich’s ex-wives noted in a link we gave you last week, Newt gave up on principles when he decided he wanted fame and fortune and power more.

Palin, of course, is a study in opportunistic ranting. She neither knows nor cares about truth. She plays to anger and fear and desperation. She creates it when necessary, all in her pursuit to “be somebody.” We have John Sidney McCain to thank for that one.

The Becks, Limbaughs, Hannitys, they are just pure feeders upon the human flesh. They are the vultures and hyenas, fangs dripping with our blood, returning to their lairs with bloated stomachs, laughing and reeking of their own evil.

I can but smile when I think, that history will not be kind. Gingrich, Kyl, Palin, King (Peter and Steven), Bachmann, McCain, Graham, DeMint, (oh the list is interminable indeed),  will be remembered for a very long time. But not as great states-persons. No not a one. But they will be remembered.

Wallace blocking school desegregation

They will be remembered.

McCarthy & House UnAmerican Activities Hearings

They will be remembered.

An Anomalous Day

Tags

America, editorial, fundamentalist, hatred, right wing, satire

It’s an odd day. Or so it seems to me. Mostly it must be me. For I can point to no thing that is different in the passing of the night.

The oil is still gushing, though at a slower rate perhaps. For now. At least.

The sun is shining, brightly, strongly, and warmly. Not too warm, not too humid. Just right. The garden is blooming and busting forth in exuberant excitement. Or at least it seems so when I gaze out.

The mosquitos are hungry, and that fact keeps me more indoors than I would like to be.

Yet, everywhere I look, hatred seems bursting forth as well. From the gulf coast, and that is certainly to be expected. Thousands are losing their livelihood, their beautiful beaches and fishing grounds. Animals and birds and fish and amphibians, with no voice of their own, just live as best they can, or die.  Somehow, it seems okay to hate a company. May BP bankrupt itself and never be in a position to wreak such havoc upon humanity and mother earth again.

We are still, in the southwest, trying to make political hay off the backs of brown skins. Yes, we need a coherent policy, and we need enforcement of it, and we need a rational relationship with Mexico where all can agree. But it’s not hard to see that so much of this is not about “security,” it’s about greed, and fear and hatred.

Statistics say that crime has not increased in the border towns. Two mayors sit side by side, and are asked, “Is crime a problem in your town.” The Latina mayor replies, “no,” and the white male mayor replies with an energetic “yes!” Something else is afoot here, something dark and mean and ugly.

In Massachusetts, a would-be governor chastises the answers of the incumbent, who preaches tolerance of Muslims and respect for their holy day of Friday. The would-be uses the words of the day, “terrorism” and  radical Islam. Politics drives the drivel again. Play on the fears, play on the hate.

And, my mind creates this dialog:

Why, we had reason to hate the black man, but in the end,  it was simply not allowed. Even my Daddy  went from the N word to “black” but he could pronounce it with all the venom that ever attached to nigger. All too many years when we had to nod and be polite, while inwardly we seethed.  Only pretending to change.That’s what them liberals did!

Boy, take a deep breath, fill your lungs with it. It’s like napalm in the morning, that hatred, swelling your breast with America at its best. I can hate the brown and the darker brown, and maybe even some  of those Asians still, and secretly still the African, because there is good reason to!

And I can hate Obama because he is a socialist commie jihadist in disguise. Mr. Hussein! And it’s not because he is black and makes me feel small. No, he is all those things. I watch the news. Fox says he is, and more, and why I’m just being a good old Merikan aren’t I? Preserving the constitution for my kids and their kids and such?

Give me Sarah, who speaks my kinda patriotism, wrapping it in the flag where it belongs.  It was Christians like us who built this damn place after all. Who are these lazy  colored, these  wetbacks, these ragheads? Sure they come now and want a piece of the pie. Who wouldn’t? But I built it, me and my daddy and his daddy.

We never had no need of no fancy school, no fancy degrees. None was needed to pour concrete or dig ore. None needed to rivet on that bumper or drive that bus. And we did just fine. We paid our taxes, won us a couple of wars against the great evils Germany and Japan.

