Sunday 26 May 2013

Xenophobia and meatballs.




Should we be embarrassed for the state of affairs that we live in? There seems to be an excuse for those that lived in the distant or even recent past as scientific understanding lacked an accurate explanation for things in general. We had great hopes for the year 2000, flying cars and a utopia based on the pursuit of a higher order. Like in Star Trek. When London caught fire in September 1666 rampant xenophobia ensured that folk rambled around to find a Jew to hang; it was apparently unlikely to have an accidental fire in a big pile of wood without the interaction of a follower of the old faith. Where as we know now that as that big clumsy scarab pushes the sun across the sky the occasional spark is bound to come off and cause trouble.

The great fire of London had an integral background of xenophobia due to recently having attacked the Dutch, consistently fighting the French and the recent reformation of the church; there was a distinct lack of facebook so perhaps folk could lump Catholics and foreigners in to their own vile little pigeon holes because people really did not know any better. Even though a bearded gent who everybody at the time professed to believe in had stood on a hill 1400 years previously and told everyone not to behave in such a frankly gormless fashion; it hadn’t worked and now there were two groups of people who professed to believe in the bearded gent arguing over what he had meant in the first place. But that’s folk for you and there you go.

A diagram of how the sun works.

So an event carried out by individual nutters, or an event that is not really carried out by anyone can lead to the bumbling persecution of a category of people. In the case of Timothy McVeigh who carried out the largest homegrown terrorist attack in America did not lead to the persecution of Catholics, not that I am suggesting it should have done. At this point in time we had progressed to the point that made it common sense that he was an individual that happened to be catholic; his mental intentions were not the mental intentions of the majority of Catholics who were at this point, very noticeably, not blowing anything up at all. This could be due to the fact that Mr. McVeigh’s motives were not religious but political; although one might hope that a couple of commandments might have given him a little pause for thought.

A surprisingly pale bearded gent distributes advice.
There has been a backlash against the Catholic Church as an institution as a whole in recent weeks; once again the news displayed evidence for sexual misconduct and child abuse. The reaction to these events has been anger towards the institution and sympathy towards the Catholics themselves; this seems to be the most logical and kindhearted reaction. Considering how reviled pedophilia is outside of the church; those that commit it under the protective wing of the church have driven people from the institution in droves. No-one has discovered some one to be a Catholic and drawn their children closer while watching the individual with deep disgust and suspicion, I think is my point.

I logged into Facebook the other morning to waste some time and avoid doing anything constructive before I die; at the top of the wall were the words: Kill all Muslims.
I will not patronize anyone by explaining what is wrong with this.
I recently learned the art of stuffing meatballs with mozzarella; I will never look back. I will treat anyone who makes meatballs without stuffing them with mozzarella with scorn. I frown upon their undeveloped ways. While doing this I am very aware that some of these people might be peaceful people; there are nearly two million Muslims in the U.K and probably even more people that make meatballs without a cheese filling; I can tell by a massive lack of events that they are not killing anyone. I have a Google box, a book of face, Wikipedia and none of us have any excuse anymore. The people who live after us will know that we didn’t. 


The future.


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