Political Irony

A few days ago, I said I wasn’t going to talk about the Park51 Islamic cultural center (aka the “Ground Zero Mosque”), because it was being used as a distraction by the Republican party. But Glenn Greenwald makes the point that this has grown far beyond a simple distraction, and is showcasing growing American religious intolerance, hatred of “the other”, and Islamophobia.

The main evidence? A anti-mosque rally held yesterday in Manhattan, that turned ugly. A black man who merely looked slightly Muslim is threatened and attacked. The crowd yells “Mohammed’s a pig”. A student carrying a sign that says “Religious tolerance is what makes America great” is also threatened. And if this is really just about “ground zero” then why are communities trying to stop the building of mosques in other cities?

Are Americans really that stupid that they blame the actions of a few terrorists on all Muslims? Should all Christians be blamed for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan?

[reprinted from Yahoo tech|ticker]

America Won the Cold War But Now Is Turning Into the USSR, Gerald Celente Says

There’s a lot of talk these days about America being an empire in decline. Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute, goes a step further, arguing America is following a similar path as the former Soviet Union.

“While the many glaring differences between the two political systems have been exhaustively publicized – especially in the U.S. – the glaring similarities [go] unnoticed,” Celente writes in The Trends Journal, which he publishes.

In the accompanying video, Celente describes some of these similarities, including:

A rotten political system: He compares politicians (Democrats and Republicans alike) to “Mafioso” and says campaign contributions are really thinly disguised “bribes and payoffs.”

Crony capitalism: Like in the USSR of old, Celente laments that so much of America’s wealth (93%) is controlled by such a small portion of its population (10%). Owing to that concentration of wealth, the government makes policies designed to reward “the bigs” at the expense of average citizens (see: Bailouts, banks).

Military-industrial complex: The USSR went bankrupt fighting the cold war and Celente fears the U.S. is “squandering its greater but still finite resources on a gargantuan defense budget, fighting unwinnable hot wars and feeding an insatiable military stationed on hundreds of bases worldwide.”

As with many observers, Celente thinks America will suffer the same fate in Afghanistan as the USSR, the British Empire, Alexander the Great and all others who’ve ventured into the “graveyard of empires.”

The irony, of course, is that while America defeated Soviet Communism and won the Cold War, perhaps our greatest threat today comes from China and its booming state-controlled economy.

The recent poll results that nearly one in five Americans believe (incorrectly) that Obama is a Muslim is just more evidence that a small but significant percent of Americans will believe just about any cockamamie story.

Of course, it doesn’t help when you have people like Rev. Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham) spouting nonsense like this on ABC:

I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name.

Nevermind the truth — that Obama’s father was an atheist, not a Muslim. Not to mention that if being given an Islamic name makes you Islamic, then everyone named Jesus (or David or Ruth) must be a Jew. And if the seed of Islam is passed through the father and the seed of Judiasm is passed through the mother, then what is the child of a Muslim man and a Jewish woman? Or as PZ Myers speculates, are the offspring of Muslim women with Jewish men automatically atheists?

The Washington Post points out some other crazy ideas that polls show are believed by 20% of the population, including that socialism is superior to capitalism, that torture is a good idea, that states have the right to secede from the US (what civil war?), and that aliens from outer space have made contact with humans. In fact, 20% admit to peeing in swimming pools, which shows you just the kind of people we are dealing with here.

I won’t say what kind of people, but it is interesting that if you only consider conservative Republicans, 34% of them believe Obama is Muslim. That’s one third who believe a lie. Not reported was what percentage of Fox News viewers believe this nonsense.

UPDATE: I take it all back. The Guardian has proof that Obama is a closet Muslim.

© Matt Wuerker

And the actual building is one block further away than this cartoon indicates.