Defenestration Is a Funny Word

Do I have to give the obligatory not all Muslims are violent fundamentalists qualifier? If so that was it.

So a long time ago I mentioned the coming global conflict between what can be broadly and not entirely inaccurately described as Islam and what can be as inaccurately described as the "West." The thing is it will be pretty lame if it's historically remembered as having started over cartoons. Oh well.

Rather than offer any kind of cogent and lucid analysis of the racism, political power, and economic disparity that couples with particular textual and theological traditions to create a dynamic with lots of explosive potential, I'll use this space for a petty dig.

I know Pat Robertson and other of our Christian leaders looks at the global situation with sadness, but the sadness is not that children loved by God kill each other. The sadness is that brothers and sisters are complacent. The sadness is there is no passion. I mean there's Pat for example, doing what he can to keep his title "radical cleric" and the best he and his consorts can muster are boycotts. It's not like he hasn't wished anyone dead or told people to expect punishment from God- but nothing. Aside from church burnings, murdered doctors, bombed buildings, assaults against gay people, and a pervasive subtle ethnocentrism that excuses all kinds of injustice- our religious kooks can't pull much together. Where's the organized mayhem? Where's the passion?

We've gotten soft. Our... well I guess your Puritan forebears had no qualms about calling for and following through with the organized murder of Quakers and Pequots. That's boldness. And my forebears, boy, they knew how to please Jesus with burnings, brandings, and murders. Even my ancestors who didn't know Jesus at least had an idea that God would be happy with cutting out and eating the hearts of virgins.

But what do we have now? Subtle systemic violence inscribed with religious language and imagery- how weak is that? Tom Delay saying sweat shops in the Marianas , where imported girls live in concentration camp conditions, forced abortions are commonplace, and labor laws are unheard of are God's blessing and our Divine Right. We no longer boldly come right out and say God wants us to kill. We discreetly valorize war with pictures of uniformed service people kneeling in the desert. Our warriors don't wear cross covered tunics into battle, boldly saying, "I'm killing for Jesus." We hide our divinely imperial designs in tiny lapel pins. What are we? Babies, cowards, craven poltroons.

That's all. I like that word- poltroon. I came across it in a white supremacist sermon. Crazy huh?

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