You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'

Have you ever watched some heartwarming video shared on Facebook or somewhere on Youtube, and found yourself shedding a few tears? Maybe even full-on sobs of joy or compassion? I do. I love stuff like that. Admittedly, I usually don’t like to show people that side of me. I couldn’t imagine myself sitting in the lobby of a doctor’s office weeping over a compilation of deployed military parents surprising their kids at a tee ball game (although, most people would likely give me a pass on that). But I keep that type of response private—usually on the toilet as I mindlessly pass the time scrolling through social media. Probably the last time I made a public display with it was at the 9/11 Museum in New York, and of course I wasn’t the only one in the place in that condition. But doesn’t it feel good? Doesn’t it feel natural? It just happens. Every time I watch Rudy’s dad so proud of his son finally playing in a Notre Dame football game, I have a good cry, and it feels great. So why do so many people opt out of human compassion?

There is a common argument that I hear from people in the United States. Violence is natural. Aggression is part of human nature. Fight or flight. And to a degree, they’re correct. We do possess an autonomic nervous system. Our amygdala helps us trigger a response involving fear or anger and a burst of adrenaline from our adrenal glands that increases our heart rates and breathing so that we may fight off an attacker or run away from danger. And surely we experience a wide range of severity of this from light irritation to complete rage, even in situations when only our mental well-being is threatened—someone hurts your feelings or you get rejected by The Voice judges. But I think violence and aggression are, themselves, only a small part of our “natural” behavioral tendencies. They serve a situational purpose. But how often do you experience stimuli that call for violent reaction? Perhaps the claim that violence is “part of human nature” is a bit of an overgeneralization meant for the purpose of rationalizing a deeper truth, and something that I’ve argued for some time, that Americans live in and maintain a violent society.

There is scientific research to support the idea that actually, humans are more prone to gravitate toward compassion and empathy for one another, as opposed to aggression or violence. A study was conducted decades ago in which researchers set out to explain a phenomenon long documented in maternity wards and hospital nurseries. When one baby starts crying, the rest begin to cry as if it’s contagious. And what the research seems to suggest is that when these babies respond to one another crying by crying themselves, they are displaying a rudimentary form of empathy. Read further on this: http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/dmessinger/c_c/rsrcs/rdgs/emot/McDonald-Messinger_Empathy%20Development.pdf. Such compassion may be innate and completely natural. I’ve never seen a newborn respond with aggression. Really, if you follow a child through toddlerhood and into school age, they more often want to kiss your boo-boos or give you a hug if you’re sad. They express true empathy. It’s natural to them. And when they do begin to display violent or aggressive behaviors, it always seems to be the imitation or Ninja Turtles or something—a kid-friendly show with mild aggression and violence. Kid-friendly violence. You know, to start them out light. And then, according to some research, by the time you reach 16, you’ve seen approximately 20,000 homicides through TV, movies, and video games. What happened to that sweet toddler who wanted to snuggle with you when you were feeling blue?

Just ask Albert Bandura. Bandura is a psychologist famous for the Social Learning Theory. He argued that some of our learned behavior is observational. He did an experiment in the 1960s where groups of children observed an adult playing with one of those old-school inflatable punch-me clowns (yes, I had one, too). One group watched as an adult played nicely with the clown. The other group watched as the adult punched, pummeled, and even hit the doll with a mallet. Watch this video to see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBqwWlJg8U. The group that watched the adult play nice did exactly the same, and as you can see, the children that watched aggression mimicked almost exactly the actions they saw of the adult they observed.

So get to the point! Yes. Here it is. I think we’ve trained human compassion out of the common behaviors of American citizens. It’s hard to deny the violence in our media, in our language, in our sports, etc., is a very present and integral part of our culture. We are a country almost perpetually at war with someone, and have been since our founding through a Revolutionary War. We glorify our violent past and present, and it seeps into the way we influence our citizens to act on a daily basis. And this begins from birth. It’s a process of socialization. That sweet toddler mentioned before was cute for a while, but especially if he’s a boy, we start influencing him to “toughen up”. Eventually that turns in to “act like a man”. We actually discourage kids to shun sensitivity. And then they take that attitude with others around them. Trust me, I get it. There is such a thing as being too sensitive. There is a level of toughness a person must have. However, I think we have to be careful that we’re not inadvertently doing away with that person’s naturally-occurring sense of empathy. As if having a culture of violence and corresponding murder rate isn’t bad enough, it’s almost worse that we have a culture of callousness. And if compassion comes naturally, callousness is learned. When you look around you and find that even people who claim to be devout Christians take an apathetic or even negative attitude about the plight of others, it’s troubling.

