The Awesomizer

I recently received an email from a dear friend of mine, that was a forward of his response to an email thread regarding a Muslim prayer gathering on Capitol Hill. The email thread began, basically, with bigotry and ignorance and quickly went down from there to bigotry, ignorance, intolerance, and blind nationalism (which any Awesomizer reader knows is a favorite of mine). Thankfully my friend had the wherewithal to stand up to the ignorance and the gumption to send his rebuttal to everyone listed on the email thread. To quote him extensively, he says:

“This is a great time to reflect and ask yourself ‘who am I to judge?’ … I have never questioned my faith.  Initially I questioned all others as I grew into maturity.  I questioned Islam after 9/11.  But rather than fear and attack the Islamic religion, I chose to learn more about it.  I don’t agree with everything in the Qur’an just as I don’t agree with everything in the Bible.  But ultimately, both religions were born from Judaism, a belief in one God who created the world and cares about the behavior and beliefs of human beings … So with your current stance on Muslims not being allowed to pray on National Prayer Day at the Capitol Building to me is a complete slap in the face to the Constitution and several amendments.  Also, it shows a lack of follow-up.  I checked in the USA Today, Washington Post and NY Times, and there is no story whatsoever of there being a “mass prayer” being held on the Capitol Hill steps.  Perhaps the media is trying to protect “us” by not publishing or acknowledging that there was a prayer …  But you can find 100′s of stories from bloggers, which you seem to have found as ‘truth’ … I am sick of the ignorance of this nation and supposed true ‘Christians’ towards Islam.  We have unfortunately labeled Muslims as “Islamists”.  The difference is night and day.  Less than 1% of Muslims are the extreme Islamists, yet something as peaceful as a prayer on the steps of our Capitol seems to launch fools into standing against it.  Thankfully, the most of the world has not judged ‘us’ on the Spanish Inquisition, Adolph Hitler (Christian) or Benito Mussolin (Catholic) … To answer your question where do I want to be when Judgment day comes, I know I will be able to say this.  I will be standing with my family, and holding the hand of a dear friend of mine who is Muslim, and holding the other hand of a dear friend who is Hindu, I will stand beside my family and friends and together we will walk into the afterlife … If Muslims do ever choose to pray and you wish to stand against’, don’t forget to don your white hoods and take a burning cross for good measure … In closing, I would really appreciate it if you would stop sending me this filth.  It is unbecoming of true Christians.”

I want to thank my friend to taking a standing and calling out the ignorance where he saw it. I have only one thing to add for all of those jackholes that are intent on standing against an attempt at a peaceful assembly of religious folks because those folks aren’t the “right” religion. If you can march on Washington to spread ignorance and intolerance like you did with the “Tea Party” (for any of you not familiar with this, check the Awesomizer post dealing with this event), then a group of people who are trying to spread the word of peace should be applauded for trying to do so, not railed against because “their” God is not “your” God.

God is God people. We’re the one’s who decided he/she/it was something different based on the books WE decided to write about him/her/it. Our words, not God’s words … always keep that in mind. Religion is a construct of the human mind and its will to control other human minds.

By the way, that line you “Christians” (and yes, I put that in quotes to signify that you are not really all that Christian) are so intent on keeping in our pledge of allegiance, “…one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all,” does not say “…one nation, under ‘our’ God (and not ‘your’ God), with liberty and justice for a few, select people who read the ‘right’ book about ‘our’ God.”

You are the ignorant, the intolerant, the hate mongers, the violent. You are what’s wrong with this country. Not those who are trying to spread the word of peace. Here’s a hint … before you start rallying against, try to learn about that which you rally against … and never, ever forget that the “Christian” history is as violent as anything else.

Thanks friend. You are one more solider in the fight against stupidity. You are a true Christian.

Dear Awesomizer readers, this is a general chastisement to all of us in the good ol’ US of A about our understanding of our own language, and then a more general discussion of the implications of such ignorance. As some of you have seen from my short status update recently on Facebook, there is some (and shockingly common) misunderstanding of the proper usage of such words as “there,” “their,” and “they’re;” “your” and “you’re” — and then some wonderful ones added by a few others who have adopted the cause of the total, ballz-out Awesomization of America — like “two,” “too,” and “to”; and “here” and “hear.”

