re: #243 piratedan

It’s hard to not respond in kind when you’re constantly being labelled as unamerican, unpatriotic, willfully ignorant, sympathetic to mass murderers, devoid of of morals, stupid, moronic and in many cases, not even treated as being human, all the while watching them march lockstep into a mindset of theocratic fascism that would gladly allow them to marginalize you even further.

As a Muslim I see myself labeled as all those things and worse every single day, and it’s been going on for a long time. Pushing back using the same tactics would only further marginalize Muslims.

Not everyone feels the need to turn the other cheek or rise above the tactics of three year olds, especially when it appears that the other side has no intention of ever growing up, in other words, while it doesn’t help, I can’t blame people for wanting to count coup themselves. I often wonder if baseball bats to knees are what is needed in order to get some attention to the issues because speaking to these folks rationally hasn’t exactly worked well. Those moments pass and I do try to set the better example but they come with the understanding that there are a good many folks on the other side, whipped up by the rhetoric who would just as soon not give me a chance to be the better person at all.

Look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how has the payback thing worked out for them? That conflict has been dragging on for decades on end and shows no signs of changing anytime soon. Maybe the Israelis should just go for the “baseball bats to knees” solution? Yeah, I’m sure that’ll work out swell. //