A friend of mine today stated that “a society should be judged by how it treats its weakest citizens”, and she’s right. And so far, as a society, we’re doing a bad job at this. People want to do away with government assistance altogether over an average of about 2-3% of recipients abusing it. People want to ban Muslim refugees or even Muslims altogether over a handful of extremists. A woman gets raped, and you blame the victim. You argue that affordable healthcare is a “privilege”, and not a right—that your life means less if you have less money. Thirty-three people get killed in Brussels during a terrorist attack, which is horrible, and we’re still covering the manhunt. Seventy are killed the same weekend in a suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, and it barely makes the news. Who cares? “It’s over there. Pakistan…figures…” We take the same attitude when a school shooting happens in the suburbs versus South Chicago. We discount the lives of people sometimes based on socioeconomic status or ethnicity. Hey, I like football and MMA. I like The Walking Dead. We are all products of the system. Trained to thrive in violence. But we are all born with a strong sense of compassion and empathy. I’d like to see this again find its way to the forefront of our behavior. I’d like to see it trump violence. I’d like to see people care for others, shedding the callous attitudes so many have come to be indoctrinated with. And that kind of socialization starts from birth. Am allowed to hold optimism for our generations to come?

Apathy and the Common American: Why I Dislike Americans

I’ve come to the conclusion that I really kind of dislike Americans. Before you start chastising my lack of patriotism and telling me to “not let the door hit me in the ass on my way out”, let me explain what I mean. I don’t hate America in the slightest. I don’t hate being an American. I totally appreciate what I have here. I have a good life. But that’s just my point. I appreciate what I have. I hear people say that a lot. They claim to have a deep appreciation for the life they have in the United States; all the freedoms, rights, and opportunities afforded to most (yeah, not all) people born here. But I’m not sure they have the full picture of what that means. Sure, people generally understand that there are places in the world plagued by warlords and malaria. All you have to do is stay up late enough for early morning crap TV to see the commercial asking you for fifty cents a day. You understand there are hungry children in the world. It’s a general awareness that never seems to permeate the hard outer shell of spoiled entitlement and apathy for the less fortunate. It’s an afterthought. It happens waaaay over there. Can’t be bothered by it. And in the next thought, I can’t believe they give me the choice to press 8 for Spanish when I call my bank! What’s this country coming to?!

Let me begin with my recent adventures in London. This was a unique opportunity to visit a contemporary country with a comparable economy and culture. I also found it to be an opportunity to interact with non-Americans. I was curious to see what they really think of us. Answer? Maybe you don’t want to know. I have long been of the impression that a lot of the world community sees us as overfed, undereducated, gun-toting maniacs. But that seemed a little harsh. Maybe it isn’t that bad, right? But the more I talked to Londoners and they caught on that I an American, I began to realize that I was a walking stereotype. Several times a day, usually over a nice pub ale, I had the same conversations. A: How in the hell could we entertain the idea of a Trump presidency (yes, they keep up)? B: What’s the deal with all of the murders, shootings, and open carry laws? Every day. And that’s a tougher conversation than you think as you look around the city and see that even the cops don’t carry guns.

But it wasn’t the interaction with Londoners that put me off—it was my encounters with Americans while I was there. I’m not lying when I say that every single one that I happened upon overseas was the “ugly American” you always hear about. The one that perpetuates the stereotypes. They’re ignorant, yes, but not in a way that you genuinely don’t know and would like to be corrected so that you might be enlightened. No. Nooooo. This is the type of ignorance that’s loud and unapologetic. I’M TOTALLY IGNORANT AND I DON’T GIVE A SHIT BECAUSE I’M AMERICAN AND I’M BETTER THAN YOU!! Every. Last. One. Example:  On my way out of a pub, I hear one of my countrymen ask the guy next to him, “Hey, are you English?” I’m thinking, In London? What are the odds? As it turned out, he was not, indeed, English. He replied, “No, I’m Irish”. The American then said, “Oh. Same difference, right?” I walked out of the pub with a face-palm. It was like that friend or family member you have that you love dearly but you’re embarrassed to go into public with. And the guy boisterously lecturing a pub crowd over the fine attributes and foreign policy prowess of Donald Trump. And as I sat in another pub watching London news TV, which covered mainly local politics and the fact that it was going to rain every day for the foreseeable future, I took a hefty, somber gulp of ale with the news that in my 5 day stay in England there had been three mass shootings in the US, and most of you didn’t notice because it doesn’t even make the news anymore.

