This is bullshit, you guys. Sometimes, I forget what country I'm living in - and what time period I'm living in. I refuse to get all Huffington on your asses, but I'm a little huffy. What the flying fuck is with this fucking Muslim shit?
Hi, hello. Welcome. It's the year 2010. We have this thing called the Internet. We have this other thing called mass communication which has made us all capable of being more connected with each other within seconds. There was a time, I've heard, where it sometimes took minutes in order to send a message via various mediums of communication. Believe it or not, like a million years ago or something, messages had to travel by horse. AND PIGEONS! Sometimes, fucking PIGEONS sent messages.
You would think that now that we have all of these amazing open forums for message sending, discussions, debates, and all of these crazy fast technologies that allow us to do said message sending at wicked speed, that we would be a bit more careful about what we say. Right? The Internet never forgets, after all. And basically everything we say can be traced back to us more easily than ever before. Trying to figure out who sent you an unsigned love letter via carrier pigeon could be a bit more difficult. Saying horribly irresponsible, untrue, sweeping generalizations about someone or a group of people was a lot more excusable when we didn't have the entire fucking world at our carpal tunneled fingertips to fact check the bullshit we were spewing. You would think.
So, forgive me for expecting more of the world. Here I thought that as time goes on, information-getting becomes more democratized and messages are sent with relative ease and decreased confusion, we collectively get smarter and more capable of having rational conversations (via whatever medium). I would hope that our ability to comprehend such information would, by extension, be elevated. Unfortunately, it seems we have some catching up to do with all of this technology.
It seems to me that we are just children playing with expensive toys without any concept of how valuable and careful we should be with the toys we've been given. Instead, we are stubbornly throwing those toys against the wall, damaging not only the toy, but the world around us. You know what? That analogy sucks because these are not toys. These are precious advancements in technology that should be helping to eradicate this shit. These are tools - the Internet, cable news, text messages, spoken words between friends and family members, all of these - and I hate seeing tools being misused. It's like when someone uses a knife to cut a bitch instead of a steak. That's not what you're supposed to use it for, knucklehead!
I'm sorry, but this Ground Zero "mosque" situation is for the birds. I can't stand it, I can't take it, I can't even begin to escape it, and all I want to do is run and scream "No, no, no, no, NO!!" And then people start talking about Barack Obama being a Muslim. And then suddenly, Barack Obama is the contractor conspiring to get the mosque built so he can secretly blow up the new World Trade Center, and then suddenly people are trying to tell me that there's animal byproduct in my favorite parmesan-reggiano cheese and you know what? You know fucking what? My world is shattered.
First of all - if Barack Obama is a Muslim, who the fuck cares? Do you understand what a slap in the face that is to legitimate followers of the Islam faith? Is it supposed to be some big, bad, scary thing for the President to be a Muslim? Why is this totally acceptable pundit and dinner table fodder for us? It's like when people ask me if I'm "Mexican" (not hispanic or latino) and I say "No," and they say "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." What are you actually sorry for - mistaking me for the wrong ethnicity and then feeling bad about it, implying that to mistake anybody for non-white is offensive in some way? Or sorry that I don't actually hail from Spain and you know how I really wish I did and how secretly upset I am about it?
Second of all - it's not even exactly a mosque. It's a community center for Muslims that happens to include a mosque. It's called Park51, and they've conveniently made their homepage their FAQ page, no doubt to quell the hate that's been thrown their way for exercising their constitutional right. And even if it was a mosque, just like if Barack Obama even was a Muslim, what the flying fuck is the big deal? He has the right to follow whatever religion he wants (even if it is - oooooh, yikes - CHRISTIANITY!) and they have the right to construct a fucking mosque.
Since there isn't enough breaking news in the world to fill 24 hours, this apparently begs the question, just because they have a right, does it mean they should? Absolutely, they should. These are not the same people who flew planes into the World Trade Center. My understanding is that those people died - am I wrong? Why [HOW] can we infringe on the rights of others based on their religious views just because a few deranged, murderous others did something horrible? Is it because this is Amurrica?
I just get so confused, y'all. I thought when I was indoctrinated with the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem in elementary school and at NASCAR races that I heard "with liberty and justice for all," and maybe even a "the land of the free" every now and again. And here we are, in 2010, still fucking going apeshit over someone's clearly defined right to build a religious house of worship and a President legitimately elected to office who identifies as a Christian.
It's like, let's not dumb down the situation. Let's keep it real. You are scared that having a mosque/community center in the general vicinity of Lower Manhattan will somehow increase the chances of a terrorist attack. You really don't know/don't care if Barack is a Muslim, you just don't like him because he's African-American and that is somehow scary to you, but rather than be racist, it's more socially acceptable to be prejudiced based on religion because of 9/11.
Your insane bigotry. Your religious intolerance. Your inability to live peacefully with others who don't share the same paradigm as you. Your willful submission to fear over logic and rationality. Your willingness to politicize harmless happenings in order to incite and spread such fear.
I know I used a lot of "you" statements right there, and please don't feel attacked... Unless you are on of those people who says/believes such things. In that case, feel attacked because I think you're an idiot. I realize that's a judgment and I realize that's unfair and I realize I should hear your side of the story, but I also realize that I simply don't have the energy within me to even dignify your soaring ignorance with a dignified response. You are about as crazy to me as Danielle Staub. If you don't know who that is, then you're even more ignorant than I can fathom.
On the really fucking real, you guys. Let people worship where they want to worship. Let people worship what they want to worship. And let us not abuse the tools of communication we've been blessed with to spread these vitriolic, blatantly untrue messages of divisiveness. The minds of communication have not been working on easier ways to divide us - I assure you. The goal here is connection, community, and the sharing of ideas. Can we please, for the love of all that is holy (to you - I'm an atheist), acknowledge and appreciate that this is what communication is for? Not for persuasion at any cost (true or untrue)?
I know that, for the most part, I am preaching to the choir. If you are a dissenter, please show yourself in the comments. I welcome your ignorance (kidding). I guess I just really needed to get this out. I find it annoying to bring this topic up in everyday conversation, because everyone else seems to be doing so, and I hate everyone else. I suppose I just needed a private space to vent, so naturally I chose my blog. On a deeper level, I think I just needed a space to share my deep concern for the current hateful, idiotic climate. I never thought I'd say this, but can we get some climate change up in here? I mean, what the flying fuck?
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