What defines a terrorist? In the wake of the Boston tragedy.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ~ Martin Luther King Jr

 

So I’ve been disturbed in the last few days, another horrific crime has occurred in America, another senseless act of violence.  Once again someone has made the decision to kill innocent people.  That is disturbing enough, but what has disturbed and confused me more is the reaction to this particular event.

The conversation has revolved around whether or not a “terrorist” who is a US citizen, should be allowed to have his constitutional rights.  I would remind people that the ideas of liberty and freedom are messy.  A system that presumes innocence will sometimes let a guilty man go free and convict an innocent man.  But it is to try to provide the utmost protection possible to the wrongly accused man that these rights were created in the first place.  Not an avenue to exonerate monsters, but a system that strives to and will hopefully exonerate you should you erroneously be accused of being a monster.

Let’s take a recent act of horrific violence, the Aurora, CO theater shootings.  On July 20, 2012 James Eagan Holmes is alleged to have killed 12 people and injured 58 in a mass shooting during a midnight showing of the movie The Dark Knight.  Basically, a young Caucasian male used firearms to kill a large number of people and planted booby-trapped explosives in his apartment that he luckily confessed about saving further carnage.  People were upset, they wanted to string him up but I didn’t hear the word terrorism thrown around, nor did I hear anyone upset that Mr. Holmes was being afforded his constitutionally guaranteed rights as a US citizen.

Fast forward to last week and the horrific violence in Boston, MA.  Two brothers set off pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon killing 3 people and wounding nearly 150 others.  They were well armed and were reported have thrown explosives at and to have fired repeatedly on law enforcement personnel.   People are of course upset , they want to string the surviving brother up but this time, the suspect is labeled a “terrorist” and many people want to deny him his constitutionally guaranteed rights as a US citizen.

So what has been eating at me is what is the difference between these two acts that makes one terrorism and the other a crime.  First what is similar, both men used firearms and explosives to inflict injury and terror on Americans.  Both men were young Caucasian American citizens.

 

So what is different between these two men:

 

1.  One used guns as a primary form of killing the other used bombs, but both were prepared to use both.

 

2.  One was born a US Citizen, one was a naturalized citizen.

 

3.  One was not a Muslim, one was a Muslim.

 

So which of these differences makes one a terrorist and not the other, is terrorism defined by your weapon of choice?  I doubt many people would make that distinction and quite frankly I never heard anyone screaming terrorist at Eric Rudolph or demanding his rights be removed.

 

Does being born a US citizen make you immune to being called a terrorist?

 

Does being a Muslim make you a terrorist?

 

When you look at the objective facts I think what determines your view that one of these men is a terrorist and the other isn’t, if you share that view, might be a bit disturbing.  I know, most of you who hold that view will dismiss this as some liberal rant, but let’s remember I’m defending the idea that both of these men should be given all of their legal rights guaranteed under the constitution to all US citizens.  Up until this week that was the rallying cry of conservatives, they supposedly believed in liberty, freedom and were the defenders of the constitution.  But not this week, why?

I think the most hypocritical idea is this.  When the shootings in Sandy Hook occurred, conservatives rallied around the idea that as much of a tragedy as the shooting was, a single tragedy shouldn’t allow the government to infringe on any American’s constitutional rights.  Now however, conservatives are rallying around the idea that a single tragedy, because it has been labeled terrorism, should be used to deny an America citizen his constitutional rights.

The funny thing is that conservatives are arguing that President Obama sucks because he will give this “terrorist” his rights.  So thought about another way, conservatives are arguing that what they want is for President Obama and his administration to have the power to name someone an enemy combatant and deny them their rights even if they are US citizens living in America.   Really, is that what conservatives want?  Do they really want the guy they call names and threaten in comment sections to have the power to snatch them up and make them disappear?  The same folks who call him a fascist, want him to have fascist powers, at least when it’s convenient, in the news and when white people are being killed by someone who prays to Allah instead of Jesus Christ and that is one of the least Christian ideas I’ve ever encountered.

