Leading Ourselves into Captivity – Part 1

Dominance is always the goal: How fear, hate mongering and greed set the stage for carnage.

Loud voices of late are screeching from on high… warning of the threat of radical Islamists. Muslims, they warn, are either moving en masse to violently overthrow western nations, slaughter infidels, dispense with secular, democratic governments, forcibly implement Sharia law… or standing passively by as their religious kin foment discontent and plan terroristic attacks.

No doubt these harpies have some facts correct, but on the whole much of what is being trumpeted is not much more than exaggerated, chicken littlesque fear mongering. For the past few decades we have indeed seen a marked growth in the number of world citizens preaching fear and loathing of the Great Satan, the United States of America, and the radical Islamists have found no shortage of ignorant suckers willing to swallow the religious mumbo jumbo and launch themselves into oblivion.

Poverty makes good fodder for revolution, especially when the haves are so willing to flaunt success and good fortune. Our corporations and our own government have done so very much to feed that hatred and the opportunity for advantage is not lost on the Islamists. The rise in fear mongering in poor Muslim areas has been on the increase for a century or more. Their success may be witnessed daily as poor slobs blow themselves up seeking respite from this world and salvation in the next.

Our very own Christians do little to help the situation… using almost identical language in describing Islam in very nearly the same fashion as Islamists describe the Christian west. We have two religious factions making almost identical or very similar claims while standing on either side of a divide chunking rocks at the other.

Religious extremists have succeeded in doing a good bit of damage to the opposing side. Islamists have managed to inflict damage on the western world both large and small. We in America remain focused on 09-11-2001, when a successful terrorist operation planned by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda killed some 3,000 humans a single stroke. In Madrid in 2004 the same group killed almost 200 and injured some 2,000. They were well-funded then, well-organized and intent upon killing infidel non-Muslims.

The Judeo-Christian west responded by launching wars in two countries and has since engaged in organized military and covert “black” operations in no fewer than a dozen others. The dead and injured cannot be counted, but conservative best guess estimates place the body count somewhere in the tens of thousands. We’re still there and we’re still killing them… guilty and innocent alike. It seems we are constantly seeking new places to stick our noses and toss a few bombs.

Shrill harpies like Pam Geller and Glenn Beck seek to focus hatred and dehumanize individuals, creating a sense that we really aren’t killing men and women and children… we’re killing demons and devils. It’s okay to kill demons and devils… just as its okay for an Islamist to kill an infidel. The reasoning is identical.

They hurl airplanes at large buildings and blow us up in suicide bombings while we take them out surgically and remotely with unmanned drones from 25,000 feet in the sky. The drones and their operators thousands of miles away don’t care who they kill. We pretend that we do, but a little collateral damage is to be expected and the more the enemy is shocked and awed the better. A little fear is good for maintaining order, and in the end we don’t care who we kill either.

The struggle is religious in nature, and the question must be asked… which religion is right in this bloody conflict? Well… It does not matter which side you are on, that side is always right. Such is the way of mythology.

So we mobilize our Christian/Mohammedan soldiers, send them off for some old-fashioned indoctrination military training, and then march them off to holy war with a Bible/Quran tucked in their pockets… selected verses conveniently bookmarked. We make certain our commanders remind them every day of their Christian/Muslim duties, and we weed out those not worthy of the Kingdom of God/Allah. Only the pure at heart can be trusted to slaughter other humans in the name of Jesus/Muhammad.

They are different than us and they must be destroyed for that reason… May the circle be unbroken.

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The above is but a prelude to the goal of this article. It is written from the perspective of an atheist/skeptic/freethinker living in the Christian west but who has spent much time in Muslim areas of the globe. The author has witnessed the fanatics on both of the sides, and has made friendships with moderates following each of these belief systems as well as others and of none. This author is skeptical of the motives of the religionists, and is convinced that the real threat to freedom, in America and in every country, comes not from outside aggressors… but from dogmatic theocrats within.

The true threat to freedom comes when good people allow religion into positions of power or authority. In America Christianity is not the solution… it is the threat.

To be continued.

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