Prejudice

Read Part 1 and 2.
But why?
One can point to many reasons for such a tragic development in an otherwise decent, wealthy and hitherto well-respected country.

During a three-month period in 2015, August until October, one could not open a newspaper, turn on a television or visit a news website without being subjected to reports on the mounting wave of refugees coming to the European Union from countries such as Syria, Iraq or Libya. The majority of reports in the media covered the responses of EU countries such as Germany or France. A number of reports debated the state of Greece and its handling of the refugee influx.

Enabling Saudi militancy is an irrational US policy

Recently, a teacher at a school in Augusta County, Virginia handed out a homework assignment. The homework, part of the Geography curriculum, dealt with world religions. Among other exercises, it included a question asking students to copy Arabic calligraphy (in order to help them understand the complexity of calligraphy in the Arabic language).
Here is the question:

The big lie is a propaganda technique generally employed when telling the truth would be unfavorable to your side. It goes like this: never admit doing any wrong and instead always insist on a story that portrays your side as the good guys. What really happened is irrelevant. The key is repetition. Do it often enough and loudly enough until most people believe you.

Whatever happens with Donald Trump’s candidacy- whether he rides his durable poll numbers to the Republican nomination, runs as an independent, or withdraws from the race completely- the ideas he’s introduced to the mainstream political dialogue will have a long shelf life.

After 14 people were killed and 22 more injured in the San Bernardino massacre by a couple whom authorities claim were “radicalized” by Islamist ideology, Islamophobia among the American public has seemingly reached a fever pitch. But while many people are fighting back against hateful discrimination against Muslims, many are doing so with a liberal narrative of American values that rationalizes and perpetuates American state violence, while failing to recognize this violence as its own form of extremism.

The state exists through violence. Rules are enacted and people must comply (except if you are a big shot because rules are made to keep the little guys in line). The big shots consist of a tiny clique that greedily absorbs the wealth from the labor of the little guys — and little gals — who constitute the masses. Given the gargantuan disparity between the number of big shots and the number of those who comprise the masses, the big shots had to devise a system to lock in the egregious maldistribution of wealth. The masses must be manipulated based on prejudices held or inculcated.

As an American, I am terrified of Muslims. And you should be, too.
That’s certainly what the media conveys. Every news source we encounter is debating whether we should trust or distrust “those” Muslims, as if over 2 billion people can be painted by a single brush.

A staggering 168 people, 12 times as many as those killed earlier this week in San Bernardino, and including a whole daycare center class of 15 little children, were killed by a crazed terrorist in the 1995 Oklahome City truck-bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The killer, Timothy McVeigh, was a right-wing Christian fanatic who wanted to avenge the killing of a bunch of Christian cultists in Waco, Texas by federal agents two years earlier. His accomplice Terry Nichols had the same deranged goal.