It's something to give lip service to when you're proposing or conducting a war of aggression, preferably a hopeless, poorly organized one. When it comes to tolerating the views of others, the freedom of others: speech, religion and the rest of what the bill of rights guarantees, our hypocrisy comes shining through. Our cowardice, our irrational fear, our bigotry.
My thanks to Libby at The Impolitic for disgusting me with yet another view of America that will be broadcast around the world and justify more hatred of us and more acts against us and more revulsion at our pose of being a moral example. We're not and as Jefferson said " I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." If I were a believer, I'd be headed away faster than Lot could run out of Sodom.
It's infuriating that one of the bravest men I've had the privilege to observe was called a coward by a mob too cowardly to allow religious freedom in New York, cowardly enough to make disgusting religious taunts they'd never tolerate against themselves even if they were accurate -- which they would probably be. I tremble for my country. I tremble with rage at the bigots, the cowards, the enraged hordes of ignorant savages and I tremble at he dawning conclusion that perhaps we have no reason to be proud of America and that we've rarely been any better than this.
There is a price to be paid for freedom, but it can't be paid for in this kind of currency. It's not paid for by attacking Iraq or by supporting corrupt governments or toppling democracies abroad. It's certainly not paid for rioting against freedom and the allegedly sacred rights of man. If this is the voice of America, everything our enemies say about us is true and we have no right to pretend to be a moral example to anyone.
I think we fully forfeited that right by the time we'd reached our national bicentennial, if not long before. The only people who didn't know that were our citizens. It's called propaganda.
ReplyDeleteWhen this Ground Zero (for zero tolerance) Mosque controversy first started, it was predictable that sooner or later it would engender a hate crime. That grim prediction has come true; a New York cabbie has been slashed with a knife. And there will more hate crimes until the gutless GOP, or the silent former president, take a firm stand against Islamophobia.
ReplyDeleteBut I wouldn't count it. The latest crop of crap Republicans are basing their political fortunes on this shit, while the smug country club Republicans with golf clubs in hand say nothing.
Godwin was wrong.
Yes, it's strange that that silent former president is beginning to seem almost open minded, tolerant and even liberal as compared to the bacterial scum now running the Republican side show. The guy he trusted to show the world we didn't hate muslims but only terrorists, they now insist is a "radical Imam" preaching terrorism, even though Fox itself once welcomed him and he's an associate of a major stockholder of NewsCorp ( which contributed a million bucks to the GOP.)
ReplyDeleteIf foolish consistency be the hobgoblin of little minds, what then do we say of insane inconsistency and the minds that participate in it?
As a kid, I sued to read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft and I remember one of his characters being admonished to be careful raising up evil spirits he couldn't put down. The people who have enlisted this rabble to gain power should pay attention.
That rabble should remember their forbears whom Hitler used in the same way. He later had them killed.
Hey, if I can daydream about buying an AK and blowing away these bastards, imagine how some frustrated kid from Detroit must feel!
Captain - if I can daydream about buying an AK and blowing away these bastards, imagine how some frustrated kid from Detroit must feel!
ReplyDeleteTo confess, I too have a rich fantasy life and sometimes imagine myself lashing out at ingrates, but we are relatively sane people who can separate fantasies from reality with self control (although living vicariously through the Internet).
But what happens when someone with an underlying psychiatric disorder acts on impulse. We read about them in the news and dismiss them as insane but forget an inconvenient truth: They are responding to cultural artifacts, i.e. things they read in newspapers or hear on TV. A person with MPD or schizophrenia may hear voices in the head, but the voices come from outside; they are constructs from the surrounding culture.
About Enright, the man who attacked the NYC cabbie, we are dumbfounded that a former aid worker would commit such acts. Compromised by alcohol (probably used to mask underlying symptoms as a form of self medication), he acted on impulse but the messages came from our hyper-sensationalized media. One has to wonder how to separate the madmen from the madmen.