Don’t tell me I don’t know my history. I know all I need to know.  This country was built on Godly principles and we’d all be better off if more kids prayed in school. It was built on blood and sweat, and we took what we needed where we needed it from. Survival of the fittest don’t they say that?

Only damn thing that Darwin guy got right. The rest, pure atheist crap. And I’m glad they fired that teacher in Fort Dodge. Imagine teaching in a Catholic school and not believing in God? That’s what’s become of our country. She’s probably a damned lesbian to boot. They are always recruiting you know. That’s their agenda.

I gotta hang on to what is mine, doncha see that? And I’m not gonna pay for the rest of them lazy bastards (excuse my french). Let them take care of themselves, go back where they came from.

Can’t a man sit on his damn porch at night with a beer and not have to worry about losin’ his job? It’s all because of THEM.

Do I go to church? Well, heck, I would, if I had the time, but after five days in that plant, doin’ the same thing hour after hour, hell, all I want is to come home, have a hot dinner, put my feet up and watch Law and Order. I would  go, but on Sunday, well it’s the only time I got to be with my family you see?

Where are they today? Oh, the missus is visiting her sister next town over and Tommy is over at his girl’s house and the two little ones are down the street with the neighbor kids. But I pray, I tell you. I surely do. Like I pray that there’s still another beer in the fridge, and I pray that Cubs win today.  And I surely pray for a HD TV for my birthday!

Hate? I don’t hate anyone. I just tell it like it is.

What’s Up? 05/27/10

Tags

abortion, American History, ancient mystery cults, astronomy, atheism, dictionaries, fundamentalism, Islam, lifestyle, Literature, racism, religion, Roman Catholicism, Sarah Palin, synthentic life, theology, universe

Wow, what a lovely day today. Sun is just bursting forth and not a cloud in the sky. It’s warm and not nearly as muggy. The Contrarian is out in the garden weeding. The turkeys have not been able to penetrate the 48″ high fence around the tomatoes and so all is well in the world of produce becoming.

Well, Lee won American Idol, and I can’t say I’m disappointed, though I thought Chrystal is perhaps a bit more talented. As these things go, both will no doubt have fine careers and they deserve it.

Lazy food today, hamburgers and homefries (roasted really), and maybe coleslaw if I feel really energetic.

First off, let me thank Jan from Yearning for God, for e-mailing me this link. It’s an amazing site called visuwords.com. It is a functional dictionary but also a word orgin generator and thesaurus. It builds from the word you choose and developes a neural network. It’s hard to explain by try it and just be amazed. Perfect for students and all writers.

Mary Beard does a nice review of Hugh Bowden’s book, Mystery Cults in the Ancient World. She draws some interesting ties to the reply of some of the Early Church fathers to these cultic practices in Greece and Rome. This comes via 3quarksdaily.

By now you have heard of the “creation” of life synthetically by scientists. An article in the Daily Bruin, examines the ethics of playing God. This also comes from 3quarksdaily.

Sister Margaret was excommunicated for signing off on an abortion at the hospital where she sits on the Ethics board. The moral leader of the world? the Catholic church, strikes again.

Religious Dispatches answers Terry Sanderson’s “scathing” indictment of theology found here, in a piece called Can Atheists Simply Ignore Theology? I always find the comments of equal interest to the piece itself.

Anxious to know how the universe will turn out? I don’t plan on being around (in this form at least) at the time, but there are plenty of scientists who can give you a good idea.

In case u dint git propurly edjukated the uther day by Missy Sarha Paylin on the Crischun origens of our cuntry, then u kan go hear and git a few thengs she missed.

And Sarah’s insanity and whining poor me continues with her self-starting feud with her new neighbor and now Beck is involved threatening Random House. (I cannot make this stuff up!) Is it me or do the Palins sound more and more like the Flintstones/Simpsons–meaning mere caricatures of real people?

I heard this story last night on the news and Salon does a nice job with it. The ugly face of racism in this country just reeks. All because in Manhattan, building a mosque has been approved near “Ground Zero.” It literally makes your stomach turn to hear this hate. This is about race war in the writer’s opinion. Take a look.

