Why we haven't changed

During the presidential campaigns I grew even more disgusted with the American populace. And I thought that this couldn't be possible. It wasn't simply the brash and tasteless mortal combat between the two contenders, nor was it the media focus on a Joe the Plumber who wasn't even a plumber (or a Joe for that matter). It was the obvious Islamophobic sentiment oozing out of the questioning of Barack Obama's "true" religion.

Now many people like to think that we are all individuals, independent with our own unique views on the world. However, our society is so easily persuadable it's hard to think of us as a collection of different thinkers and movers, and easier to think of us as a gigantic blob of gullibility and misinformation. It's no wonder then that after 9/11, which was perpetrated by Islamic "fundamentalists", that an anti-Muslim mindset grew in the American population. "They killed many people on U.S. soil, they are Islamic, therefore Islam is a violent religion." Seems pretty straightforward. Jesus, you know what, that is such a well thought out complex argument that I think I'm just going to shut up now and accept that Islam is a violent and wicked religion.

The horror...the horror!

Or maybe I'll simply wake up and smell the fucking daisies. It wasn't Islam that moved these people to kill many innocent American citizens, it was a corruption of Islam. It wasn't the Quran that taught this group of impressionable men that the U.S. was evil, it was their own doctrine based on cultural beliefs and ideals. Think of it as how the majority of Christians in America don't even know what they are talking about concerning their own religion and only read the spark notes version of the Bible because they are simply too lazy to actually read it. tl;dr* These people simply say what their pastors tell them and do not have their own opinions. Same with the Jihadists who follow charismatic men who persuade them they are fighting for Islam when in fact they are fighting for personal agendas.

But it's so much easier to simply classify all Muslims as evil and that they all have hidden agendas and desires to rape and kill white babies. I mean we did the same with blacks right? I'll just forget about the Constitution of Medina, where the prophet Muhammad preached religious tolerance and brotherhood, and that it says "You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion." (109:6) quite clearly in the Quran.

Are you scared yet? This girl is a hardened killer, as you can tell.

Let me give you some more history lessons here. Ooo goodie I love history lessons! (clap excitedly with a stupid smile on your face now please) If you really think that Islam is a violent and evil religion and that Christianity is a good and just, peaceful and virtuous religion, I want you to look up anything you can about the Crusades, about the Spanish Inquisition, hell just about anything from the Middle Ages. Now of course it's well known that in the Crusades both sides killed innocent familes and threw babies out of towers, but not many know about the amount of Jews killed on the crusading path from Europe to the Holy Land perpetrated by Christian Crusaders (this all being supported by the church of course). Jews were repeadedly butchered in town squares and expelled from society all throughout the middle ages in fact. Of course Muslims were too.

And so it leads us back to Barack Obama being a Muslim...He's not. And even if he was who cares? Are we really such prudish bastards that we think we're locked in a holy war between Christianity and Islam and that if our president was of the Islamic faith that our country would simply explode from sin and wickedness and we'd all go to hell? We thought the same way 50 years ago about a black person possibly becoming president. A huge civil rights movement and constant reruns of Diff'rent Strokes later; a black man is elected our president. We have moved forward in that aspect, however we are still the same hateful people afraid of anyone different from us that we were all those 50 years ago, we're simply way more subtle about it now.

So yay, change! We must have changed when we elected Obama as our leader. I mean it showed us the complex and hardened journey for the black person to become accepted in our society and how he overcame the obstacles thrown down before him and rose to the top, right? But oh, what was it that passed at the same time Obama became prez? That's right it was Prop 8; the hate filled hush hush homophobic legislation that became law in California, barring homosexuals from their right to marry. So I want you to ask yourself, are we really changing? And if we are, are we changing for the worse? Or is it simply a gradual change, after all the woman's suffrage and civil rights movements took time? Who knows, but I can tell you now that the only thing that we've changed so far is our outward appearance. We are a society that is spoonfeed our opinions, basing all of our actions on what others tell us and until we have a Martin Luther King type or a Gandhi type telling us to accept everyone as brothers, like many of our founding fathers intended, we have not changed and we will continue to not change, unfortunately. Maybe Obama is that person, and maybe not. As seriously cliche as this sounds and how I really don't feel like saying this overused saying; only time will tell. There, now you can all go back to watching Rock of Love.

Look into the face of pure evil.

*tl;dr means "too long; didn't read"