Days of land and roses, wine of milk and honey

I am reluctant to embroil myself in this one that has irresponsibly, recklessly come to be known as the “Ground Zero Mosque”.  Nomenclature at it’s most absurd.  It’s stupid.  I didn’t want to because it’s stupid.

That and what else could there possibly be left to say?

Let’s start with the indefensible hijacking of the issue by hard right demagogues and the various porcine zealots of faux patriotism and vicious jingoism.  The shit regurgitated from these mouths is as inexcusable as it is calculated to exploit fear and racism.  For Newt Gingrich to equate the placement of a COMMUNITY CENTER, that happens to devote a small portion of it’s proposed 13 story architecture for worship of the Islamic faith, a COMMUNITY CENTER that will not be built at ground zero or even viewable from there, for that loathsome hypocrite to suggest the intention here is no different than putting a swastika next to the Holocaust Museum, chaps my ass like a cheese grater.  For him to say we should not allow such effrontery until there are Christian churches in Saudi Arabia…….this from a man who left one wife while she was in treatment for cancer and cheated on another while leading the charge for impeachment against a sitting president for lying about a blow job……why would any sentient being listen to such a hypocritical douchebag?  Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion, but what makes Newt’s worthy of broadcast?

Fox News does.  Fox fucking News is nearly half owned by a Saudi Arabian prince named Alwaleed bin Talal, a prince from a theocratic oligarchy where brutal misogynist Sharia law is absolute.  Irony irony irony.

*I’ve since been corrected on this point.  The aforementioned prince owns 7% of Newscorp and they own 9% of his largest Arab entertainment company, Rotana.  I posit the relationship is still nefariously symbiotic.  This is interesting: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/01/cairs-honest-ibe-hooper-caught-boasting-about-getting-saudi-money—-which-he-has-denied-getting-in.html

I could say a lot a about Newt, he clearly lacks for any moral or ethical imperative of any kind as well as well as being demonstrably bereft of compassion, what he does not lack is brains.  Newt Gingrich is a frighteningly adroit, modern Machiavelli.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  He’s whipping the great unwashed, the willfully ignorant, into froth and frenzy by employing those by now, tried and true GOP archetypes of fear and racism.  He’s not the only one, the Palins and the Boehners and the Cantors……..have all fallen in line to manifest the inevitably hysterical Greek chorus.  In the key of indignant.

These people don’t realize they are embarrassing themselves and I don’t care.  What matters is they embarrass the rest of us.  Sometimes I wonder if the appeal of the whackjob demagogue is their inherent self loathing.  You know, as common denominator or perhaps ice breaker when they gather.  For fruit and seltzer.  Drugs, prostitutes and their lust for money and power.

It’s to be called the “Park 51 Community Center”.  Not a Mosque by definition, but even if it were it would be among 400, attended by some 600,00 Muslims in New York City alone.  There are Mosques in every state and major city in this country and they have been there for a very long time.  Common sense dictates that it shouldn’t be any big deal.  There is far more logic in protesting Catholic churches anywhere near public schools.  It’s all so goddamn fucking stupid.

There’s a Mosque in the goddamn Pentagon you idiot fucks.

The single most salient tragedy here, and it’s deliberate and hypocritically intentional, is how this nontroversy is more than mere catalyst for the devolution of national discourse over just about anything into fear by way of racism and bigotry.  The terrorists would like nothing better than for ordinary Americans to see the war on terror as an existential conflict between Christianity and Islam.  Such demagoguery hands them the advantage they would most like to have.  A rudimentary Us vs. Them vaulting horse.  Those that would foment as much seek to convince us that we are a Christian nation as opposed to what we are, a nation of Christian majority.  It’s a slow pitch game of xenophobia for the mouth breathing neanderthals that would have sucked up McCarthyism with a pastel bendy straw.

What’s new?  The GOP preying on the minds and sensibilities of the mentally and morally compromised.

Just yesterday, two polls revealed that either one fifth or one quarter of the citizenry believes that our president is a secret Muslim.  It’s evidence of just how hard and far they reach.  This begs a lot of questions.  My first one is so fucking what?  Who cares?  I happen to have equal disdain for all organized religion.

