Day: September 7, 2009

The Indoctrination of Lying


liarWe’ve become so used to fear and hatred…..it’s as American, indeed human, as mom and apple pie, but I can never get over how easily people can lie without showing any effects from this hideous disease.  I shouldn’t be surprised therefore to read that the rather pleasant looking young lady above who claims to have confronted a school mate for an infraction against her loyalties and sensitivities made the whole thing up…….or in other words lied!

It didn’t happen, and the victim of this lie didn’t do anything that approaches the charge young Heather Lawrence accused her of; not even remotely, so why did Lawrence even go there?  No doubt some of it is home training or the lack thereof.  Parents sitting around any part of the house and lamenting the state of modern day America probably say things they don’t want others to hear or know, but with impressionable children around, such talk often gets translated into the type of action that Lawrence initiated.

While I applaud Obama for trying to diffuse the hatred directed towards Muslims and Arabs from all quarters of American society, the first step begins with punishing those who cross the line like Lawrence and letting them know there is a zero tolerance for actions that are clearly forbidden by the rules and regulations of businesses, the workplace, schools and other institutions.  Political grandstanding at the expense of innocent people, in other words demagoguery, cannot be tolerated in today’s America.  There’s enough of that going on under the guise of free speech on the air waves of America, but when it’s translated into actions that are intimidating or violent, should be met with the full systemic force of those responsible for rule and order.  The school officials who have punished Lawrence acted appropriately and are to be congratulated; the young girl’s parents need to be taken out to the nearest woodshed and spanked, while their daughter is made to watch, and then she too should be punished again.  At some point this young girl is going to have to become her own person, mature enough to discern what is right from wrong in her social relations, but until that time, her parents/guardians, her legal and moral authority, have to assume responsibility for her actions.  I shudder to think this girl may some day join a law enforcement agency and act out as inappropriately with much more at stake then she has now.  Such behavior as hers is the jumping off point for the likes of Sgt. James Crowley who somehow thought he had more right to remain in the home of someone than the actual homeowner did.  This family owes the victim of their daughter’s hatred and deception an apology, and to us, the greater society a pledge that while they can believe whatever they want good citizenship demands a strict adherence to the rules of law and institutions that make up this Republic.  Get busy Lawrences’…….you have work to do on yourselves and your daughter!

Blame the victim


The French government has come out four square against the rights of French Muslims to decide for themselves how they want to express their religious beliefs on the grounds that France is a secular society.  That secularism should apply to all religious expression, so goes the French rationale and one wonders why at the first hint of France’s Islamophobic response that anyone wouldn’t think that tendency to ban any and all religious  expression would be the natural outgrowth?!  For those who silently cheered on the sidelines as Muslims were targeted the full weight and oppression of the state is headed to a religious community near you, just don’t blame the Muslims.

The backlash against Muslims in France demanding religious rights in the public sphere has also hit Jews, who feel that their own, similar requests are being treated increasingly negatively.

“Things have got worse since more and more Muslims started pushing demands, sometimes with political motives. Now we’re compared to assertive pushy militants and our own requests are denied outright,” said Marc Djebali, vice president of the Jewish community of Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris. “Now officials tell me: ‘we can’t accept this, this is a secular state’.”

In America we call that, ‘chickens coming home to roost’. Of course Jewish concerns for their religious expression should be honored just as Muslim expression or any other religious group that lives in what’s supposedly a free society as France claims to be; otherwise no faith can or should supersede any other faith, and that means Jewish women will either have to wear state approved swim wear or not swim at all, and Jewish men will have to doff their yarmulkes just as Muslim women do their hijab. Instead of blaming a politically inclined Muslim movement, perhaps French Jews should blame their tacit support for French racism against Muslims which is now slowly headed their way as well. Have French Jews forgotten how racism fueled a world war in the heart of Europe only a few short years ago? Do they think the same ingredients of racism, lies, distortions xenophobia today won’t produce the same results, or do they think they are now immune from the dangers of anti-semitism?  Que sera, sera.

I have some good Muslim friends


Tenn_mayorYeah, right.  In a throwback to ‘some of my best friends are Negro’, this Tennessee mayor applies the stereotype to Muslims to cover up his ignorance contained in an email he forwarded where he asks readers to remember a series of “Muslim” terrorist attacks. For example, “Remember the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993! To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.”

Choosing to ignore the scores of Muslim victims of 911 and the rather dubious aftermath of the attacks where calls for a more honest and open investigation are being made everyday, Clarksville Mayor Johnny Piper wants to lie and mislead people about that fateful day in American history in order to score points on the Islamophobia battlefied.  In the process he gets most everything wrong, like the assertion that the stamp is new, and its creation was ordered by President Barack Obama, when in fact it has appeared in five of George W. Bush’s eight years in office.

The politics of hate, lies and distortion are being ramped up as people find purpose and comfort in such tactics to reinforce stereotypes and prejudices that have long simmered under the American collective psyche.  People of reason and faith should recognize the tactics of the Pipers of America, call them out on it and discard them as quickly as such people spring up.