Sunday, October 26, 2008

Don't Call Me Bigot, Whitey

A few days ago, I was unlucky enough to read one of the horribly racist and offensive Obama-bashing emails that have been traversing the cybertubes and scaring ignorant Americans into fearing big bad Barack because his name is typed out in close proximity to the bogus term "Muslim male extremist."

Needless to say, it made me furious. Frustrated with the rampant racism of America and demonization of "the other," I decided to pen a response, in the style of the original, that speaks to fears of a nation and encourages learning from history. Whom should we really fear and how should that influence our vote come November 4th?

To read the original email, click here.

Here's my reply:

READ THIS PEOPLE, DON'T BE BLIND.

I knew there was something I didn't like now I know what it is. If you plan on voting, read this first.


This is not a matter of opinion. Opinions are subjective. These are facts.

My personal opinion? I agree with facts because they're factual.

If after reading this email you disagree, please, feel free to reply back to me. Your opinion is yours and that's fine, but you should be able to justify it, don't you think?

*******************************

A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine that America can inflict horrific damage upon the rest of the world without any facing any consequences.

Moreover, there seems to be a whole lot of fear-mongering going around these days, exploiting the xenophobia, racism, mistrust and misunderstanding of "the other," and the cultural and ethnosupremacy of many white Americans, who are the descendants of European Christians.

So, please, pause a moment, reflect back.

These events are actual events from history.

They really happened!!!

Do you remember?

1. 1095-1291: The Crusades, a series of religiously-motivated military campaigns with the intent of brutally conquering and claiming the Holy Land and fought primarily against Muslims, were waged by white Christian men. Death toll: 3-5 million human beings.

2. 1478-1834: The Spanish Inquisition, a bloody effort to create a politically and religiously homogeneous kingdom wrested from the hands of Muslims and Jews through forced conversion, censorship, repression, and torture, was sanctioned and carried out by white Christian men. Death toll: 32,000 human beings.

3. Over the course of four hundred years, beginning in the fifteenth century, witch hunts led by white Christian men were responsible for the deaths of about 60,000 human beings.

4. 1562-1598: For thirty-six years, religious battles were waged in France among different factions of white Christian men. Death toll: 2-4 million human beings.

5. 1618-1648: The Thirty Years War, also fought among conflicting factions of white Christian men, cost the lives of about 7 million human beings.

6. 1803-1815: The Napoleonic Wars, immediately following the French Revolutionary Wars, had a death toll of upwards of 6 million human beings and were waged by white Christian men.

7. 1415-1914: Over the course of five centuries, white Christian men consistently, compulsively, and competitively conquered and colonized the majority of five continents, in an effort to expand economy, exploit resources, subjugate native populations, and exert unabashed hegemony, imperialism, and chauvinism upon the non-European world.

8. The conquest of the New World by European explorers, beginning in earnest in 1492, led to the systematic and deliberate genocide of over 100 million human beings, an unspeakable act of ethnic-cleansing in the name of Manifest Destiny and perpetrated by white Christian men.

9. 1500-1880: The African Slave Trade in the Americas was responsible for forcibly removing over 24 million human beings from their homes. Fewer than 50% survived the trip to the New World and spent the rest of their lives in brutal bondage. This abhorrent crime against humanity was funded, executed, promoted, and fought for by white Christian men.

10. Over the course of 150 years, beginning in 1770, the indigenous population of Australia (who had lived sustainably on their own land for over 40,000 years) was all but wiped out, due to colonization, violent re-settlement, disease, and cultural disintegration inflicted by white Christian men.

11. Even after the abolition of slavery in the United States, Jim Crow Laws that limited or denied the civil rights and liberties of minority groups were in place for almost a century, until 1965. This legalized racism, segregation, and the paradoxical bigotry of the "separate but equal" doctrine were conceived and enforced by white Christian men.

12. 1899-1902: U.S. Marines slaughtered over a million Filipino civilians, as a result of the American occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, one of the first imperial exercises of the United States government, which was controlled (as always) by white Christian men.

13. 1938-1945: Well over 30 million civilians were killed by the Nazis and Fascists during World War II, an estimated 12 million of those in concentration camps. Who's to blame for this genocide? Yup, white Christian men.

14. February 13-15, 1945: In an unjustified and unnecessary series of air raids, the U.S. and British Air Forces dropped about 4,000 tons of bombs on the city of Dresden, destroying about 13 square miles and at least 30,000 human beings. Who gave the orders? White Christian men.

15. August 6 & 9, 1945: After six months of devastating firebombing of almost 70 other cities, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the deaths of over 220,000 human beings. These criminal acts of civilian murder, and the only attacks using nuclear weaponry in the history of the world, were carried out by an executive order by a white Christian man.

16. For over 40 years, beginning in 1948, the Apartheid system in South Africa legally dictated the domination of one race over all others via institutionalized discrimination and segregation that affected citizenship, identity, freedom of movement, living locations and conditions, marriage, education, employment, and health care. As in the U.S., people of different races were prohibited from using the same restaurants, restrooms, and swimming pools. This violation of human rights, with its wholesale contempt and rejection of equality, freedom, and justice, was enacted, supported, and administered by white Christian men.

17. Between 1950 and 1975, militaries led by white Christian men caused the deaths of over 7 million civilians in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Over 2.5 million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos and Cambodia alone, more than double the amount dropped on Nazi Germany and about 14 times the number dropped on Japan during WWII.

