“I am not offended, I am just exhausted … I do not ask every guy named Mike where his people come from.” Classic.
Thinking about making an Indian version with “Do you speak Hindu?”
And so should you.
Blogging about the “Ground Zero Mosque” isn’t an exercise in politics du jour. If these arguments against the mosque and resulting decisions, however distracting from real American problems of the economy and jobs, are not combated early, often and vehemently, a lot more than an argument stands to be lost here. The freedoms of Americans like me are next up on the chopping block. And why not? We will have precedent.
Sepia Mutiny | America has a Nativism problem, not a “Muslim Problem”
“Islamaphobia” is not what afflicts our nation. It is merely a symptom of the underlying malady which, like chronic malaria, can flair [sic] up and leave the collective “us,” the American people, weak until treated. It will never be totally eradicated. Treating the problem by adopting an “enlightened” us vs.”ignorant” them mentality will make things worse, as will appeasement.
… In no way am I trying to say that Muslims should not be both concerned and saddened by what is happening right now. On the contrary, I am saying that none of us non-Muslims should for a second believe that we will be spared or that we need not concern ourselves because we are not the immediate targets of this ugly behavior by some politicians and media organizations. This isn’t just the Muslim and Latino community’s problem. This is the Global American’s problem too.
First Draft | The 9/12 Project and National Unity
… that’s who we were, a lot of us, on 9/12/01 — assholes, painting our chests red, white and blue and high-fiving our drunken buddies while we beat up Sikh cabdrivers and yelled. That’s who a lot of us were, and boy, were we ever grateful, weren’t we, for Osama bin Laden giving us an excuse for a self-important hoedown.
… I know a lot of people have memories of examples of kindness and decency from those days; all I have is notes of phone calls from people talking about yet another container of pig’s blood smashed on a mosque doorstep (CLASSY) and some dipshit accosting me at a rally yammering about how the “dune coons” were taking all our jobs away. It was high-level horrific, because Lower Manhattan was still actually burning, the entire country pretty much hadn’t slept, and here come these people … marcher Colin Zaremba, 19, told The Associated Press, “I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have.”
Listen up, brown Americans out there who operate under the delusion that you’re white: Enough with the support of racial profiling of all browns and bigotry against Muslims and illegal Latinos, in particular. These are not justified behaviors just because, in your shameless desire for western approval, you deem all Muslims and illegal immigrants as driven by nothing but megalomania and greed, respectively. What’s with the self-loathing? You think that by distancing yourselves from the latest object of Rah Rah We’re America’s ire, they will consider you their friends and on their side, on the side of self-proclaimed Good. How blind are you? Have you observed how folks like Mr. I’m Proud To Be American And I Hate Arabs here look at your brown skin? The content of your character is worth approximately nothing to people like him. So, when they eventually call you a name, discriminate against you in housing or employment, leave a flaming cross on your lawn or worse because they can’t and don’t want to differentiate between an actual Muslim terrorist, just another Muslim and you, don’t run crying to me.
Instead, come back to real America now and be a real American who fights for the rights of all who want freedom regardless of race or religion. And stop offending my brain acting this way.
Update: Manhattan Cab Driver Stabbed By Passenger Who Asked “Are You Muslim?”
I’ve written this post several times now and deleted it. The manufactured Ground Zero Mosque controversy is not worth talking about, in so many ways. Like Manish, I figure that ultimately “nobody is repealing the 14th Amendment, Muslim-bashing will simmer down after midterms and so on. This is just politics as bread and circuses. Anything to turn the crazybase out and avoid talking tax cuts for the rich.”
Law-abiding Muslims and browns in turbans are vilified in the process, justice is shattered once again, Harry Reid still hasn’t found a spine and the dissonance hurts ears and brains alike, but Fear & Loathing is an ancient Washington game. And fools rush in … Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me … you get the picture.
A new episode of Rescue Me airs tonight. For those of you don’t watch the show, here’s a quick rundown: Denis Leary plays a New York City firefighter whose alcohol-drenched and dysfunctional family life is thrown into a serious tailspin in the years following 9/11. There’s life and then there’s trauma. You get over both, if you’re lucky. Two weeks ago, the show introduced a firefighter from another house; Pat Mahoney is dying of cancer he came down with after working in the rubble of the World Trade Center in the months following the attack. The character Mahoney is symbolic of many firefighters, police officers and relief workers who have developed blood cell cancer from inhaling benzene and other toxic chemicals during the search and cleanup.
Ground Zero is hallowed ground. I know, I was there. In 2007, long after the last piece of rubble was taken away, D and I stood at the corner of Washington and Liberty Streets in Manhattan’s financial district and stared into the crater, past the hole. I thought my heart could shatter no further after Kuwait, 9/11/2001 and The Storm, and yet whatever remained was shredded.