 

Conservative Principles Support Marriage Equality

So I wonder why so many conservatives are against marriage equality?  The single most common thing I hear from conservatives, particularly Tea Party conservatives, is that they are the defenders of liberty, freedom and the constitution.  Given those criteria the freedom of someone to have the liberty to marry the person of their choice should be right in their wheel house.  Conservatives love to quote the founding fathers, so let’s start there.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,  that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

A quote I’m sure you recognize from the Declaration of Independence, written and signed by the aforementioned founding fathers of our country.  Of course, it can easily be said these men were being hypocrites, the idea is nice but the practice that followed was that all white men were created equal, women and non-whites to the back of the bus please.  However I like to think that maybe the founding fathers were idealist who hoped that someday our country would rise to the level of these lofty ideals.

In fact, in many ways we have, we’ve come very far from the 1700’s, women and non-whites can vote, they enjoy generally equal rights in our society.  This is not to say sexism and racism don’t exist or have an impact, but certainly we have progressed in the last two hundred plus years.

The Constitution itself is silent on any discussion of marriage, but the document, particularly through the first ten amendments, seems to lay down a pretty consistent idea with the Declaration of Independence and that idea is that people are equal and should be treated fairly.  As such they should be free to express their ideas and religion they follow, be free from an oppressive government, excessive punishments and bailments.  My favorite amendment has always been the ninth amendment, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” 

So as defenders of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the principles of the founding fathers, conservatives should support an issue that at its heart is an expression of freedom and equality!

I could stop this piece here but I know inevitably I will hear the argument, disingenuous as it is that conservatism and Christian religious belief are tied together as America is a Christian nation.  Even though the documents referenced above clearly state you are free to practice any religion you would like, hardly a Christian ideal as doing so would condemn you to hell.   Here is an interesting piece on the subject, Why the US is not and has never been a Christian Nation.

The reason I can so easily dismiss this remark on the issue of marriage equality is simply that conservatives have never viewed marriage as a Christian or even a religious idea for that matter.  Oh sure it’s been great rhetoric in recent years and Bush the second even tried to get a one man, one woman amendment supported, but in fact the actions of both Christians and Conservatives clearly show marriage is not the Christian religious issue they pretend it is.  How can I say this, well if they thought it was a Christian issue then why haven’t they opposed Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim marriage? Ok, so maybe it’s just a religious issue, not a Christian thing.  If so, why haven’t conservatives and Christians been out there fighting vehemently against the right for Atheists to be married?  Have you ever heard of a single state where there was significant political opposition to Atheists getting married?  Of course you haven’t, because at the end of the day marriage equality is not a political or religious issue, its bigotry.

It completely parallels the opposition to interracial marriage also an issue of bigotry.  I have heard since I was a child that God is love, almost always from highly religious Christians, yet I don’t see a whole lot of Christian love on this issue.  So given that the idea of marriage equality follows conservative principles and is so clearly not a Christian or religious issue, I have to ask the following question.

Where are my conservative brothers and sisters, why isn’t the Tea Party out in full defense of the idea of marriage equality waving rainbow-colored flags of support?  Hey you can even paint the background of your Obama is a Socialist signs in rainbow colors and kill two birds with one stone! ~ ZD Blue

Let me save some time: No need to watch the debates

So let me save you some time by telling you in advance exactly what is going to happen and even what most of you will think about it.

Obama vs Romney

If you’re a Republican or Conservative you will be upset that Obama lied so much, you will interpret any statement he makes as evidence of his further plan to socialize America, redesign the flag, take away all of our guns and ruin our economy, regardless of what the facts are.

If you’re a Democrat or Liberal you will be feeling very smug as Romney once again showed himself to be stiff and disconnected from the common man, confused on the facts and generally unpresidential.  You’ll be thrilled at how smooth the president comes off.

