The Color of Things

I want to take just a minute to comment on racism in this country.

It exists and it exists from every angle to every person.  If you walk around outside today some person somewhere is going to dislike you simply for your complexion.

Now kids I'm going to offer you a radical piece of knowledge that some of you are going to instantly get angry over and offer every excuse and tried and true piece of crap bandwagon nonsense up to and including "Don't Shoot" to try to prove me wrong. 

Pay attention now.  It's so simple it's going to piss you off.

The perpetuation of racism in our country is the fault of every individual that uses race as a qualifier and descriptor for identification.

Black man.

White woman.

Asian-American.

Etcetera, so on, and so forth.

We put race into the equation ourselves.  Why not just see a man or a woman?  Or an American? We tag everything with race nearly automatically and I don't care what color or creed you are personally - unless you are an exceptional person you do it just like the rest of us.

Why is that a big deal?  It gives those among us who love to race-bait something to feed off of and stir pots with - pure and simple.

Take this more recent incident outside of St. Louis, the Michael Brown case.  Now take race out of the equation. Cop shoots thug moments after thug strong arm robs a convenient store and then attempts to steam roll cop after fracturing said officer's eye socket in an attempt to disarm him.  Thug meets an early end due to officer doing what he was trained to do. (Personally, that's what the evidence seems to point to as far as I'm concerned.  I really don't care if you disagree. It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks until the grand jury decides what it wants to do anyway. But hey, if rioting and tearing up the neighborhood makes you feel better...) I have a hard time believing that this officer shot this kid because he was black, let alone executed him in broad daylight as some were originally attempting to claim before evidence came out. I mean come on, everyone knows that kind of shit gets done at night.  (The white sheets show up better that way...) 

But, simply due the color of each man's skin, all hell broke loose in that town and it was stupid, wasteful, belligerent ignorance incarnate. Those people weren't destroying their own town out of anger.  They were driving in from out of town to stir things up, repeatedly escalate a slowly calming situation, and generally act a damn fool in the name of racial slights they had nothing to do with in most cases to start with.

Kids, challenge yourself tomorrow.  Take "race" out of your personal equations.  Ethnicity is no longer a determining factor in someone's worth, unless it is your determining factor for them.

Just my two cents worth.  Fuck you if you're too ignorant to catch on.

By the way, I did happen to mention I'm completely prejudiced against stupid fucks, didn't I?

The Coefficient to "Coexisting"

Kids, something is / possibly already has happened that I'm not happy about in the least.  It's probably not the brightest thing in the world to air this out online but, considering all of the ranting and raving you've collectively put up with from me by this point, you're pretty much used to my common denominator level of moron anyway.  The more I examine this internally the more I realize that it's been brewing inside my noggin for a while now so I might as well get it out there.

I'm losing my ability to be tolerant of the religious beliefs of others that I find offensive.

It started with Atheists.  To be absolutely truthful it started with Scientology but I find it actually impossible to be offended by ol' L. Ron's faithful.  I find the whole thing so scatterologically absurd that I tend to write it off to bad fiction and hyper-addictive social Kool-Aid more than anything else.  But militant Atheism has finally ruffled my feathers to the point that I'm done with it.  Look you bunch of self-righteous jack-wagons (sorry Reges but a line that good's gotta get pirated eventually), just because you don't like it doesn't mean you should use legal bullying and public brew-ha-ha to force your own impact on a community that as a majority doesn't believe as you do. Just knock it the fuck off already.  We get already.  God offends you.  Big fucking shit.  Grow up and learn to deal with things in this world you don't like just the rest of us have to, which just for you almighty edification means you in case you were wondering.  The lot of you are turning into a societal nuisance with a legal department and a civil rights intern.  Just sit down and do the rest of us a favor and go loudly fuck yourself.

What's truly sad about what I'm having to admit to here is that just as recently as five days ago I was debating the rights of others to believe as they wish as long as it didn't create harm to others and vehemently standing up for those rights.  Maybe my level of intolerance isn't exactly toward religious beliefs but those radicals within it that piss me off.  I don't know.

Then a realization hit that sickened me to the core.

Believing as strongly as I did in this

 Also meant that I had to on some level attempt to understand this

and friend that just a'gonna happen.

There is such a thing as religious extremism in this world. The sad truth of it is that the extremists within a faith tend to color that faith no matter how hard you want to try no to let it.  As pitiless of a loss as Atheism is trending in my opinion, I'm also finding myself at real odds over my own feelings about Islam as well.  I know there are is a world of good people who practice that faith and believe in its tenants with the same level of fervor that the best Christians have.  I even understand that the more radical side of that faith, including those that believe in strict adherence to Sharia law, are more akin to the Old Testament version of Christianity.  

But the simple fact is that the Koran mandates the murder of those who do not convert to Islam. 

My concern is still the same - will the extremes eventually mark the whole?  I even wonder if we as a country are looking at, in the abstract, the eventuality of interment of American citizens of Islamic faith should a conflict with IS reach our shores? It's not that far of a stretch folks and it really concerns the hell out of me.  

Don't misunderstand me.  I don't hate Muslims.  On the contrary.  I do, however, hate IS and everything it stands for to the core.  Why for the love of God we're still allowing these subhuman fucktards to continue their oxygen habit is beyond me.  I will say this though, even though I know it's pure prognostication:  should IS attack on American soil, even if it is only through some lone wackjob and in name only, being a Muslim in the US is going to get a bit tricky.

And for the life of me, as hard as I want to definitively say otherwise, I'm conflicted as hell about how I truly feel on the issue. In math the coefficient is the number that is multiplied with the variable to make an equation make sense, at least in the most generic of definitions.  Maybe what I'm missing here on this whole issue is that coefficient.  The ideological "3" to this 'x' that will equal out to 9, if you follow that math metaphor.  

Damn, no wonder I'm confused.  An English major making math analogies... ouch. 

Oh, and just for good measure and in case you weren't paying attention before, the Westboro Baptist Church can eat the entire warehouse full of rubber dicks and use their taints as squeaky toys.  In public, on Sunday afternoon, just between church and football.  Funny as it may be it can't interrupt kickoff after all.