But what really solidifies my new dislike for Americans comes from a recent cruise vacation to the Caribbean with my family. It was a lovely trip of course, and as always, I love to interact with the wonderful people of Montego Bay and Grand Cayman. The ports of call were not the problem. It was what I saw on the ship that turned my stomach. Every passenger on that boat was at least middle class. They likely live a relatively comfortable life. That’s not to say they’re necessarily rich, but as I have come to find out, you don’t have to be rich to be oblivious to your own sense of entitlement. To preface, if you’ve never been on a cruise ship, you should know that they are staffed almost completely with international employees. Only a few are American or British, and one hundred percent of the time, those workers are the director of something and get payed far more than anyone else. You begin to detect a pattern when you see nationality printed on the employees’ name tags. Cruise lines hire heavily from countries like Zimbabwe, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bulgaria, and India. These are places where malaria and starvation are common, or the economy is thirty years behind the rest of the world. You hardly ever see French, German, or Swedish employees. Nope. The ones from India will work for less. And most of these employees send every bit of their pay home to their families that they get to see a total of about two months out of the year. But hey, they made sacrifices and that’s what they had to do to provide for their families. More power to them.

Still, to compare that to the passengers allowed me to finally realize how ugly we can be as a people; as a culture. From time to time, when we cruise, we will sit down at a poker table which is the way to go if you insist on gambling. You can play a lot longer and for a lot less money than pouring your bankroll into a slot machine. And it’s a great way to chat with other people from other places in the US. You can be there for hours on the same buy-in. Sometimes, as you get to know these people, you can quickly see that you don’t like them. Others, obviously, are pretty nice. And all of them…were highly entitled. To listen to these people bitch and what they bitched about was so petty. [in my whiny, spoiled voice] The soup was so bland tonight. Oh yeah? Well my steak was between medium and medium well, when I clearly asked for medium. And my stateroom wasn’t turned down the way I like it. My kids were expecting towel animals and they didn’t get one tonight. The chocolate extravaganza at the buffet was a joke! And I look at this girl dealing cards—the one from a country where 1.6 million people have AIDS, there are over 500,000 orphans due to AIDS, and there is massive starvation—and I lock eyes with her. I could see it. She didn’t say a word, but I knew what she was thinking. Poor you. You have it so tough here in the US. That’s when I really began to dislike these people. And that’s when I realized this attitude accounts for most of our population. Maybe it isn’t conscious or by choice. But that’s the nature of ignorance. And you have a choice not to be.

The cherry on top was the buffet and dining rooms. To watch people pile food onto a plate at the buffet and eat half of it is a common sight even if you’re not on a cruise ship. Where it really hit me was to see people in the dining room at literally every table order three appetizers and two main courses(for one person). If you’re a big eater, fine. If you ate it, fine. What sickened me was to watch that waiter from the Philippines or Indonesia have to come by, pick up a plate with one bite taken out of it, and dump it all in the trash, knowing that in the Philippines, one in seven people are starving. I saw it in their faces. Most people didn’t. Maybe they weren’t paying attention. Maybe they didn’t want to or didn’t care. But again, it’s this hardened shell we have round us that is impervious to the plight of others in the world. And with this comes a lack of empathy, even when it comes to similar problems within our own borders.

Here’s my conclusion. I currently dislike Americans. That doesn’t mean I dislike America. I love my country. I just have a problem with our culture of apathy and entitlement. And I’m not talking about the word entitlement as someone complains about poor people on welfare. I’m talking about the since of entitlement possessed by that person bitching about welfare recipients. Because those are the same people complaining that their steak is overdone or that housekeeping was too slow to bring them a third pillow. You have a good life. Enjoy it. No one is saying you have to be ashamed of having things. I, too, enjoy the finer things in life. I just wish Americans had a deeper appreciation for those things they have and more than just a passing awareness of the kind of suffering experienced by others in the world. Your bland soup is not suffering, nor is it suffering when McDonald’s forgets to hold the pickles. So please Americans…make me like you again. Make the world like you again. 

Capitalism? Socialism? How About Neither?

