There's a point here...somewhere

Turns out I have a friend who's turned into a paranoid neo-con right-wing-nut defender of George WMD Bush and the War on Terror, nee Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (remember that one?), nee the Quest against Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction, nee “weapons of mass destruction development program activities,” nee Axis of Evil, nee... hell, it's hard to keep track.

It's sort of like discovering someone you think you know has become a Moonie, or wants to tell you how L. Ron Hubbard got it right. Or is has joined AA or become born-again. It's like meeting up with an old bar-b-que buddy who suddenly says, “How can you eat pig?! A pig is an animal, just like your kitty! Could you eat your kitty?!” (To digress a moment, I probably could not bring myself to eat my kitty. On the other hand, if I ended up dead on the floor and he'd run out of Meow Mix, I'm pretty confident my fuzzy house-mate wouldn't have any compunctions about nibbling around on my carcass; after all, I've seen what he did to that mouse he brought in from the garden.)

Silly me, but I'm not all that afraid of Islamic terrorists. I figure, if I become as afraid of them as my friend, the terrorists have won.

They haven't, you know.

Not even close.

Except for my friend.

He's read a slug of right-wing neo-con websites that are probably on the Armstrong Williams gravy train and stuff stuff over Ted Stevens' tubes which comprise Boy George Bush's “Internets” that prove how diabolical Islam must be.

“Nothing in Christianity,” says my friend, “comes close to the hatred endemic to Islam,” he says.

Yeah. Except for all the admonitions of the Old Testament God against infidels, and Muth v. Frank (which tried to make homosexuality illegal in the United States, and the good “Christian” from Topeka who shows up at Iraq War veterans' funerals with signs that declare “God Hates Fags.”

And nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.

My personal observation has been that the folks who rationalize their terrorist attacks against their perceived enemies are corrupting their religion. If Osama bin Laden represents Islam, the Ku Klux Klan represents Christianity.

Sorry. I don't buy it.

I happened to win the genetic lottery by being born into an American middle-class, college educated, relatively-prosperous family. My parents had been raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition and taught me accordingly. I got an education and a keen perception of bullshit from my parents and teachers. I also got a little bit of idealism along the way. I still haven't been able to shake Buckminster Fuller's observation that all of us on this planet aren't just passengers, we're the Crew of Spaceship Earth.

We're all in this together.

You can resent your sister and have issues with your parents or shake your head and sigh at what your brother-in-law does, but you're all family come time for Thanksgiving Dinner.

There is an innate, basic instinct, I think, that may somehow occur to human beings that, for all our picayune differences, we've got more in common than we have that's different.

Except for the Nazarenes, of course. They're going to Hell.