Can you look at a picture or hear or watch footage from that day without fighting the urge to lose it, tear your clothes and run screaming into the wilderness? Not I.
But it shouldn’t turn us into animals, into barbarians. Barbarians who tout our nation’s freedom of religion on one hand and, on the other, deny it to a group of Americans who want to build a religious and community center in a former Burlington Coat Factory building three blocks away. Savages who blessed the launch and nourishment of two disastrous wars using 9/11 as a launchpad. And the worst, most hideous act of all: referring to Ground Zero as hallowed ground and then turning around to deny vital monetary aid to 9/11 first responders under the pretext that it “creates a massive new entitlement program, exposes taxpayers to increased litigation, and is ‘paid for’ with tax increases and potential job losses.”
If anyone should have their citizenships revoked, it should be these asshole politicians we put in power, who would rather play with the lives of real American heroes and their families, only prolonging the greatest mass murder in American history for their own gain and not helping heal it. Furthermore, instead of loudly bringing up these inconsistencies and injustices, We The People more often tuck our tails and watch the moral-relativist ball tossed back and forth between two parties who purport to work for America. Barbarians and animals.
Would you like to keep Ground Zero truly Hallowed instead of using just the word over and over again until it loses its meaning? Want to put that America F**k Yeah sentiment to good use beyond linking to a favored opinion on your Facebook wall? Here’s what you do:
- Donate money at any time to the Fire Fighter Cancer Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 2830, Wilmington, DE 19805
- Team up with your local fire station for the Save Our 9/11 Survivors program, to “help raise funds to provide 500 air purification units that will help ailing responders breathe clean air, avoid secondary infections, and suffer less. Please organize fund raising activities to help your brother & sister responders and send donations by 9-11-2011 (10th anniversary).”
- Stop watching the greedy hate fomented in cable news and reading that which raises anger and self-righteousness as well as your inactivity. Your patriotic bravado followed by no positive action does nothing for the people who are living and dying the real fallout of 9/11.
- Write your congresspeople and political action committees and ask them what the hell they are doing anyway. Soaking in their pre-packaged tea or beer or whatever it is today is what they want you to do. Get away from it. Break truly free.
- And stop fearing. Fear is the mind killer. Think. Be decent. Be American. It’s about time.
From left, Nichelle Nicols, Brad Altman, George Takei and Walter Koenig pose for photos following the wedding of Altman and Takei at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008. Nicols, Takei and Koenig are members of the original cast of “Star Trek.” (AP Photo/The Rafu Shimpo, Mario G. Reyes)
George Takei To Prop 8 Supporters: “Mind Your Own Marriage!”
Dichotomy, artist unknown
Ed Darrell points out at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub an interesting 2008 exchange between Speaking of Faith’s Krista Tippett and Cal DeWitt, professor at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies of the University of Wisconsin at Madison on the history of environmentalism. According to DeWitt, it would seem that human beings stopped viewing themselves as part of their environment, in order first to conquer it and then to protect it. I’d love to learn more about this philosophical fork in the road given that it involves more than us seeing ourselves as separate from the creator; this is divorcing the human self from the rest of creation.
Cal DeWitt tells an interesting story about the origins of the word environment. It emerged, he says, from a term coined by Geoffrey Chaucer: environing. This became a linguistic way of distinguishing our human selves from the world around us. Previously, DeWitt avers, human beings had thought of themselves as part and parcel of the same creation. At best, this implied a certain responsibility and relationship that has been absent in the modern Western approach to the world.
Western Christianity itself has, ironically, been a potent historical driver of enmity between humanity and nature. But after careful study, Cal DeWitt found the Bible to be an “ecological handbook.” And he has long put it into practice in this way, beginning with the marsh beneath his feet.
… DeWitt also points out that the stereotype of environmental activism as liberal and secular has never been accurate. Devout evangelicals have long been in positions of environmental leadership. And on this program last year, the chief representative in Washington D.C. of the National Association of Evangelicals, Richard Cizik, stunned many of our listeners with his passionate declaration that he is a “convert” to the science of climate change. As it turns out, Cal DeWitt was one of the organizers of the global gathering that exposed Cizik and others to the science of climate change. DeWitt describes an intriguing theory of his this hour, that evangelical and charismatic Christianity may be better equipped than other Christian traditions to change and galvanize and lead on an issue like this.
Ack Comics gives us America in the form of Hindu comics my brother and I grew up reading. Gotta love it when my worlds collide like this. King Maharaja LeBron James could have been a contender.
(Click on the image for the rest.)
Be sure to check out the Oil-Eating Obama-Mermen and the Ack Blog. A total riot!
Help Oiled Birds
Please help some innocent living things by supporting the efforts of The International Bird Rescue Center in locating, rescuing, and cleaning wildlife affected by the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Click on the pelican to donate.