“I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name,” -Franklin Graham/abcnews.go.com

Conundrum?  None here.

Some of them blow themselves up in the market square and some of them shoot abortion doctors in church.  The rest of them hate on various levels.  These people all need to get fucking handle on it.  Their own insecurities and fears are why they act, never for the right thing but a result of what is wrong with themselves.

Equally disturbing is how obsessed we’ve become with what just doesn’t matter and should not ever.  I realize this is nothing new but just how far back are we gonna slide?  The color of skin, ethnicity or religious belief.  These fermented under Dumbya but they are exploding under Obama.  These things are not and were never intended to make a mad fuck’s difference when evaluating character or worth and they suddenly do, more than ever it seems, at least since I started watching television.

They are throwing this shit in the air at an amazing pace.  The whole immigration conversation has gone racial.  Why does it have to be racial?  If that question confuses you, you might be a redneck.  There is a quid pro quo between the fucktards and the GOP.

The framers of our Constitution went to great lengths to avoid such a clusterfuck.  They were clear to exacting on this very specific concern and the first amendment is proof of that.  This whole thing is stupid on the surface but profoundly important underneath.  What pokes out of the water is manufactured controversy.  I’m sick and tired of non-issues dominating news cycles and public dialog.  What’s underneath is the right of people, whomever they are and wherever they come from,  provided for in the very first amendment to our constitution.  There is no evidence whatsoever that the people attempting to exercise this right are doing as much to be provocative in any way.  It is merely an innocent effort to bridge whatever cultural and/or religious gaps that still exist between people from the Middle East and North Americans, between Christians and Muslims.  We attacked and wrought untold devastation on an entire country. completely innocent of what we invaded them for.  Everyone will be allowed in this proposed COMMUNITY CENTER, to be named “The Park 51 Community Center”.

It’s all about the first amendment and that means we are done here.  No debate, no objections.  Shut the fuck up.

And stay off the 14th amendment too.

We are done here.

Drinks for my friends.

15 Responses to “Days of land and roses, wine of milk and honey”

  • Beca:

    Thank you! My point exactly! I am so sick and tired of the non-issues that are fabricated for dark and sinister reasons we can’t even begin to understand. These polls were also released on purpose, right in the middle of this nontroversy, in order to make sure people make the mental connection between our President and their hate for Islam–it was all orchestrated, and all for their own selfish political gains! How sick is that? these who pretend to ‘love this country’ are doing everything possible to rip it to shreds, to have country lie broken and bleeding, and smashed appart so badly that nobody will be able to put it back together. What the right wing extremeist and their blue dog lap dogs are doing is domestic terrorism! Why aren’t they arrested, charged as enemies of the State and shipped to Guantanamo!

    I just love the use of the word “fucktards”, its does define these people perfectly!

    Yes, I am done here too! Anybody want to buy a house?

  • Janet Carter:

    Excellent op-ed, Michael. Keep up the good work and let’s get your articles OUT THERE to every one. If Fux news can get away their lying shit, we can get away with the truth.

    Let me know how I can help.

    Janet

  • Chris Ottinger:

    Yep.

  • joe:

    You are spamming rants and raves and I will flag each and every one of your posts from now on. Others will do the same. I’m sorry no one wants to read your blog and you have to come to rants and raves and beg people to read it, but it’s too bad. You are being obnoxious by posting the same exact post over and over again. I will continue to flag and report your spam until they ban you.

    • Michael Douglass:

      This is an incredibly important issue and if you choose to foment ignorance by not allowing others an informed and truthful analysis of it I can’t stop you. My intentions are more altruistic than you can know. I already have well over a quarter million readers and don’t need the handful posting on craigslist will get me. People like you are the problem. You’re pathetic.