Bernie Sanders has caused quite a stir, in more ways than one. To supporters, he’s the alternative to establishment liberal politics. He’s the anti-Hillary. She represents the party. The party surely views this go-round as her turn. But to a lot of younger voters, she represents business as usual—something that has frustrated many Americans, liberal or conservative. And just as conservatives seem to have chosen Trump as their anti-establishment figure, Bernie serves the same purpose for liberals. The difference is, obviously, that Bernie is smart. And has a soul. And while he enjoys a fierce grassroots support movement and has had a meteoric rise to almost the level of a folk hero, the kind of reaction he is getting from conservatives is seismic and fearful. And it stems from one powerful, cringe-worthy word…socialism.

There is a reason this word isn’t as big of a deal for younger liberals. Milennials were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Action movies produced in their lifetime pit our trigger-happy good guys against the likes of jihadists. Older generations grew up in an era when our common enemy was the commie. We were fighting Russians and Ukrainians, whether it was Maverick and Goose shooting down MIGs or Rocky avenging Apollo Creed. And it was okay for us to dislike those people. We were cool with it because for decades we had been told, first that communism was bad and that communist countries were part of an “Evil Empire”. Evil. Yup. Evil. An economic/governmental system was considered evil. EVIL. That was the word used by President Reagan. Secondly, we were taught that socialism is essentially the same thing as communism, or at least the welcome sign on the outskirts of town headed into communism. According to a lot of high school economics textbooks, socialism is defined as an economic system in which the government owns some of the factors of production, usually in the way of basic necessities that all people need. A communist country with a command economy would own all of those factors. Therefore, on the other end, our capitalist country would be completely privatized. There is no government ownership or control over resources. And according to decades of propaganda, you’re not a real American if you don’t choose the latter.

Therein lies the problem. Our society often applies an all-or-nothing approach to choosing ideology. Take the Back the Blue movement, for example. Backing the blue, to me, sounds a bit like an ultimatum. I have to choose either to back the blue and unequivocally support all law enforcement officers no matter what, or I’m not supportive at all. No one wants to seem unsupportive, so they back the blue. But if I use my own brain, I can take the position that I understand the need for a police force and the protection that comes with that. I can support the officers and their families in the face of a sometimes dangerous job. But I also recognize that there are some cops that are racist or dirty. There may be some who use their power to hurt others or advance themselves. Or maybe they’re just bad at their job. Or what if one wrongfully shoots and kills an unarmed man? Do I still have to back the blue? I’d rather not. But that doesn’t mean I say Screw the Blue. It just means this is more complicated than a simple slogan and ideology. We do the same thing with capitalism and socialism. We put together an ideology and place all the tenets of that ideology into a neat little box. Here’s the capitalism box, and here’s the socialism box. You can choose only one. And when you choose, you have to stick with all the things that goes into that box, no matter what. People actually think this way. We do this with being a Democrat or a Republican. Pro-choice or pro-life. iOS or Android. You’re forced to subscribe to the ideology. Sometimes people willingly choose the ideology. It’s easier. Because when you choose an ideology, you allow that ideology to think for you. You become an easily labeled drone that spouts the popular catch phrases and scripted arguments handed down from the establishment, diffused through media, and indoctrinated into millions of Americans who choose to not use their own brains. They choose not to inform and educate themselves. Instead, the politicians educate them; the talking heads educate them.

Easily labeled ideologies and propaganda go together like Krispy Crème and type two diabetes. And to an underinformed populace, it’s just as attractive. So here’s what you get. Bernie Sanders proposes that we move to a single-payer healthcare system—a system that everyone pays into through our tax dollars in lieu of private health insurance. Health care becomes a human right. Or Bernie proposes that college should be free to the student who commits to making the grade and is willing to work for the degree. And you know what people say? Well of course…he’s a damned socialist. He wants to give away free crap. And on my dime. Typical… B-b-but wait! Then what is Medicare? Or tax-funded public safety? Or national defense? Or public education? Or corporate subsidies? According to the capitalism-indoctrinated American, the government using tax dollars to fund healthcare is socialist. So it’s evil. But didn’t we say that the textbook definition is that the government has to own the factors of production? According the Bernie’s plan, the single-payer system would be more of a reallocation of people’s income, just like we do so that we can have a military and fire departments. So my question to the naysayer whining about socialism is this:  Does the textbook definition of socialism need updating, or does single-payer healthcare and free college just simply fall short of being considered socialism?

