These events are so sickening that I hate to talk about them at all, or even think about them. But what's especially sickening is that we never do anything about it.
Well, if a grade school could be shot up without America actually trying to do something about it, what would get us to take action?
Here's another perspective:
And re. that last video, check out what these Christian pastors say about the Orlando attack:
After 49 people were gunned down in an Orlando gay nightclub in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, pastors in California and Arizona praised the gunman for massacring “perverted predators” and “pedophiles.”
In Sacramento, Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church said the killer succeeded in making Orlando safer.
“Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?” Jimenez said in a sermon originally posted on YouTube. “Um no, I think that’s great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight.”
In the sermon, delivered just hours after the rampage on Sunday morning, Jimenez also said, “I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a wall, put a firing squad in front of them and blow their brains out.”
Tempe, Arizona preacher Steven Anderson also rushed to praise the “good news” that “there are 50 less pedophiles in this world.” ...
"The bad news is that a lot of the homos in the bar are still alive, so they're going to continue to molest children and recruit children into their filthy homosexual lifestyle," he said, adding the attack would be used to attack Christians and push gun control.
Maybe Republicans would like to ban all Christians from entering America?
I never could understand why Jews, Christians and Muslims don't see they share the same God. I guess that's a kind of proof against monotheism. If there is just one God, then everyone should see the same one. Because they don't, it suggests the concept of monotheism is invalid.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Jim. But even Christians don't see the same god. There are thousands of different Christian sects, and they disagree about nearly everything.
DeleteBTW, I edited my post, adding a bit to the bottom of it. I just wanted to be sure you saw that.
For all the talk about Islamic terrorism, there are Christian pastors who are praising the shooting.
(And to make this even more complicated, there seems to be reason to think that the shooter himself was gay. Was his primary motivation self-hate?)
The Christian Right is an extremely hate filled and dangerous group. They appeal to rednecks, the uneducated and people incapable of critical thinking. They also appeal to people through fear and who have a need to feel superior and "chosen". They are not a fringe group like American Nazis or the KKK, but are a large and growing group. Our only hope is the sanity of the younger generation, if that exists.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, Mary. Religious fervor comes and goes, and in many cases, it's the young - or, at least, younger - people who are more fanatic than their parents were.
DeletePretty much everyone wants to feel superior, and certainly everyone feels fear. So that appeal is to human nature, I think.
Nevertheless, they're still a minority. Above, I pointed out two Christian pastors who praised the Orlando shooting, but that's two out of hundreds of thousands of pastors in America.
I worry about it, yes. But I don't actually think that we're moving in the wrong direction. Instead, I think that fanatics tend to arise when they're losing.
If they were winning, we wouldn't see this amount of hate and anger. They're losing, and they know it. That's why they just get crazier and crazier.
Maybe that's too optimistic, I don't know. Certainly, they can still do a lot of damage to our country and the world. The fact that they're losing might easily provoke them to more extreme measures, I don't know.
Thanks for commenting, Mary.