NBC has fired Donald Trump for speaking his mind. No matter if you find him annoying, suffering from megalomania, abrasive, or a straight-shooter, does he have a right to speak his mind, or do they have a right to protect their brand. If they are protecting their brand, then they obviously don’t think people who have his mind-set are worth pandering too, as viewers. That’s okay. They have that right. He has a right to be a hot-head and truly look irresponsible with a couple of his remarks. If he wants to be taken seriously as a POTUS contender, then he needs to be more judicial about how he reacts to things – or does he?
We hear quite a bit about mosques being vandalized. We’re learning about 6 potential hate crimes against black churches in the South. Two of the incidents have already been eliminated as hate crimes. During the month of June at least 9 instances of vandalism, fire, anti-Christian hate were reported in Catholic Churches in this country alone. But – nothing is ever said on the national news.
Why?
In Palm Springs a Catholic Church was vandalized. A statue of the Blessed Holy Mother was beheaded. That is a desecration, and what I call a hate crime. Earlier this month, a Catholic Church in Torrington, CT was vandalized. So was St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Athens, Ohio. Divine Mercy Parish, near St. Louis, was vandalized last week. Sacred Heart Catholic Church and school in Covina, CA was vandalized several weeks ago. The first of the month, a Catholic cemetery near Baltimore was vandalized. Earlier in the month, a statue of the Blessed Holy Mother was vandalized in Santa Fe. The same thing happened in Brooklyn. The cathedral in Yakima was vandalized with anti-Christian hate speech.
Robert Mapplethorpe was a self-serving hack who rose to fame through his mediocre black and white photography. I say mediocre because I’m a photography freak. If it had not been for the controversial nature of his work, he would be long forgotten. It is that controversial work that cause far right angst. Should images of a homo-erotic, S&M nature be featured in tax-payer funded institutions? And, his work was mediocre. If it had not been for his reputation and so-called controversial photography he would have been considered a hack.
One of the critiques of Mapplethorpe’s work is that he featured nude photographs of children. At the time it was very disturbing. Today, the world has changed so much, I don’t even know if child pornography laws would allow it. Looking back on things, I don’t think I’ve heard of any of the children who were supervised by their parents, were abused in any way.
His most controversial work, with the nude images of children, went into a few private galleries, causing a tremendous uproar. I was furious about it. Then, a friend, Mike Galloway, told me it was a private gallery and they had the right to do what they wanted to do. I have never known another attorney, or anyone else who loved the law the way he did. He almost worshiped the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Liberal, he felt that constraints which were being put on the Bill of Rights by the Reagan Administration were deplorable. He hated Rush Limbaugh.
Mike taught me a heck of a lot about the Bill of Rights. He changed the way I thought about them. He opened my eyes to a different world, one in which we should all aspire to live. The Bill of Rights, according to Mike, made us all theoretically equal under the law. He taught me that something done in private, by a private company, no matter who or what that company is, has a right to do what they want, without the public demanding it do otherwise.
He taught me that everyone had the same rights. When we allow one group to exercise their rights and preferences over another, we destroy the fabric of our country. Everyone has a right to freedom of expression, no matter now disgusting and annoying we might find it.
The lesson I learned from my friend was that no one single person is better than another. We are all the same. We have the same rights to equal protection under the law. We have the same rights to exercise freedom of expression, unless it is a public danger and menace. You cannot restrict someone’s actions because you don’t like them, and they are not illegal.
Someone wanted a Walmart bakery to do a cake with a Confederate flag on it. They were told Walmart no longer did anything with Confederate flags. The guy who wanted the cake went back the following day and ordered a cake with an ISIS flag, which Walmart made for him. Aside from being a commentary on the fact that the average person in this country has no idea what is really going on in the world, it is also an invitation to a lawsuit. According to federal law, if a person wants a bakery to bake a wedding cake for a LGBT wedding, that bakery must do so, even if they don’t want to do it, and find the cake distasteful (pun intended). It seems to me, the same law must apply to Walmart and a Confederate cake, no matter how distasteful.
When the topic is brought up on various social media sites, especially sites like Raw Story, The Daily Beast, etc, of you dare say anything positive about the South, or dare defend someone who is being discriminated against – for bad taste, you’re being damned as a racist, stupid, and treated like dirt. According to progressives, who take the time to comment, people who defend the Confederate flag have no rights. Because they feel the Confederate flag is a symbol of hate, which it may or may not be, those who fly it have forfeited their basic Constitutional rights.
What we have here is a far left version of what the far right did during the Mapplethorpe exhibits. They seem to forget that people who have differing opinions, who have committed no crime (other than bad taste) have the very same rights to the very same freedoms as do they. A person’s race, religion, or ideology do not allow for them to have more rights, more freedom, and more tolerance than those of another race, religion, or ideology. We are all the same. The problem is that those from the far right and far left have a tendency to forget the Bill of Rights applies to everyone, equally.
The far left is in serious danger of becoming what they fear most, rank bigots who don’t mind walking all over another person or group of people if they get in their way. There are some of us who think they’ve already passed go.
I guess what truly annoys me is the assumption that anyone who dares say something contrary to the popular discourse is unaware of actual verifiable facts. Facts are a nasty little thing.
Secondly, I’ve been writing about far right hate groups for nearly 10 years. I am well aware of the expansion in the number of far right hate groups. Frankly, I think some of it is about Obama, but I think there are a heck of a lot of other undercurrents. We to try differentiating between ‘hate’ groups and anti-government militia types. THEY are the real danger. There is a difference between idiots who wave the Confederate flag and dangerous groups like the CofCC, American Renaissance, and Stormfront. There’s a huge difference. Root was leaning Neo-Nazi. They are the ones who go around killing people.
In order to educate ourselves and others we might want to go look at the FBI’s list of most wanted domestic terrorists. They are almost all far left, with none being far right. Why is that? The FBI notice about domestic terror this weekend is primarily about ISIS, but oh, wait, they don’t do anything wrong, according to the delusional dimwits who are trying to two-step all over themselves to prove that idiots waving the Confederate flag are more than just that – idiots. We might want to check actual FBI incident and crime stats since the first of the year – dealing with terror. A good 75% of it is Islamic in nature.
The Cliven Bundys of this country are a disaster waiting to happen. Trust me, it has NOTHING to do with Obama, and everything to do with libertarian anti-government hate. One of these days some idiot is going to start shooting and then we’re going to have a mess. When it happens, it will be white on white. They hate ANYONE who disagrees with them, regardless of race.
Like I said actual numbers and stats are a very scary thing, especially when one is dealing with hyperbole, emotion, and relying on what others are saying, rather than doing your own digging. There are extreme right freaks who are lethal. They are EXTREME. If every single redneck who flew a Confederate Flag were guilty of anything other than bad taste, you might have some real numbers to compare. The thing is, they’ve been turned into monsters, and as an American that terrifies me. It should terrify you. We are watching the wholesale demonization of an entire segment of the population. If we lived elsewhere in the world, I would be trying to figure out a way to liquidate what I own and get the heck out of the country. Something like this is the first step to fascism. You demonize a group and turn them into the target of hate, then no one has any compassion for them.
I don’t like what I’m seeing. Frankly, I thought liberals were better than this. But, I am discovering that I’m wrong. I refuse to join the pile-on against any group of people no matter what their religion or race. It’s called bigotry and hatred. When you allow such things to creep into the public discourse it eventually destroys the fabric of our nation. I am shocked that the right is not doing this. I don’t think any social trend in ages has shocked me more than watching progressives morph into the very beings they claim to hate.