What about just saying to hell with both notions? We seem to be the only country not doing that. We seem to be the only one clinging to archaic propaganda-driven ideologies and not thinking for ourselves. And it is proving to be counterproductive. We’re so hung up on the labels—capitalism, socialism, etc.—that we’re not having a coherent conversation about what we actually need. Every other country out there sits down, addresses a problem in their society, and decides what is best for the people. I have to imagine that’s the way our founding fathers viewed the creation of an elected government body. I would guess that’s what they meant when they said that the government should promote the general welfare. They didn’t once write the word capitalism or socialism into the Constitution. They simply wrote promote the general welfare. So I would suggest that we do what every other country does. They assemble the adults, have an adult conversation, and decide what works. We need to figure out what is best for our unique society with our unique demographics. And we need to do it having erased the labels and ideologies. Dump the contents of both the socialist and capitalist boxes onto the table, and sort the things that don’t work for us from the things that do. And at that moment, as a nation, we will have grown up.

Progress in the New Year

It’s the last day of the year. It’s a time when everyone in the world reflects on the previous three hundred sixty-five days, what their triumphs were, and what their pitfalls were. But it’s also a day when we peer into the possibilities that the next year may bring. Commonly, this comes with a mentality of change. Many of us that are brave enough to see ourselves as imperfect think about what we could do differently next year so that we may improve and evolve as people. Why can’t we have the same mentality as a society? Why can’t we think this way when it comes to our government and the people that government serves?

I think if you were to ask Americans about our place in the world as a society and as a country, the majority would stick to the old propaganda-borne belief that this is the greatest country/society in the world. And there is some basis for that claim, but it is a holdover belief from a time when it may have been true that we were at the forefront in comparison to the rest of the world. I don’t believe we have simply maintained that position. Rather, like other societies we might be compared to, we have occupied that status in waves, followed by time periods where we grew comfortable, socially and economically.

Here’s an example. The Revolution and ideas that helped us to construct our new government were radical—extremely radical. The ideas behind the social contract and unalienable rights were from the minds of Enlightenment writers who were seen as so radical and dangerous to the status quo that they were often censored and/or imprisoned. Guys like Voltaire lived much of their lives in exile from their own countries. Paired with the audacity to challenge the most powerful imperial force in the world and its monarchy, that made the new United States of America a cutting edge example of what governments should be for a brave new world. It directly inspired the French Revolution, which inspired governmental and social changes all over Europe, and eventually the rest of the world. But we didn’t remain a world leader in that way. We lulled throughout the nineteenth century and clung to our past status of greatness. We were among the last in the western world to end slavery, and even that came with an actually war in which some still wanted to cling to the archaic institution. Even beyond that, our practices of discrimination persisted for another century and more. We sunk into a deep attitude of isolationism and materialism. The only other time that we regained a true status of global “greatness” was in the change enacted in response to the Great Depression and during our fight against imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. But once again, in years to come, we still clung to the ideals and achievements of yesteryear, claiming to be the greatest country in the world, but with no evidence to back such a claim.

What made us great in those times that we could legitimately claim global leadership? Many of you will not like this truth, but the answer is progressivism. Those revolutionary ideas were radical because they were progressive. They challenged the status quo. They challenged those whose power stemmed from doing things the way they always have been done. Franklin and Jefferson challenged the power of King George. Abolitionists challenged the power of wealthy slave owners and their greedy ideals. Civil Rights leaders challenged the power and dominance of white Americans, and that struggle still persists. These events are significant in our history. This, paired with economic and technological innovations over the years has been the source of what makes us great. And this, my friends, is what one would call progressivism. To many conservatives this is a dirty word. But why? That same conservative may hold Jefferson or Lincoln in high esteem and examples of what made the US great, but he or she forgets that these people were progressive, and that’s why they were great. Great and innovative people think outside the social and cultural norm. They invent things that have never been. They are not content or complacent with what has always been. They seek to improve.

