ManicDDaily

One Set of Ingredients for Bozodom in America

Feel sick after reading last night about Pastor Terry Jones.  He is the Florida ex-hotel manager turned “Pastor” planning to burn a bunch of copies of the Koran on September 11th.  This bozo admits that he has “no experience” of the Koran, but feels that burning it is his right as an Amerian Christian.

Oh, great.

Jones claims to know the Bible (excluding, I guess those parts, about brotherly love.)    (By the way, Terry, Yahweh appeared as a burning “bush” not a bookpile.  Also, fyi, –those best known for burning books were certainly not “not-Christian”, but not exactly folks you’d want to emulate.)

It’s idiotic, embarrassing, dangerous, sickening.

What is additionally upsetting to me as a downtown New Yorker is that he is staging his outrage on September 11th.

For people who lived in downtown New York on September 11th, the anniversary of the day is very somber.   We ran, we walked, we stared, we wept.  We breathed air, thick with dust, ash, bone, asbestos and the smell of burn for months.   We were fearful of crowds, saddened by bagpipes.

We worried (still do) – what if it happened again?  How would we meet up with children?  Did we have duct tape?  Face masks?  Iodine tablets?  Could we get across the Hudson?

We became, at least if you are someone like me, even more sympathetic to people who live with a risk of violence on a much more frequent basis–people who suffer “shock and awe” in war-torn  or simply difficult societies.

If you feel any kind of connection to 9/11, you do not want to augment idiotic symbolic violence.   You want to promote tolerance, peace.  This is not just because you want don’t want to foment another attack on yourself, it’s because you understand that any violent/burning extremism, especially when combined with religious fundamentalism, causes woe.   (You are down on woe.)

This ridiculous vicious ignorant intolerant hoopla from people whose connection to 9/11 came primarily through media exposure (i.e. seeing it on TV), and who are seeking (you guessed it!) more media exposure (i.e. seeing themselves on TV) is beyond sickening.