Biden vs Ryan

If you’re a Democrat or Liberal DO NOT WATCH THIS DEBATE!  Paul Ryan is going to slaughter Biden, he’ll seem confident, self-assured, he’ll lie and people will clap and Biden, as Biden always does, will demonstrate his extreme flexibility by inserting his foot deeply in his mouth while still standing at the podium and smiling all at the same time.

If you’re a Republican or Conservative, ITS PARTY TIME!!!  Invite your friends over, bring out the Ann Coulter posters, run the split screen Fox News Commentary, play let’s drill in Alaska Boardgames, and thoroughly enjoy yourselves.  If the poll numbers are accurate and the trend continues this may be your last happy night this election season.

Just another public service message in hopes of simplifying your life.  ~ ZD Blue

Why the United States is Doomed

The American experiment has failed, or more precisely is on the precipice of failing.  The sad part of this prognosis is that it’s not the American people who have failed directly, but make no mistake we all share some level of culpability.  We have failed through the poor choices we and our parents have made.  You see we’ve bought into some things and let some things happen that have brought our country to the edge of failure.  We have allowed our government to be about two things, re-electing incumbents and the influence of money.  It has all become solely about power and we have allowed for a system of governance where the determining factor for most elections is how much media can you buy, how many special interests can fund you and through that process how well can you distort reality to make your opponent out to be un-American, a Socialist, out to get senior citizens, planning to ruin our economy, planning to tax the rich, or not planning to tax the rich, not being born in this country, or being of the wrong religion, socio-economic class, or color.

The reason America is doomed is because what we have truly lost in the process of selling out our government is the truth.  You see the truth doesn’t matter any more, science is abhorred, unless of course it is being used to find a new way to get people high, or make your I-phone better, faster, stronger, able to masturbate you while you surf the web with unlimited battery capacity on a 4G network.

How do I know this to be true?  Because routinely when inaccuracies are pointed out by multiple fact checkers the political response is to misdirect or create confusion, to change the focus of the news as soon as possible.  BOTH parties do this, it is the standard operating procedure of today’s politics.  And people on both side of the aisle let pass because the other side does it to.

Also if you notice, both sides are always right, the other side is always wrong.  I would ask you simply, what ideology have you ever encountered that is right 100% of the time.  If that were possible, Fox News and MSNBC are never wrong and their stories, opinions and general bullshit are diametrically opposed, so they can’t both be right.  Poor CNN who actually tries to what FOX News claims to be, fair and balanced, has seen it’s ratings tank in comparison to MSNBC and FOX News, that’s our fault folks, we are the ones who watch the shows, we create the ratings.  We are telling the people who program our news that we are no longer interested in truth, or honest analysis.   We want to watch people argue, make fun of the people of the other view and find out what Marge in Omaha thinks via the anchor’s Twitter feed.

I constantly see television ads that are obvious lies.  If you believe what you see on TV, oil, gas and coal companies care more about local communities, economies and the environment than they do about profits.  Please comment on this piece if you actually believe that to be true, because I have ocean front property for sale in Utah and I want you to have the first crack at it.  This isn’t new folks, for decades people were told to smoke to soothe throat problems and that smoking isn’t bad for you and certainly not addictive.  Tobacco companies, like all big corporations will lie to maximize quarterly profits because they know at the end of the day, the lawsuits mean nothing compared to their profits.  You might think all of those smoking lawsuits destroyed the big tobacco companies, if you believe that, research a company named Altria.  You might know it better by it’s Tobacco company name, Philip Morris.

America may have at one time been truly exceptional, but it wasn’t exceptional by decree of God like most Conservatives seem to believe.  America was exceptional because we solved problems, we compromised when necessary to get things done, we put a priority on educating our children.  That is not a result of a decree from God instead those are the characteristics of a multicultural, evolving and concerned citizenry.   Not the petulant consumer children we have become.

There was a moment, shortly after the tragedy of 9/11 where America seemed like it found itself again.  We put away the partisan bickering, we felt compassion for our fellow Americans.  Except for a few incidents we didn’t go on a nationwide sweep of Muslims and close all of their mosques.  I was proud of America for the first time in my life during that small window of time. 