Many people who have learned English as a second (or third or fourth) language will tell you that it is because of these homonyms(phones)(graphs) that English is a tricky language to learn and use, and by virtue of my place of employment and my course of study, I can verify this to be true in many cases. However, and this is the crux of this discussion … these people who have learned English as a second (3rd, 4th, 5th) language USE THESE F%^*ING WORDS CORRECTLY while we, native-born, native speakers of English CANNOT and have no desire to correct this particular problem.

Meanwhile, there are intelligent, eloquent, hard-working people in our midst who not only know how to speak and write in English every bit as well as we do (or better), but they also speak and/or write fluently in several languages. How many people do you know who are bilingual, let alone are polyglots? How may people do you know who could use polyglot correctly in a sentence?

Lord knows I’m not multilingual … I know enough Spanish to order at Taco Bell and that’s about it.

This is not to say that I would expect all of us to become English experts or Linguists or anything, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that we can (and should) learn the bare-bones basics of the language we have supposedly learned since birth … and that’s “supposedly,” not “supposably.”

Part of this, I realize, is the sad fact that all people are not considered equal and that there is still a large part of our population that does not have access to quality education … hell, if we can’t provide the basics needed to keep our citizens healthy, then how are we going to provide them all with good education … but a lot of it is our own willful, intentional, acceptable, laudable ignorance.

It’s the jock mentality of high school … nerds do well in class, jocks do well in sports, it’s cooler to be a jock than a nerd, therefore, jocks are more valued. It’s why professional athletes make millions of dollars and teachers make $h!t.

The problem with all of this is — and here, dear readers, is the point of Awesomization — we are willing to blame everyone but ourselves for the problems we have in this country. It’s immigrants, it’s foreign business, it’s them damn Arabs, it’s the gays and the lesbians, it’s the non-Christians, it’s the liberal media, it’s blah, blah, blah.

Wake up people … if we can’t write the basics of our own language, how are we supposed to run the giant business that is our country? How are we supposed to keep foreign businesses from doing better than American businesses? How are we supposed to keep foreign individuals from, as the rednecks say, “taking our jobs,” if they are obviously willing to work harder and study harder than we are?

How, my fellow Americans, can we expose the corruption and broken systems in this country, so that we can be active participants in fixing the systems, eradicating the corruption, and mending the clusterF^&K of a country we live in, without being taken for a ride by the “greedy politicians” and the “liberal media” and all of the other people who are “doing stuff to us” if we can’t F%^&ING figure out that “there,” “their,” and “they’re” are three diifferent words?

Education is the key … if we would actually be willing to take it seriously … but that, my friends, is entirely too unAmerican.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y&feature=player_embedded

There is not going to be much text in this post because I believe this video says it all. I am sure that the individual interviews and comments in this piece were cherry-picked specifically for their absolute ridiculousness, but I think the point still stands …

We’re dumb. Americans are dumb. And the saddest part is that we don’t want to learn. We’re willfully stupid, and we beg these crackpots and idiots to come and tell us what to think.

Because why learn about your government? Why become educated on the inner workings of congress and the presidency and the judicial branch when someone can fill your brain with fear and propaganda? Why think for yourself and take an educated look at the information that’s being fed to you when you can believe it word for word, no matter how ridiculous it is?

This video is the perfect example of how the Right Wing nut bars are feeding the populace this load of garbage, knowing full well the average American doesn’t know anything except for what he or she is told.

Medicare is socialized medicine.

Communism, Socialism, Totalitarianism, Fascism are all different things … they are not interchangeable.

Czar is just a fancy name that Reagan gave the guy he appointed to lead the “war on drugs” and it stuck.

Obama is a black man living in a nation that is still a majority of white knuckleheads, he is not Hitler. If you want to see the Nazis in action, hold a mirror up to the Right Wing.

But in order to know this, you will have to read and listen and observe and process and think critically, which Americans are clearly not willing to do.

When you’re standing at a rally protesting something and someone asks you detail about what it is you’re protesting and you can’t answer that question, you should be ashamed of yourself … utterly and totally ashamed.

I don’t care if you really believe this $h!t, but if you’re going to make an a$$ out of yourself, at least know enough to answer a simple question about why you’re making an a$$ out of yourself …

Meanwhile, the Right Wing agenda enforcers are sitting back, getting blowjobs from hookers and payola from special interest groups, laughing at how easy it all is … because you redneck, idiot sonsabitches are too stupid and lazy to pick up a F$%KING newspaper.