I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

I watched a very disturbing video several times today. It was of a protest regarding the jingoistically named 911 Mosque, Ground Zero Mosque, whatever. There was a black man wearing a white cap who, it turns out, wasn't even a Muslim, who found himself in the midst of a protest featuring both pro and con demonstrators. He was denigrated, told to run away, called a coward, and actually had to be escorted from the scene by authorities.

This topic and the resulting incident that I have referenced above, along with the blatant racism now being more and more tolerated each day...the vile spewings from the mouths of most everyone at Fox Noise but most notably Glen Beck and Sara Palin, along with Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Michelle Bachman are words that as early as five years ago would have been cause for uprisings and banning of these voices from public discourse. Of course, we didn't have a black commander in chief. We didn't have a black family in the White House. God knows what those two are doing on the counter tops in the White House kitchen.

I said that in the hopes that just one cracker bigot reads this blog. I know they don't but it would be fun to spar with a fourth grader.

Dr. Laura got her two cents in. She went out with a bang, spouting the "N" word 11 times. That must have been a real purging experience for her since she's been dying to use it for so many years. I hope that now she can take a good, healthy shit since she's let go of all that bigotry she's been holding onto for the past several decades. Better take some dulcolax, Laura, because it's going to be a big old turd.

Glenn Beck is going to dishonor the I Have a Dream Speech this coming weekend. Along with many other white people who seem to think they have to take their country back from something. I think it's dark people. They still like orange people, though. Thus, John Boehner. By the way, the correct pronunciation of his name, phonetically is not "Bayner." It's "Boner." Just sayin...

While I am adding a certain amount of levity, this just isn't funny. When Newty whose legacy, both professionally and personally is that of something below a deranged sewer rat can compare the building of this community center to Nazi's putting up a display outside of the Holocaust museum, this country has to really and deeply consider who we put up as experts, pundits and authorities. We have to storm the doors of the media...all of them... and perhaps watch Network so that we all say "I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it any more."

But not like some poor, misguided woman who is obviously old enough to collect social security and medicare wearing a sunhat laden with teabags, toting a sign that says keep your government hands off my medicare. The uneducated and frighted older white population of this country have been scared and duped enough. I don't have to continue to wax political on them, it is a futil effort. Let's fix a few things to save the people who can be saved.

Gays and Muslims are the new...I can't bring myself to say it, but the "N" word. It works and it gets uneducated white people who are unemployed, underemployed, scared and mad all worked up. There is only one way to settle them down. We'll never stop them from being bigots. But we can stop the frenzied madness.

We have to pressure our government to quit sitting on the rest of the stimulus money and get all Eisenhower and Roosevelt (both of them) on us. Turn a couple of those assembly plants sitting vacant in Detroit and Ohio and Indiana and Pennsylvania into functioning operations that make the cars for the new light rail that's being built in Denver from Grand Central downtown to the airport. Among other projects. Made in America, you know?

I've digressed but not really. If a baptist minister had bought that piece of shit Burlington Coat Factory building that sits among a Starbucks, a Strip Joint and a lot of barely surviving bottom feeder businesses we wouldn't have heard a peep. These are Americans. These are people who want to spend time with their families and friends in a community center and, gee, just like countless Catholic Youth Centers at which I have volunteered, also have a prayer center.

Before I make my final point, I would like to quote an excerpt from the beautiful Lady Liberty, and the poem connected with her. You see, this country and what we venerate is so much about the downtrodden, the needing, the lost and the hopeful. We are supposed to be the country that reached out to those who just want a little chance. That beautiful piece of writing actually disdains what the right so venerates. Here is it...just a few lines you may not be aware of, that appear just before the familiar statement that is forever connected with the Statue of Liberty:

From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; Her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities framed.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp” cries she with silent lips.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

America has a right to hurt and grieve over 911. But many of the countries upon whom our military presence has been pressed over the past 10 years suffer similar tragedies. Only on a daily basis. One of the reasons 911 is so raw is because it is so rare. Should we not consider ourselves, as a nation, blessed and thank God, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, and every other spiritual entity that grants us solace, hope and peace, that we have never had to live under the threat of constant bombings, abject poverty, torture and subjugation of women, and no hope further than the miracle of surviving another day? Shouldn't we want the religious freedom we so easily enjoy in our own communities with our own traditional and accepted faiths for everyone? Including a basketball court  in a community center if they want one?

Isn't it really as simple as that?

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