Your self-help offering for the day: The 4 Addictions that destroy your dreams. Not what you think. Interesting read.

I brought you into a plentiful land

to eat its fruits and its good things.

But when you entered you defiled my land,

and made my heritage an abomination.

– Jeremiah 2:7  (Thanks there PB, and to all of us who have been silent for too long)

 

OOOOh I Love New Friends!

Tags

bigotry, minarets, Muslims, Switzerland, terrorism

When I read about this, I just wiggled and giggled with delight, and thought about getting some appropriate gift for my new friend–Switzerland!

Indeed, though it would be highly unproductive to do so out here in the Meadow, I’ve a mind on Wednesday when I return to the city, to give a good shout-out in the Walmart parking lot calling forth any Swiss citizens. I just want to hug to stuffings out of them.

We are muy simpatico as they say. Hadn’t you heard?

It seems that by a 57% majority vote, the fine citizens of Switzerland have voted that Muslims who erect mosques within the confines of the country will be prohibited from adding minarets to their peaks.

It seems that the Swiss are increasingly concerned about being overrun by Muslims who presently constitute somewhere between 4 1/2 – 7 % of the population. There are at present something like less than half a dozen of the pointy edifices on Swiss soil, and one must take a stand.

This has prompted the rest of the Swiss to hang their heads in shame, post placards at “vigils” saying “This is not my Switzerland” and well, otherwise point the finger down the road at some other poor schmuck as the one voted for such a bigoted law.

You ask why I am so giddy with glee at all this? Why because, as anyone with a brain knows, this wandering around in the desert by ourselves in the land of unforgivable bigotry, grows tiresome. (Way to make that connection to Exodus hey?) We are no longer alone as being insufferably bigoted towards people whose only crime seems association via generalized religious belief under the rubric “Islam.” We now have FRIENDS!

Yes, indeed, proof indeed that America is not the dumping ground of every right wing wacko on the face of Mother Earth. I think that grounds for celebration don’t you? We are not alone! It’s akin to finding life on another planet doncha think?

I just want to call up everyone I know. “Did ya hear? We aren’t he only bigoted idiots on the globe any more! The Swiss, can you believe it, are nutty too!” Yay, God can turn his attention and the spotlight off us for a while! Cartwheels are in order here folks.

I really can’t tell you how relieved I am. After finding that nearly everyone whom I went to high school with has become a flaming fundie and stooge for Fox news (well some of them at least),  I had considered my escape (read Exodus?) from said Mayfair district, Flint, Michigan, to be a miracle of sorts, worthy of a life time of thanks to the dear Lord.

“Thank you from saving me from being an idiot, Lord.” I’m a liberal and still sane.

Still, one has to accept the disease of crazy towel biting insanity seems to have spread widely in the US of A. One attempts to remain calm, yet they are effective after a sort, in derailing and weakening any number of legislative initiatives by their deliberate lying and plain lack of ability to see truth spitting at them in the eye. Personal selfishness has that tendency to overcome rational thought apparently.

Seeing this on every freakin’ issue of substance in the last year, I began to wonder if it were sabotage or something. Maybe in the pre washed spinach, or in the Domino’s pizza? I thought perhaps Starbucks, but then realized that they were too foo foo to be trusted with such a deed. I wondered if perhaps it had to do with NASCAR. Perhaps the tickets were saturated with stupid juice. I was seriously investigating all this, mostly so as to avoid contamination.

Now, I don’t know where to look. If the infection has spread to Switzerland, then, well, maybe the culprit is chocolate (gasp) or watches. The latter, I can handle, since I seldom wear a watch. The chocolate, oh dear Lord, how can I avoid that most perfect of foods? But no, it can’t be that for I consume plenty of it every week, and you can see, my liberalism is strongly intact.

So, well, whatever the cause, I’m just so pleased to know that we are no longer alone in the land of crazy. So Europe, get a grip, we are not your little toy to punch out any more. We are not the sole repositors of eyeball spinning stupido beliefs or logic. There is a new kid on the block, and he’s in your back yard. So there!

Now we can finally say what we have all been thinking all these years: Swiss yodeling is simply awful. Just sayin’ between friends ya know.