But that ended, we used the tragedy as a political tool to invade Iraq and it all slowly started to unravel again like a burning flag.  Since that time we have seen nothing but increasing divisiveness, fewer civil liberties, new laws against protest, an ever-increasing home security agency that reaches into every facet of our lives, there are even Homeland Security Documents as part of your loan package when you buy a house.

We have polarized our politics to the point where the minority party will cheer for our economy to fail for their political gain.  My God do you realize what that means?  As the economy tumbles more children go into poverty and therefore more children die due to reduced nutrition and medical care.  So in effect our governmental representatives would rather see children die than compromise 1% of their ideological beliefs.  Maybe we should rename those idiotlogical beliefs.  Now did any of them think that position through to that logical end, of course not, it’s just politics, a game that you win if you and your party get re-elected.

We’ve failed America, we’ve sold our truth, our country and our souls to special interests and corporations.  We did it so we wouldn’t have to think and so we can buy more things.  We abrogated our responsibility and in doing so have sold out our children’s future. 

Two men are running for President of the United States of America and both are probably decent individuals.  Both are the pictures of main stream America, family men, by all accounts good fathers and good husbands both are Christians as so many of you are and yet almost all of you hate one or the other and are willing to accuse them of horrible things.   But both have willingly been manipulated by the political process to put their chances of election, or re-election before their actual core values and it’s too bad. 

However neither of these men are worthy of your scorn or the names you choose to call them.  It is the process that we have condoned that created the polarization in this country.  Liberals are not interested in running this country into a Greek style debt crisis, Conservatives are not awful hateful people who don’t care about poor people.  In fact, I doubt there are many true liberals or conservatives out there.  Most of us have views that range across the spectrum, conservative on some things liberal on others.  If you don’t then you probably aren’t thinking, as I said earlier, no one ideology is right 100% of the time.

America is on the precipice of doom but we can prevent it.  The solution is to be compassionate, considerate of others views, the ability to compromise, a desire to operate off of facts, not opinions.  We need to remove the insane money that drives our politics and maybe even go to open elections instead of primaries and elections pitting one party always against the other.  Unfortunately, I’ve lost faith in this country, we are too selfish to do the things I suggest or to come to agreement on ways to improve things.  It makes me sad that both of my grandfathers fought in World War II for an America Dream that no longer exists.

Conservatives against Capitalism & Freedom: Chick-Fil-A vs The Muppets

In case you’ve been living under a rock over the last week the president of the restaurant chain Chick-Fil-A came out with a statement that the chain supports the idea of  “traditional marriage“.   This was met by the expected reactions by liberals and those who support the LBGT community of condemnation and talks of boycotting the chain.  A quick side note, one thing that has always bugged me about Chick-Fil-A is that it’s pronounced chick filet, when clearly the way it’s written it should be pronounced chick fill uh, a much less sophisticated name.  This is not really all that newsworthy as these type of things seem to happen with some regularity and not all that unexpectedly from a restaurant chain primarily situated throughout the bible belt.

However what really kicked this whole thing up to another level was when the Jim Henson company came out against Chick-Fil-A and their bigoted stance.  That’s right, even the Muppets are against Chick-Fil-A, when you’ve lost the moral high ground to puppets you really are in a bad place.  There are of course now lots of protests and protest responses occurring, there is a national support day on August 1st and a corresponding same sex kiss day.

As Conservatives are always quick to point out, the restaurant is a private entity and has the absolute right to support financially or otherwise the anti-gay marriage agenda.  However what I find funny is how up in arms Conservatives get that people are exercising their right to protest this stance.  One of the primary conservative political planks is supposedly the support of freedom and capitalism.  Well, in a free capitalistic society people have the right to protest a company’s obvious bigotry by exercising their right to convince people not to spend money at that business.  Unfortunately what people on the edges of political belief, both left and right, always fail to recognize, is that your opposition has the same exact rights that you do.

