Friday, September 10, 2010

Congratulations. You have not burned a Koran today.

Must we be congratulating Terry Jones, pastor of some godforsaken church in Florida, for NOT burning Korans this weekend? I'm not burning them either, which is the position of millions of people all over the world. Are we being congratulated? Roger Cohen quotes Heinrich Heine saying in the 19th century, "If they burn books, they will also burn people." How prescient he was. That could have been Terry Jones's next step, too. Would anyone put it past him?

The news media is only too happy to make a disgusting circus of all of this. How Jews (the Anti-Defamation League, for example) could possibly join in this anti-muslim fray is just totally beyond me. The ADL says it's okay to build the mosque center, just not where the group that's doing it wants to build it. Do they realize they are contributing to a miasma that may well have little muslim children in NYC right now feeling exactly the way little jewish children felt in Germany in the 30s? Never Again--was that supposed to be just about Jews?

For once, I must say Thank you, NY Times, for today's paper. It included a speculation on why Terry Jones gets so much ink (a bit of a mea culpa, in fact) and at long last an actual story about the Muslim widow and children of an actual Muslim who had been killed in the World Trade Center. Ultimo!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The trouble with "Liberals"

They will not stop demonizing their fellow citizens, will they? I mean some progressives, who cannot understand how Americans can be SO stupid as to support the Republican party in the upcoming election. Well, they voted the Dems in, didn't they? And what did it get them? Worse unemployment, a commission apparently created to end social security, a very bad health reform bill that will require us to pay the scandalously high salaries of insurance co. CEOs, and the loss of more and more houses to foreclosure. No advance on unions, no improvement in privacy, no prosecution of torturers, and... Military Commissions! There are I suppose some good things that the Democrats did; they are not nearly as bad as the Repugs even at their worst, but who knows about them? The Dems seem almost to hope that nobody important (read rich) knows if they've done something for the "lesser people" (vide Alan Simpson, meaning anyone who isn't a Fat Cat). Secretly, I have to feel, they just want to be accepted by the Establishment (a word I haven't heard in a long time) so they'll get a lot of money for their campaigns (plus it's so much more elegant to pal around with the elite).

So who are the masses supposed to vote for? There are only two parties and that doesn't give them much choice right now. How do they express their displeasure with the Dems? By voting for them again? I don't think so. And most people are not quite up to starting new parties or new movements, oddly. So all they can do is vote for the Other Guy--the repugs, god help us all.