18. Since 1893, the sovereign governments of Hawaii, Cuba, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Brazil, Greece, Iran, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chile, Grenada, and Panama, among many others have been overthrown by U.S. government and CIA-supported coup d'etats, incited by white Christian men.

19. Since its creation in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan has advocated white supremacy and violently supported their racist agenda with intimidation, lynching, murder, terrorism, and hate speech. At its peak, the Klan boasted over 4 million members, all of whom were (and still are) white Christian men.

20. The recent illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, including atrocities at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, bombings of wedding celebrations, massacres in Haditha and Mahmudiyah, and the Blackwater shootings in Baghdad, committed by and the behest of white Christian men, have cost the lives of well over a million human beings and have displaced over 3 million others.

21. Assassins John Wilkes Booth and Charles Guiteau, serial killers Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, dictators Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco, terrorists Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh, bigots Billy Graham, James Hagee, Rush Limbaugh, and David Duke, cult leaders Jim Jones and David Koresh, as well as every single U.S. President and Vice President in history have all been white Christian men.

Clearly, there's a pattern here. As a result, I think all Americans should be very wary of electing another leader of such dubious character and affiliation.

The next U.S. President will be the commander-in-chief of the most active and most expensive military on the planet. The U.S. spends over $600 billion dollars a year on its military, more than the rest of the world combined (Our nearest competitor, China, spends one-tenth what we do). The U.S. sells more weapons to other countries than any other nation, has more than 700 military bases in 130 countries around the world and over 6000 bases in the U.S. and U.S.-controlled territories.

Would you want to place this devastating amount of power in the hands of another white Christian man?

Have the American People completely lost their Minds, or just their Power of Reason?

Also, in response to the bogus claims of the "Book of Revelations" prophecy...

The ridiculous statement, as repeated in numerous e-mail forwards attempting to link Barack Obama's popularity to the end of the world, is as follows:

"The Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40's, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, he will destroy everything."
Ok, just some simple corrections:

1. There is no "Book of Revelations" in the Bible. It's called the "Book of Revelation." Singular.

2. Nowhere in "Revelation" is the word "Anti-Christ" mentioned.

3. There is also no mention of a man in his 40's (or of any age for that matter).

4. The mention of a "Muslim" is clearly absurd considering Islam (and thus the term Muslim) was a religion founded in the early 7th Century, about five hundred years after the New Testament was written. Nice try, idiots.

5. The subsequent descriptions of the so-called Anti-Christ are found nowhere in the Book of Revelation. They are pieced-together ideas from disparate parts of the Bible, taken completely out of context, and filtered heavily through End Times theology and Rapture mythology.

Basically, the whole thing is made up. Kudos, racists.

It would behoove all those flag-waving church-over-state patriots to remember the words of our founding father Thomas Jefferson, from his Notes on Virginia:
"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites."
Too wordy? Maybe this other Jefferson quote sums it up better:
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
And what about this gem from Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason:
"Of all systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity."

There you have it. Amen.

********************************

So, hey, if you've gotta vote on November 4th, it's safer to vote against the white guy. Those fuckers are dangerous.

2 comments:

Nima Shirazi said...

THE ORIGINAL EMAIL
(poor grammar and typos included)

Millions of people have probably received and forwarded this email, spreading fear, lies, and ignorance everywhere it goes. Sad.

*****

READ THIS PEOPLE, DON'T BE BLIND. I knew there was something I didn't like now I know what it is. If you plan on Voting read first.

This is a matter of opinion and opinions are like (well you know) everybody has one.

My personal opinion? I agree.

If after reading this email you disagree, Please, no need to reply back to me. Your opinion is yours and that's fine, just delete it.

*******************************

A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine that America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves.

Pause a moment, reflect back.

These events are actual events from history..

They really happened!!!

Do you remember?

1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male extremist.

2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by Muslim male extremists.

3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim male extremists.

4. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by Muslim male extremists.

5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim male extremists.

6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by Muslim male extremists.

7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens , and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by Muslim male extremists. ( remember the pilot of this flight was from Richmond , MO )

8. In 1988 , Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim male extremists.

9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim male extremists.

10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim male extremists.

11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take down the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by Muslim male extremists.

12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against Muslim male extremists.

13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by-- you guessed it-- Muslim male extremists.

No, I really don't see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people... Absolutely No Profiling!

They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males alone lest they be guilty of profiling.

According to The Book of Revelations:

The Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40's, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, he will destroy everything.

And Now:
For the award winning Act of Stupidity Of all times the People of America want to elect, to the most Powerful position on the face of the Planet -- The Presidency of the United states of America .. A Male of Muslim descent who is the most extremely liberal Senator in Congress (in other words an extremist) and in his 40's.

Have the American People completely lost their Minds, or just their Power of Reason ???

I'm sorry but I refuse to take a chance on the 'unknown' candidate Obama...

Let's send this to as many people as we can so that the Gloria Aldreds and other stupid attorneys along with Federal Justices that want to thwart common sense, feel ashamed of themselves -- if they have any such sense.

As the writer of the award winning story 'Forest Gump' so aptly put it,
'Stupid Is As Stupid Does'

Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet...do it!
or again. just delete if you disagree

Anonymous said...

To Dear Lord Baltimore: A million thank you's for organizing these facts on one brief sheet. I knew about some of them, but they were in different sites, so I truly appreciate your gathering them up in one paragraph. I shall forward this to my many contacts, so that the stupidity and racism of these dangerous white men of Christian ideology is exposed. Thanks again! KlosRtoGod@optonline.net