To me the saddest thing about the anti-gay marriage stance, is that to any person of reasonable intelligence can see the direction all of this is heading.  Like the civil rights movement of the 1960′s the equality of marriage movement will culminate in all people in the United States having the right to marry the people they love.  Being against that says three things about you. 

First, you are mired in an outdated world view that no longer makes any sense.  The biblical arguments against same-sex marriage are ridiculous.  The way the bible guides the lives of Christians has and will always be re-interpreted into modern times, for example, we no longer stone people to death for working on the sabbath.  Essentially you will soon find yourself on the wrong side of history.

Second, you don’t have a basic understanding of history or culture and you certainly have not spent time with the people in the LGBT community.  Yes that’s right they are people, not Gays, or deviants or any other term you want to use to dehumanize them, they are just people just like you.

Third, at the absolute core of it all you are against love.  You are in opposition of the idea that two people have the right to express their love for each other in the same way you do.  Basically you are denying them freedom, the same freedom you wave as a flag, the same freedom found in the Constitution of the United States of America.  So at the end of the day, opposing Gay Marriage, is basically un-American.

Sharing a blog post – 10 things Americans don’t realize

A really will written and excellent blog piece on things Americans don’t realize about America, check it out. ~ ZDBlue

http://postmasculine.com/america

Boy Scouts of America ban Conservative Scout Masters!

Boy Scouts of America ban Conservative Scout Masters!

Today Wayne Brook, Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts of America made a surprise announcement.  Amongst controversy about the Boy Scouts reaffirming their policy to not allow homosexuals to be members or scout masters, Brook announce that Conservatives will also now be banned from the Boy Scouts.  The announcement sent ripples through the conservative community and initially Brook was reticent to explain why the position had been taken.  However, last night on the Sean Hannity Show on the Fox Network, Brook collapsed under the laser wit and questioning of Mr. Hannity and finally admitted the reason.  Brook said, “Given the information we’ve received on the levels of closeted gay Conservatives, we just can’t chance it, this is the youth of America at stake.” 

The reasoning absolutely shocked Sean Hannity and particularly as it came in the last-minute of the program, there was no time for further questions for Mr. Brook.  Conservative talk show icon Rush Limbaugh speaking at a public appearance in Boca Raton, Florida was hit with a question about the controversy.  A reporter from the local newspaper asked Mr. Limbaugh if it was true that he was one of the closeted gays in the Conservative Community being referenced by Mr. Brook.  Limbaugh, caught off-guard by the question, didn’t seem able to respond and was quickly escorted from the venue shortly after.  Later a representative for Mr. Limbaugh said, “Mr. Limbaugh didn’t respond because he wasn’t willing to dignify the question with a response.”  Is Rush Limbaugh gay? 

Some people have questioned whether or not Limbaugh even appeared at the event, but it has been reported that shortly after the event an empty Oxycontin vial was found near the podium.  Of course this controversy has raised questions about the sexual preference of many conservative talking heads and political wonks and really of most of the announcers for the Fox News Network.  Is there a secret gay agenda at work at Fox!?

Satire – the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

 

The Boy Scouts of America have helped a lot of young men in this country build character and be successful.  Which is why it is so sad that they have taken such a bigoted and idiotic stance when it comes to allowing homosexuals to be involved with the organization.  Now let us be clear, the Boy Scouts have the right to do this, just as another bigoted group, the Ku Klux Klan has the right to ban people from their group, this is the freedom Conservatives talk so much about and I support it.  However, the same idiotic and mythological thinking is at work in both groups.  You see the klan thinks that people of color, Jews and Catholics are all inferior a clearly ridiculous idea.  The scouts are buying in to the idiotic idea that all gay men are either predatory pedophiles or trying to recruit young men under an imaginary homosexual agenda.  If you believe either of these things you are a moron, plain and simple, and I’m sad that the Boy Scouts of America are now a group that can be so easily and accurately compared to a racist group like the Ku Klux Klan.

