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“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.” Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese monk, activist and writer)
This is the status quote of someone I knew in high school, who since he friended me a few days ago has been commenting on my wall posts with very narrow fundamentalist propaganda denouncing Islam, pornography, homosexuality, drug use, welfare ...
But this quote, from a monk that he neglects to mention is a *Buddhist* monk, describes exactly what he and his coreligionists are doing. And this after he asserted that society should not try to take care of all its members, because the poor need to take more "personal responsibility" for their condition.
Really? When you've been telling us all these years that traditional marriage isn't failing because traditional married heterosexuals aren't taking personal responsibility for the quality and commitment of their relationships it's because of those damned homosexuals? And we're not being targeted by terrorists because of our refusal as Americans to take personal responsibility for the lethal and disastrous effects our foreign policy has on billions of the world's poor, it's because of those damned muslims? And the ghettos full of gangs and drugs and killing aren't a product of centuries of social policy systematically disenfranchising the poor, it's because of those damned niggers?
We've been hearing all those same lies for years -- for decades -- and you haven't even noticed you're one of the people telling them? Or is this some kind of ironic pointing-out that you can tell people exactly what you're doing, and they still won't notice because you've ensured they're either too poorly educated to be able to tell, or too busy grubbing for sustenance to care?
If you can call a society acceptable when it can allow people to starve and blame the starving for starving, you have a seriously skewed concept of the purpose of society. If you can do that and call yourself a Christian ... well, all I can say is, you haven't read the Gospels very closely. Either that, or I missed the part where Jesus said to the poor, "Sorry, you're on your own. Take some personal responsibility and stop being poor."
This is the status quote of someone I knew in high school, who since he friended me a few days ago has been commenting on my wall posts with very narrow fundamentalist propaganda denouncing Islam, pornography, homosexuality, drug use, welfare ...
But this quote, from a monk that he neglects to mention is a *Buddhist* monk, describes exactly what he and his coreligionists are doing. And this after he asserted that society should not try to take care of all its members, because the poor need to take more "personal responsibility" for their condition.
Really? When you've been telling us all these years that traditional marriage isn't failing because traditional married heterosexuals aren't taking personal responsibility for the quality and commitment of their relationships it's because of those damned homosexuals? And we're not being targeted by terrorists because of our refusal as Americans to take personal responsibility for the lethal and disastrous effects our foreign policy has on billions of the world's poor, it's because of those damned muslims? And the ghettos full of gangs and drugs and killing aren't a product of centuries of social policy systematically disenfranchising the poor, it's because of those damned niggers?
We've been hearing all those same lies for years -- for decades -- and you haven't even noticed you're one of the people telling them? Or is this some kind of ironic pointing-out that you can tell people exactly what you're doing, and they still won't notice because you've ensured they're either too poorly educated to be able to tell, or too busy grubbing for sustenance to care?
If you can call a society acceptable when it can allow people to starve and blame the starving for starving, you have a seriously skewed concept of the purpose of society. If you can do that and call yourself a Christian ... well, all I can say is, you haven't read the Gospels very closely. Either that, or I missed the part where Jesus said to the poor, "Sorry, you're on your own. Take some personal responsibility and stop being poor."
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