Happy Friday the 13th

It is Friday the 13th with all that entails and a whole lot of bad news coming our way.

Like the massacre in Paris that purportedly is another in the round of Muslim extremist violence in European cities where the jihadists have settled. I am always reminded of one of my boys' science experiments for school where he kept rats. He found out that a large population of rats in a very small space turn to cannibalism to free up room. Since radical Muslims tend to congregate in enclaves, I wonder when they will stop their violence against their host cities and begin cannibalizing their own. It's a thought that seems appropriate on this day of ultimate evil.

Aah, superstitions. Where would we be without them? For one thing we wouldn't be looking forward to yet another installment of Jason on Friday the 13th dismembering and massacring whoever gets in his way. Combat the fear by checking out these fun facts.

I'm not superstitious unless you consider that I consider it unlucky to debate morons and I have come across a whole group of them since I went back to Facebook to see pictures and videos of my granddaughters. Their mother shortly thereafter took a Facebook break, leaving me with the crazies and the political nuts that consider me dangerous because I promote the idea that not all religions, people, and policies are bad and because I frequently refer to historical facts that fail to prove their point. They counter with calling me names, the last bastion of the schoolyard bully and the bullies yes wo/men adherents. I always thing of A Christmas Story and Scut Farkas's toady with the green teeth. The Democrats call me a Republican and the Republicans call me a Democrat, having never actually read all -- or any -- of my posts and comments. The most pernicious thing I do is disagree with them or caution them to try another perspective. After all, if all one sees out the window is a garbage dump, it's time to find a window that doesn't look out on the garbage dump or at least buy some curtains.

The latest inhumanity I have perpetrated is in saying that not all Muslims are evil, murdering extremists -- because they aren't. I pointed out that Jews and Christians have done their share of murdering, bullying, destruction, and eradication of whole peoples and their written history only to be told that I should focus on more modern facts not contained in the Old Testament. The fact that Islam has been around for less than a century and is not featured in the Old Testament or that first century Christians massacred pagans and Jews and unbelievers, driving opposition from their new homes and destroying the history and writings and people of every non-Christian is met with more disdain and demands that I live in the real world in this century. Of course, they conveniently forget that modern day Christians even in the 20th and 21st centuries continue to murder, massacre, and destroy the people and anything in their path escapes them because all Muslims are evil. That smacks of the thinking that permeates George Orwell's 1984, another fact that eludes them.

Take Ireland for instance that has suffered through bombings, murders, massacres, and destruction that continues to this day. And they are Christians. Of course, they seldom wreak worldwide havoc, although Irish bombers have been known to sell their services to the highest bidder to continue bombing and murdering because it's a habit they're not likely to give up now that they have tasted its flavor.

There are Christians of every stripe throughout the religion, just as there are in Jewish and Muslim sects, that live to murder and destroy. But we're not supposed to hate all Christians because of the acts of a few, which is contrary to the idea that we are supposed to hate every Muslim for the actions of a few extremists. The connection is lost on the Christians calling for eradication of all Muslims. "Bomb them all and let Allah sort them out," in righteous anger as the Muslim jihadists scream, "Convert or die," to everyone else. None of them pay attention to history or how they keep reenacting the same bloody scenes as though caught in a time loop in the Grand Guignol. 

Here are a few of the highlights of Christian extremism.  A Sinhala Buddhist sect promoted violence against Christians and Tamils in the 20th and 21st centuries in Sri Lanka and Aum Shinrikyo engineered the Sarin gas attack in Japan in the mid-1990s using Buddhist and Hindu beliefs to justify his acts. In the 1940s Zionist Jews carried out terrorist attacks against the British.  And the list goes on and on. There are the Browns Shirts in Germany, the Red Brigade, and numerous other terrorist groups that have nothing to do with Muslims and all operated within the last 100 years.

The only thing these terrorists have in common is that they are all humans, members of mankind. They use religion to justify their acts and refuse to see themselves as terrorists or wrong and they won't listen to any arguments that humanize their targets. That is the point. In order to function as they do and believe their acts are justified by their chosen deity they dehumanize their targets. That is the first rule of any terrorist act for whatever reason one chooses to use: dehumanize the enemy.

As long as people are involved, there will be blood and terror and destruction because that is how they survive and thrive. One must blind themselves to truth in any form, demand proof that fits their warped view in order to continue their reign of terror. It is the basis on which war atrocities are made palatable and justified and how people willingly commit unbelievable inhuman acts of violence. They soothe themselves by claiming they are different, that their religion is peaceful, that their aims are right, and they are justified in ridding themselves and their region, state, country, and the world of such brutal animals never realizing that they have become just as brutal and vicious in their holy war against the opposition.

Until humans see themselves in an undistorted mirror they will continue to call for the eradication of those who sin against them and call it good, and they will condemn anyone who steps up to hold that mirror to their faces and asks them to look without the blinders and hatred obscuring their vision. More often than not the one who holds the mirror will be pushed aside and even murdered in order to maintain their shattered sight as if the Snow Queen's mirror shards are permanently lodged in their eyes, ears, and heart.

Humanity will never progress unless and until people are willing to give up their prejudices long enough to consider that not all people are evil and only the guilty should stand for their crimes, not their whole religion or the entire population of their kind. I hope that day comes soon.

That is all. Disperse.