There is nothing wrong with being conservative. I think a lot of conservative ideals are great—ideals that center around morality and certain values. But often times, politically, officials and policies use this as a way of convincing people to make sure that those in power stay in power both in terms of elected office and in control of wealth, just as did slave owners and monarchs past. This is the status quo. This is the voice that seeks to ensure that nothing changes for the betterment of everyone in our society. This is King George asserting his own personal supremacy over the people of the North American colonies. This is David Koch ensuring that he and his brother can buy a government that makes policies that support their own greed. And this isn’t necessarily good for all of us in our society. The greatest moments in US history saw men and women challenge this stagnation. Change is what makes us great. And it’s what is helping our contemporary nations to surpass us as being world leaders. Progressivism is not a dirty word. But not progressing—becoming too comfortable in the way things have always been—ensures that everyone else surpasses us. We become regressive. We hold ourselves to our own ideals, regardless of global consensus. We gladly isolate ourselves from an increasingly integrated world that tries new things and boldly solves problems with new solutions. And we become socially, morally, culturally, and economically archaic. And if you want to know that that looks like, just visit Saudi Arabia or Yemen. 

A Dangerous Game We're Playing

Thousands roar in support and allegiance as they gaze up and across the crowded space at a spectacle of a stage at the head of the venue. It is a shrine of flags and symbols of propaganda. The audience chants and venerates the speaker at the podium as he addresses them with furious pride and smug rhetoric. He tells them their country will be great again. He tells them they will again be dominant. And to do this, society must be pure. It must be pure of those who would undermine its fabric with their lifestyle—a lifestyle so foreign to the values or the rest of the population that it should be done away with. Those people should be blocked. Their culture should be snuffed out. They are not to be trusted. They should be feared. They are less than us. I could easily be describing an old news reel from the late 1930s—one in German. But no, I’m describing a presidential candidate’s rally. And the political leader? Donald J. Trump.

Donald Trump has come out and full-on supported the notion that our country should block entry of all Muslims into the United States. For the record, I’m not opposed to tightening our borders out of caution, given that recent weeks have seen the execution of terrorist attacks outside of troubled Middle Eastern countries. We should scrutinize those applying for visas or attempting to enter the nation, particularly if they have recently visited ISIS or al-Qaeda-controlled areas of the globe. But barring all people based on a cultural common denominator is something we’ve worked against in the United States in the last several decades. Seventy-odd years ago, we were interning Japanese Americans in camps based on their heritage, and now we commonly recognize the folly in that kind of xenophobia. Fifty years ago, civil rights activists were staging sit-ins at restaurants that wouldn’t serve African Americans. We now see this practice as “un-American”. Or is it? Perhaps that’s perfectly American. Because while we can say, “sure, that’s an awful thing to refuse service to someone based on skin color”, aren’t we recently seeing people do this on the basis of sexual orientation? We have always been prone to discriminate against the minority. We have a very long history of assimilating out the cultural particulars of groups outside of the dominant norms. We make you speak English when you’re in our presence and tell us “Merry Christmas”, though you are a Jew.

So when Trump advocates the barring of everyone who practices a certain religion or when other elected officials publically suggest internment camps for Muslim Americans, it shouldn’t surprise us. That’s what Americans have always done. Just ask the Native Americans. But it is also an echo of a darker time in history when another leader and another society began a dangerous rhetoric about a religious group that they too had a problem with. Germany was already highly anti-Semitic by the rise of the Third Reich. Such anti-Semitism had its roots into the previous century. By the time Hitler was elected chancellor in 1933, he didn’t have to push much. Within a few years, strong public mistrust and opinion about Jews had turned to extreme discrimination that eventually saw Jews rounded up into ghettos and then on to camps. There, millions would be systematically exterminated. Am I saying that Trump, as a president, would ever round up Muslims and execute them in death camps? Not even close. This, I would hope, would never happen in today’s America. My point is that we are playing a dangerous game in terms of our legacy and especially for the Muslim Americans who work and live among us. One only needs to look to social media to see the hate and prejudice cultivating in certain US social circles. Memes and hateful overgeneralization feed that bias, and every time two radicalized Muslims carry out an act of violence, it confirms the existing view that none of them should be trusted. Like Nazi Germany, that prejudice exists. And all they needed was a leader to push forward that public opinion. And that’s all we need for Americans to take that next step into discrimination against Muslim Americans. All we need is that charismatic leader and his words that inflame. Let us instead reject the sins of our past in favor of a new America. Come on, folks. We’re smarter than this, right?

