The older I get, the more I see the difference between “friends” and “friendly”. I’m having a harder and harder time maintaining friendships with folks who don’t understand why a fractured EU is bad for Democracy, who maintain the illusion that gun ownership is good for society, no matter the type of gun, that Muslims are threatening our “freedoms”- and on and on. I can be friendly and professional, but I simply can’t get on board with the willful anti-intellectualism, xenophobia and bigotry that is running rampant in this country and abroad, and I’m having trouble keeping quiet about it.
It seems most people don’t realize that the “hordes of Muslims” are a diaspora being created by the Islamic State and al Qaeda. It is sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites, dummies. This should not be lost on my “Christian” friends, although discussion of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation never seems to come up. But I digress.
Please take ten minutes and read up on Wahhabi Sunnis, Islam in general and our own history. Please take five minutes to google the rise of fascism in the twentieth century. Please stop forcing me to defend decency, compassion and American democratic ideals, and please realize that denigrating 1.25 billion Muslims because of what you see in the news reveals to all of us that you are a frightened, provincial, moronic bigot. Good day.