Here in the United States the other day for a few seconds, perhaps as much as ten minutes, I thought we had murdered enough “OTHERS” in El Paso, Texas last week to last us a few days, then reality set in and a seemingly normal person I had gone to school with back in the 60’s (back then in rural Pennsylvania there wasn’t a single black or Hispanic in the school district) forwarded to me that they had reposted some random HATE and they wanted me to share the hate with others – it was about how someone who dressed differently should be killed because they look different but all hate of the “other” is essentially the same so details don’t matter.
(NOTE, if you aren’t familiar with the mass shooting background skip to the bottom before reading further.)
When I studied theology I was repeatedly struck by the way so many of the people who claim a personal relationship with Jesus instead mostly rely entirely on the hate and intolerance of the Old Testament for their ethics and political validation even while skipping entire sections such as Leviticus. (Anyone stoned their neighbor to death for mowing the lawn on the sabbath lately?
That’s required by Leviticus as is getting your neighbors to help kill your mother if she owns a wool blend sweater.) and while spewing their hate forget that Jesus was nailed to a tree for saying people should be nice and kind to each other.
While we are banning Muslims and all brown people, shouldn’t we also be killing off those damn Amish with their strange clothes, outlawing kilts because us Scots are a dangerous savage people? Maybe we should ban anyone who wears glasses. They obviously can’t be trusted because they wouldn’t wear glasses unless they read things and are therefore might be learning something dangerous such as the fact that almost all mass killings in the U.S. have been by white guys.
Can someone actually claim to have reached adulthood if you only stop being scared of the bogeyman man under your bed because instead you now fear and hate all foreigners?
It makes even less sense when you remember that most mass killings in this country are by youngish white males born here in the U.S. (38 or 39 of the last 50) Or that in many countries including the U.S. you are more likely to be killed by lightning than by a Muslim terrorist and much more likely to be killed as a bystander by an on-duty policeman.
I’m sure we all feel safer when a police chase stops a teen car thief or an otherwise innocent black man with a busted tail light even if a family of 4 dies because they happened to be in the wrong intersection at the wrong time.
(416 innocents were killed just in high speed chases in 2017, 480 people were shot and killed by police so far this year – many unarmed or bystanders, and in 2018 there were actually 23 days when it appears U.S. police did NOT kill someone, but there is some thought that perhaps it was because local reporters are reluctant to criticize people who routinely carry guns and break traffic laws – ever see a police car going under the speed limit on an open highway?)
By the time you next go to your place of worship next sabbath many people in the U.S. will have forgotten Dayton and El Paso having moved on to sports or the latest twitter outrage, but I would ask that they please try to keep the hate down to a tolerable level at least one day a week. I know this will be a strain for some people but they should give it a try and see if it doesn’t make their religion feel a bit more comfortable.
OH, and while we’re at it, as a reporter myself I want to suggest that instead of attacking us, we go back to the good old days when we burned witches because they not only knew about childbirth and herbs they actually used that knowledge to help people, not to mention sometimes failing to obey religious figures or even (GASP!) husbands or fathers.
That could divert some of the bloodlust from reporters long enough for us to cover the next election. For several hundred years European churches thought that burning uppity women was a great idea and it is still a lot easier to pick out old women by sight than to spot reporters when they aren’t working.
And finally, it seems necessary these days of instant hate to suggest that whose of you who are foaming at the mouth and perhaps thinking of joining those who already send me death threats because many reporters such as myself prefer truth to lies and honest people to liars, you might consider the definition of the word IRONY as it applies to white people hating and fearing brown people when it is the brown (and black) people who are mostly being murdered, far too often legally.
It is even more ironic when Americans want to ban all brown immigrants at a time when the population is aging, the birth rate has dropped below replacement level, and we don’t know where the taxpayers will come from to support Social Security in the next decade – hint, immigrants would help the U.S. from becoming a country of all old people as Japan which is now facing a crisis.
(Since you don’t know me I need to point out that I wear glasses, some of my ancestors wore kilts and belonged to a Clan on the island of Mull, I have an Amish friend as much as “any English” can have an Amish friend, I know some Wickens none of whom I would want to see even singed, have a Muslim neurologist, and I have had a beard for 53 years because I don’t like shaving.)
Using the Bible or other religious works to justify hate is just the other side of using the Bible to justify a rejection of science on Sunday, then using a cell phone to get on the Internet while driving home in a car controlled by 12 computers, to post anti-science nonsense.
I really wouldn’t mind people denying scientific facts if they would also stop using technology, medicine, and all those other things that science created. Not letting your children be protected by vaccines for measles and HPV while parents take prescribed medicine is the height of hypocrisy right up there with claiming to be a good Christian while hating everyone who doesn’t look and worship exactly like you but at least that will diminish over the years as the dead hand of Darwin continues to thin the herd.
Last week in the U.S., two young white males born in America took legally obtained assault rifles, one with a double drum 100 round capacity and killed as many people as they could.
One, in Ohio, seems to have just been crazy because in 29 seconds before local police killed him, he murdered his sister and a friend who had ridden to the nightspot area with him an hour before.
The other drove 600 miles to intentionally terrorize mostly brown U.S. and Mexican citizens in El Paso, Texas all legally shopping for back to school supplies for their kids at the local Walmart. He published an article online which echoed many of President Trump’s rants against immigrants, calling the unarmed, undernourished men along with women, children, and babies an “invasion” force.
After a day, President Trump held a press conference blaming video games and former President Obama for the Texas act of domestic terrorism, although he did mention white nationalists one time in the speech and some tweets.