Terrorism is Terrorism

I’ll paint the scene as I imagine it. It’s a public place—maybe a mall or a restaurant. People are enjoying each other and living their lives. Not one of them left home expecting it would be the last time they saw it. As they are carrying out their business, a masked man walks in with an AR-15 type weapon (Colt holds the official trademark of that name). He has several clips at his disposal, each with a capacity of about thirty rounds. He can unleash these as quickly as his finger can pull the trigger. He also has a handgun he carries at his side. He opens fire and fills the air with bullets as if it were some aroma that diffuses about the room. There is no escape. People try to hide or run, but who can outrun a bullet? In the end, dozens lose their lives or are severely injured. By the time the police arrive and eventually kill the perpetrator, the news has broken via social media and the local news crews. Panic spreads in the community as people fear that their loved ones may have been there and may be dead. As it graces the headlines at CNN, the country learns of yet another massacre in a US public place, and they mourn. Maybe they fume with anger. And everyone awaits for the identity of this horrible person. He has yet to be unmasked. No one knows his face. No one knows his origin. How do you categorize him?

That’s an important question. Without knowing anything about this person, we all agree that he has committed a senseless act of violence. He took dozens of innocent lives—took mothers away from children and sons away from fathers. But an interesting thing will happen once this man is unmasked. The police will approach, finally assured that he is dead and poses no further threat. They will pull the mask from his face and once his identity is revealed, a new label will be attached. If he is a white man, likely Christian, he will be touted as a mass murderer. Maybe a disturbed or disgruntled citizen with mental health problems. He is a US citizen with no previous indication of violent tendencies, though neighbors thought he was quiet and perhaps a little “off”. If it turns out the shooter is Hispanic, rumors begin to spread that he was a cartel member in the country illegally. But what if the shooter is an Arab? He has tan skin and a name like Ahmed or Fareed. Maybe he is a radicalized Muslim, maybe not. Either way, he now receives the label, “terrorist”. My question is this:  why did only the Muslim get that label?

Think about it. With a mask, we knew nothing about this person. We just all agreed that what he did was horrible. We would want answers. We would want justice. We would want our leaders to try to find a way to prevent things like this from happening ever again. But once we know his level of skin pigmentation and his name, we start to think differently about him. If he’s a white Christian, he actually falls in with most mass murderers America has ever had. And it seems that we’re so used to it that it almost comes off as business as usual. We mourn as a country for about five minutes, a handful of people whine about their guns, we tune in to Dancing With the Stars, and wait for the next massacre. But when we unmask a Muslim American who was no more on the radar as a homicidal asshole as the white guy, he’s a terrorist and we have to take action NOW! Facebook fills with hate memes and Fox News-inspired rants about Americans getting their heads out of the sand. People rail against liberal “apologists” and call for the country to do something about the “Muslim threat”. All of a sudden, it’s a priority. Trump even starts talking about deporting all of the Muslims as other lawmakers suggest rounding them up into camps like Japanese Americans circa 1942. Somehow a Muslim extremist killing a dozen people is far worse than and Anglo-American doing the same. And while I can appreciate the fact that the radicalization of Muslims in America is a problem, and stands to threatens lives, this has happened, comparatively, only a handful of times. Most of our mass murders are carried about by white people, yet we don’t call it what it is.

And that is what I’m proposing. Do we have to reserve the “terrorist” label for Ahmed? Or can we call senseless murder and violence for the purpose of striking fear into the hearts of the public the same thing, regardless of who does it? Terrorism is terrorism. Violence is violence. Let’s put a stop to all of it.

Hate ISIS, not Islam

It’s easy to be angry in the aftermath of such a senseless attack on humanity. A handful of extremists perpetrated the wholesale slaughter of so many innocent people. That should make you angry. But who, specifically, are you angry with? Is it possible that emotion overtakes you and as it spills over, you have to find a place and direction for those feelings? Maybe. But the seeds have long been planted. For most of us, it was 9/11. If you’re a bit older, perhaps it started with Beirut in 1983 or with the Iran hostage crisis. Could we even place the beginnings of western views and mistrust with Islam as far back as the Ottomans or the Crusades? Sure. But I want to make an argument for Islam and how it might not have as much to do with ISIS or the attacks in Paris as one may think.