      • joe:

        No. You, like other bloggers, are nothing but an attention whore. The sad part is that I completely agree with what you have to say. I just take exception to you trolling for more followers on rants and raves. One post…maybe. Post in the general New York category…everyone will see it there…but to post repeatedly in every area is just plain obnoxious, and since, as you claim, you have a half a million followers as is…there is just no reason to spam a message board with fifteen posts in five minutes.
        Blog on, attention whore. But spamming? Fuck no.

        • Michael Douglass:

          I’m not an attention whore, I’m a writer and writers, like musicians or actors etc. want to entertain and amuse. There’s nothing in your vitriol that will convince me there’s anything wrong with that. Sorry buddy, your attempts to insult someone you’ve never met and to impugn that person’s motives only proves you’ve got a hard on for things I have nothing at all to do with. I work very hard on what I write, I’m meticulous about research and I do my best to bring a unique perspective.

          I’m not running for cheerleader or student body president here. I take this very seriously. And I’m goddamn good at it.

          And you know what you ignorant fuckhead? I’m not trolling for readers on craigslist, I’ve already explained what I was doing there. You have an agenda that has nothing to do with me. This piece I want the people of New York to read is intended to, in a small humble way, contribute positively to the discourse that is raging out of control. It is an attempt to do some good. Who the fuck are you to question my motives? A better person would not seek to prevent others from reading it but instead allow them to do so and judge for themselves.

          Proof that you’re a dick and I’m not your problem.

          I DID NOT POST REPEATEDLY YOU FUCKTARD. I posted ONCE, in EACH geographical region of the area I wanted to target with my message. It appears that you cannot read and cannot count. I said a quarter million, not a half a million, further proof you can’t read or are unable to pay attention. In either case, it wouldn’t make sense for me to make the effort to post eight times for the dozen or so readers it might get me.

          What is your fucking problem? A blogger banged your girlfriend?

          Good luck with that angry for no reason asshole thing.

        • Dragynn:

          I for one, am grateful for the Craigslist post, the one I read a couple months ago, was not from Michael directly, but from someone else who had read his blog and decided to share it. That’s how I found this blog, and I have enjoyed it and been happy to contribute some commentary, so the posts on Craigslist were a boon to me, and others as well i’m sure.

          And that’s all it is really, sharing info freely on a forum intended for it, and I found a kindred spirit in the bargain, hard to put a price on that (though i’m sure some Republitard wouldn’t hesitate to do so).

          You on the other hand, are seriously offensive, your suggestion that “nobody wants to read your (Michael’s) blog”, is the hallmark of a minor troll, nothing more. Who gave you the right to speak for the 100 million strong Craigslist community? What gives you that kind of power? I certainly didn’t sign anything that authorized you to speak for me.

          Let me guess, another tea-bagging control freak, desperate to shut those up who don’t agree with them, well I hate to bust your goose-stepping bubble there junior, but you don’t control anyone, or speak for anyone, and no one needs to do what you say.

          But here’s the real and ONLY power you have: control over yourself. You can choose to NOT read the blog if you don’t like it. You can choose to NOT be a controlling asshole too. Flag off posts all you want, that’s your right, and i’ll re-post them personally every time you do, that’s my right.

          Or we could choose to live and let live.

          good luck.

  • Assistant Corporation Counsel Johnson:

    I have served as a building code and zoning attorney for a major US City. The only regulations that apply are those of the New York City municipal Code. Religious use is a category of use, type of religion is not regulated. Bottom line, the intended use is legal.

  • Though as a practicing Muslim I do not share your disdain for all organized religion, not by a long shot, in fact as you could imagine quite to the contrary,
    I nevertheless do share the rest of the views you have expressed in this flabbergasting article!You rocked this thing! Instead of pontificating like most people do nowadays over the “ground-zero Mosque” you get right to the heart of the matter and prove beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt that this is all about politicians capitalizing on bigotry and Islamophobia and that my friend is very noble of you!
    May Allah bless all the peace loving sons and daughters of Adam(may God’s peace be upon him)!
    Cheers

    • Michael Douglass:

      You know, I do my best not to begrudge anyone their faith unless they shove it in my face. Thank you for reading and contributing. Thank you 🙂

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