America is not the greatest country in the world

I have written a couple of pieces before about how annoying the idea of American Exceptionalism is to me.  You see it takes all thought out of the equation, we’re America and we’re the best just because we’re America, circular bullshit reasoning with no critical analysis.  There are things about America that make it an absolutely wonderful country and there are things about America that make it a shit country.  This idea is not unique either, you could probably say the same thing about every country that has ever or will ever exist on Earth.  Recognizing this fact does not make you un-American, un-Patriotic or someone who doesn’t appreciate our country, it makes you a rationale thinking human being who is willing to look at reality without blinding or deluding yourself through the prism of ideology, or the name of a political position or party.  If your thoughts have to be filtered through your ideology or if you have to hate an idea because the other party came up with it, especially if you loved it five years ago when your party was in favor of it then you have blinders on, take them off, try to see the world the way it really is not how it was report on Fox News or MSNBC last.

A new show came on HBO Sunday night called the Newsroom and the opening scene did a better job of addressing the American Exceptionalism argument than I ever will, the link to the video is below.  The character who makes the speech basically becomes a political pariah, why, because he spoke the truth, exactly what happens to anyone in our country who tries to do the same.  Don’t buck the only political party we truly have, the re-election party, and don’t buck the people truly in charge of our country, the corporations.  Unfortunately what is quickly becoming the best advice I can give anyone is keep your damn head down and try not to be noticed.  That also seems to be advice that goes against everything America is supposed to represent or at least used to represent in the sanitized, virtualized and fantasized “old days.”  Enjoy the video and throw the blinders in the trash.

America is not the greatest country in the world

 

Call me when the revolution starts

I recently spent three weeks in Ireland, one of the things I really didn’t miss about being out of the country was the constant reporting on the upcoming presidential election between Romney and Obama.  More than that it was incredibly nice not to have to listen to all of the hate speech spewed back and forth between US politicians and all of the idiotic talking heads on the cable news channels.  So I’ve made a decision, I’m only going to get my TV news from The Jon Stewart Show, seriously he seems on a nightly basis to be able to summarize all of the idiocy up in about 18 minutes and do it in a way that makes me laugh.  I’m an information junkie so I’ll still troll through the news websites but I’ve given up news coverage on TV.

The bigger issue in all of this is the fact that our politicians don’t give a shit about the people, not Romney, not Obama, not Democrats or the Republicans.  What’s worse is that now everyone seems to have to be labeled and those who label themselves basically filter the world through that lens, if you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail.  So all the conservatives see socialism under every bush and liberals see cruelty and discrimination everywhere, get a grip folks.  If the world was so damn black and white all of the problems would already be solved.

So I wonder is it time to tear it all down and start over?  If the answer to that is yes call me when the revolution starts, it may be televised, but I won’t be watching.

Conservative Hypocrites support Sharia Law

Conservative Hypocrites support Sharia Law

Conservatives in America are always screaming about how they are trying to stop the Obama administration from allowing Muslims to institute Shariah Law in the United States.  They claim it would be wrong to impose Islamic religious laws on the citizens of a secular nation.  However these very same conservatives are willing to support religious law as long as it’s their religion being imposed on everyone else.  They are willing to impose their religious views no matter how bigoted they are in regards to preventing gay marriage or the use of insurance to pay for contraceptives or by finding ways to strong-arm organizations like the Susan G Komen for the cure to hold up breast cancer screenings because they happen at Planned Parenthood.

So you might think this idea of Christian Shariah Law is hyperbole but Rick Santorum, recent winner of three Republican Party primaries for the President of the United States very much supports this idea.  Santorum is also ironically the chosen candidate of the religious right and one of the biggest supporters of this idea.

It never ceases to amaze me how little the conservative and religious right, who spend so much time screaming about American Exceptionalism, freedom and the constitution are the ones most often supporting bigotry, lack of freedom and the loss of civil rights.