Weeping for All the Victims

Tags

army, Fort Hood, Islam, Japanese, Latino, Muslims, racism, War

I share with most people, the sadness of what transpired at Fort Hood in Texas. Sadness that so many were harmed and killed, grief that war continues to take its toll even off the battlefield.

What I most fervently prayed for, in those initial moments, is that no Muslim or Latino would be involved. Of course, that turned out not to be the case, as a Muslim army psychiatrist seems to be the person who wreaked such horror on the base.

I fear for the expected backlash, which always seems inevitable in this country. We are a country that proclaims it’s melting pot status on the one hand, and then goes out of its way to scapegoat most of its ills on “immigrants” and other “others.”

I cannot imagine the pain that ensued in Muslim quarters as the news came forth. I cannot imagine what plans and practices normal everyday Muslims must take to protect themselves against the slurs and actions of rabid “patriotic” nut cases. I almost desire to run up to every Muslim I can identify as such as offer my apologies.

I have already heard talk that “some” suggest that Muslims shouldn’t be serving in the armed forces, simply because our identifiable enemy is “Islam.” Of course it is not, for the vast vast majority of Muslims are law abiding, pious, quiet people, much like their Christian and Jewish brothers and sisters. It is only some demented fundamentalist types who pose a danger to all of us, Muslim, Jew,  and Christian alike.

Such an idea is absurd and unconscionable of course. It is akin to the racist nonsense we endured during WWII when we “interred” Japanese Americans, lest they secretly offer help to the Empire of Japan. We still are shamed by the film of those days as perfectly ordinary citizens are rounded up and incarcerated for no other reason that their heritage.

Such hatred and vitriol is not news these days. The right wing continues to ratchet up the rhetoric. Go to any of the tea bagger events and see the signs. President Obama is vilified as a “sambo” and referenced to Hitler. One knows that this powder keg will someday explode in some sort of ugly display. And of course the right wing pundits will all look left and right, and deny any complicity in the tragedy that has come upon us.

This is the quiet cloud of desperation that Muslims live under today. Never knowing. Keeping their eyes averted, and their mouths closed, they move among us. Knowing that anyone may be a potential nut case, ready to wreak patriotic retribution on supposed enemies of the state.

Latinos are not far behind in this. Regularly, otherwise innocuous “crimes” and unsavory activities are tied to “immigrants” and their “living off America” lives. We forget that they work harder and longer for less than most of us, and send a good portion to family members still trapped in even deeper poverty than here experienced.

Fostered no doubt by high schools that still teach that American is somehow the best and never much to blame for anything, we now live in a nation which always looks to some one else to be the cause of our unhappiness. It is always the fault of the socialist, the communist, the anarchist, the fundamentalist, the Asian, the Latino, the Muslim, the Jew, the Buddhist. As long as it is not “us,” that illusive and ever shrinking whitey. We are the somehow never to blame, perfect being.

I offer my meager support to Muslim brothers and sisters and those of all other minorities who seek the American dream in this morass of fickle humanity. We can slap them on the back and tell them, that, “hey, this was done to the Irish and the Italians as well. They made it. You will too. Just keep you head down and your nose clean. In a few decades, we will have found someone else.” It is hollow and trite and is inexcusable.

I am saddened that we as a nation cannot seem to learn any better. I am sorry that we don’t see this tragedy for what it is. A man, ill suited to the job he was in, increasingly makes it clear that he doesn’t belong in war. We ignore him, as we do all such men and women for the most part. Buck up there soldier! we say. You’ll survive, just as we did. It used to be okay to say, “it will make a man of you,” but it doesn’t sound as good saying it will make a woman of you.

War has many victims. More than we know. It has all of us as its victim if we would but see that. We all are reduced as human beings, we all suffer, we all are harmed in ways too deep to even see. We violate each other and then we return to base and eat a steak and sip a beer. A little touch football, and a good nights sleep, and tomorrow, well who knows, live, die, kill, wound, cry, laugh, it’s anybody’s guess. The insanity of such a life is clear isn’t it?

When will we learn that war is not an answer, but a stop gap for a people who have become too uncreative to come up with anything else?