First, let me say that I have known many Muslim Americans at this point. Most of them were students. I’ve known some of their parents. I’ve known others more casually through work or acquaintance. And if I’m being honest, other than the fact that their faith comprises a tiny minority of the overall American aggregate, all of them were quite like anyone else. But Americans unfortunately have a different mental image of Muslims. When most of our citizens conjure images of Muslims, we think of people within a Middle Eastern setting. We think of dust and hollowed-out buildings. We think of a city-wide call to prayer from the nearest mosque and men selling fruits in the market. We think of veiled women herding around their children with their heads hung in subjugation. This might not totally be incorrect in a lot of places in the Middle East. But it’s also not totally accurate. It all depends on where we’re talking about. Yet, we default to the description I just gave because that’s how we always see it in the movies or in TV shows. And those shows are almost always about bad-ass US troops kicking some jihadist ass. Right off the bat, Americans are force-fed a set of images that further push the common, average Muslim into a category that is somehow lesser than ourselves. That they all come from backwardness where evil always seems to loom around the corner. This is despite the fact that your neighbor or coworker who is Muslim isn’t anything close to that. They just go to work, provide for their families, go to school, and live their lives like anyone else. And yet you lump them in with terrorists.

There is a distinct difference between the American Muslim and perhaps the Muslim who lives in somewhere like Yemen or Saudi Arabia. While some of this has to do with religion, I think the think we often overlook is the influence of culture. Western culture is overwhelmingly Christian. If you really want to compare the holy books of Christians and Muslims, you’re going to get a lot of similarities. They come from the same basic region and over the span of history, aren’t really separated by much time. They each reflect popular culture of ancient times, along with punishments for breaking social norms. You can find that stoning someone to death is okay according to both the Qu’ran and the Bible. But we don’t stone people in the west. We have disregarded that ideology while clinging to the more positive core beliefs of our religions. Of course, I’m mostly talking about Christianity. But if you look closely, you’ll find this also in most Muslim Americans. I especially see it among my students who were born here. A lot of the girls aren’t even required to wear the hijab (head scarf) by their parents and are allowed to go to school where they congregate with boys. Their parents know that this is the cultural standard here. In this, American culture has shaped the practice of their religion without diluting the positive aspects of it. I’ve never had a student have to step out of class to pray in the middle of the day. They do it when they get home. Again, our culture shapes the way they practice. We have to understand that the Middle East is different. They have had very limited exposure to western culture before a few decades ago, and it’s largely limited even today. Slowly, western standards have seeped in, and this is part of why groups like al-Qaeda have a problem with Westerners. But even within the Middle East, you’ll find different cultural standards that regard women, marriage, etc., depending on what country or what region you visit. The fact that Jordanian women have far more freedoms than Saudi women tells me that this isn’t so much about Islam as it is about cultural standards.

You see, every religion in the world has, at some point in time, been used to control others. Slavery in the southern US was a cultural and economic standard. Yet, to justify the obvious evil in owning another human being, many southern Christians turned to the Bible. They twisted and contorted what the scripture actually said to fit their needs, justify their actions, and keep their slaves subservient. Spanish Catholics during the Renaissance were intolerant of Jews. The justification for torturing or expelling them was religion. Medieval Christians wanted to regain control over the Palestine. Religion became the excuse and catalyst to attack in that region. People go to war to control a territory and its resources. They go to war for selfish reasons. They just need an excuse.

And this brings us to ISIS. Leadership in ISIS wants to consolidate all Muslims in the world under one caliphate. This isn’t dissimilar from Nazi ideology in consolidating all Germanic territories and people. They want to establish an “Islamic State”. This is political in nature. Islam ends up being an excuse to do so and a method of recruitment. Reports from people who have defected or escaped from ISIS overwhelmingly testify that ISIS leadership is highly hypocritical. They don’t at all practice what they preach. They are bent on domination and territorial gain. But they recruit on a basis of jihadism. They prey upon a young, impressionable Muslim man—one who may have lost family in a drone strike; who may be upset with Americans. And all the recruiter has to tell that kid is that this is the kind of attack on his faith and way of life that the Qu’ran speaks of, and that it’s his duty to defend it (even though most Muslims know better than this). And just like that, you have a radicalized ISIS fighter. What you’re left with is an ISIS leadership with a political goal and a fighting force who believe they are fighting a holy war. Sounds a lot like the Crusdades, actually. You want to take over a territory, and all the Pope has to do is tell the peasants that they can go directly to Heaven if they die for God, and you have a religiously-charged army fighting for a self-serving political entity.

But in the end, it has little to do with Islam. Islam isn’t the problem. Islam is the excuse. It’s a manipulation tool. People can be bad. Be upset with the people. Be upset with ISIS. Be upset with terrorists and their tactics. But this does not provide free license to hate everyone who practices the religion. That’s wrong. And do not tolerate it.