They warn, “never trust the power of a true believer.” Indeed a true believer is a dangerous as a schizophrenic that is hearing command voices (kill the one with the yellow spectacles). They both are hearing voices telling them to do things. In both cases reasoning ability is subsumed by the voice of the Almighty. Only we put dangerous schizophrenics in rooms with padded walls, while allowing religious whack jobs use their piety to gain status and power to reinforce their own wanton views upon the world. Its quite the contradiction.
While the “Religious Right” in this country may have been responsible for electing the most irresponsible and reprehensible president of recent history, zealots in this country have much to learn from the whack jobs over seas. They are much more adept at the art of lunacy and tryanical puritanism than anyone state side.
One extremely sticky situation that made some ripples last weekend is that of the Israel and Palestinian conflict. A flotilla of activists was boarder by Israeli commandos, for trying to bring stuff to the Palestinians in Gaza without the permission of Israel. The interesting thing about this conflict is that on both sides combatants are so completely involved in the conflict that any sort of reasoning or compassion normally gets tossed out the window early on. As was the case here.
Listening to and reading the rationalization by the agents of the state of Israel for their actions is at times mind boggling. Most apparent is it seams that the Israelites, though very dependent on support from the U.S. still don’t quite understand out traditions. The reaction on the ship from Turkey has been repeatedly described as a lynch mob, an art the southern whites of the U.S. perfected during Jim Crow era. In this gruesome display of xenophobic mob rule, a mob is first formed. Then the mob travels to the residence of the Lynchee. The lynchers then demand for the head of the Lynchee and threaten violence against others if specific lynchee is not surrender to them. Then they kill the lynchee.
The group most associated with this tactic was the Klu Klux Klan. Now they lynched Jews as well as Blacks and the occasional Gypsy or Catholic. So it supries me that so many Jews can seem to be confusing a lynch mob with violent resistance. See normally the lynchee was unarmed and occupyed a lowly rank in society. It is hard to lynch miliary personel because they armed. A key to a successful lynching is that the the person being lynched is powerless.
Now another key to aspect to lynching is that the crowd must go after the lynchee. As in romance the chase is half the fun. There was never a case of lynching in the south where a group of Black folks came to a Klu Klux Klan rally with paint ball guns and started pushing people in white robs around. No the Klan would have to seek out their prey, they never rappelled out of helicopters into their laps. See Black people in the Jim Crow South knew they weren’t invited to such gatherings and as such didn’t go into them with paintball guns hoping that the Klan would peacefully disperse.
While I’m sure that the Israeli soldiers lives were in danger (one of them died, I think), they managed to kill 9 activists. Though we hear about the rocket attacks on Israel, its pretty rare we hear about the the death tolls on the other side of the wall. Like the time a Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian boy. Or of course the white liesIsrael was telling about its ordinance. Some have said there was insufficient intelligence during the planning of this raid. I’d agree.
However, the most hypocrisy has come from Israelis describing Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas for those of you prefer to live your lives with your heads up your arse (excuse my British) has been democratically elected by the Palestinian people to represent them. So when Israel says it has a right to defend itself like any other state, Hamas theoretically has the same right if it is part of the government that rules Palestinians. All the while Israel is casting Palestinians as religious extremists when Israel fights wars (killed people) to take back land that they believe God had explicityly to them. Anyways… thats all for today…
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