As you have probably already read, Donald Trump has some pretty crazy ideas! Last night he released the below statement on his official site. Whoa, get a load of this guy!
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing “25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51% of those polled, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.” Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women. Mr. Trump stated, “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again.” – Donald J. Trump
Let me preface this by saying, as many of you who read this site know, I think religion is dumb. Sorry, it’s just dumb. Any other adjectives I could use to describe it would be a waste of time, because it would give it more credit than it deserves. I don’t need to read a book that has the potential to make me think God is cheering when I rape and behead an infidel or bomb a church that kills four black children. Awesome. Glad we got that out of the way. That being said, a cursory scroll through the Center for Security Policy site takes maybe like two seconds to realize that whoever wrote this truly believes jihad fire will rain down on America from people flying on prayer rugs. And since the site knows their target audience, they’re aware that Christians love them some self-fulfilling prophecy, so they want a candidate who will make that happen as soon as possible. Enter Donald Trump.
His plan so far includes: Killing ISIS’ family members, including women and children (not on accident). Banning Muslims, including American citizens, from entering the United States. Shutting down all mosques. Internment camps. Tracking Muslims in the United States, maybe throwing in an ID badge to be sure. From what I read on Twitter from Trump supporters with American flags as their profile pic, they love the Constitution, so we don’t need to get into the Constitutional issues with this.
Now, I realize people who wholeheartedly agree with this plan like to clutch their incredulous pearls when Obama doesn’t call things what for what they are, so I honestly hope you aren’t calling this simply “politically incorrect”. I know this might be hard to believe, but reality isn’t what you make it. The rest of us are really gonna need you to chill. the. fuck. out. Why? Well, here’s the thing.
There are 1.6B Muslims in the world. We all know that. We also know that it’s the “only major religious group projected to grow faster than the world’s population as a whole”. We also know that the vast majority of that 1.6B read about ISIS and say, “dude wtf“. We also know mostly all the victims of ISIS are Muslims. I’m telling you stuff you already know. I get that. For context, I wanted to find the highest number regarding the size of the ISIS force: That number is 200,000. If you’re good at math, you can tell right away 200,000 out 1.6B probably has a lot of zeros after the decimal point when you calculate the percentage. If that number justifies what Trump is suggesting, I’ll leave that up to you and your conscience to decide. Now if your own personal narrative forces you to refuse those statistics, what’s your last name? Oh wow, that’s a nice last name. I bet there’s a lot of people in the world with that last name. I assume you’re related to all them? No? Cool. You had me worried for a second.
Now depending on which statistic works for you, there are anywhere from 5M-12M Muslims living in the United States. One of them is Mike Tyson. Another one is Shaquille O’Neal. If you want to go put a tracking device on them, I’ll gladly pay good money to see that. Good money. Now if we’re following this logically and playing the percentages, a Muslim who would leave a predominantly Muslim country to come live in America, is probably about as “Muslim” as most Americans are “Christians”. Muslims are already here. They’ve been here. They’ve been here since most of us we’re born. Have they all just been waiting to accept that ISIS e-vite they’ve been ignoring? Have they been waiting on the terrorist bat signal? The Muslim who owns my favorite restaurant in Atlanta and let me use his pickup truck to move hasn’t shared that info with me yet. However, let’s not confuse the issue at hand, radical Muslims really love blowing shit up. Like, they love it. That’s their thing. Which leads me to my next point:
Tea Party Las Vegas Assemblywoman Michele Fiore said she would gladly shoot Syrian refugees in the head. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. told his students to arm themselves so they can “end those Muslims“. Florida Gun Supply is a “Muslim Free Zone“. Armed “protesters” stand outside a Texas mosque. A severed pig’s head was thrown at a mosque in Philadelphia. A Muslim taxi driver in Pittsburgh was shot by a passenger on Thanksgiving. A dude in Connecticut shot up a mosque. A postal worker in Brooklyn repeatedly spit in the face of a pregnant woman wearing a hijab (and pushing her child in a stroller) then threatened to “burn her mosque down”. A hate group in Texas published the names and home addresses of Muslims and “Muslim sympathizers”. I’ll stop here, but I guess I could find more if I decided to go back more than two months.
Look, now I know how upset you get whenever somebody says “holiday tree”, so I wonder how upset you’d get if this was happening to you. Forgive and turn the other cheek? Is that still a thing? Another possibility is that you might, and I’m just spitballing here, go on YouTube and listen to videos made by people with the same, yet incredibly more extreme, religious views as you who tell you God wants you to fight back. The next thing you know you’re making a pipe bomb. Or since the Second Amendment allows everyone to get a gun with or without a background check, maybe you’ll buy one. Maybe you’ll buy two. Shit, maybe you’ll buy twelve. This is America. The world is yours. Maybe you’ll skip the whole “high-capacity magazine” law thing and make your own magazine since you can make those pretty cheap. Maybe you’ll make a bunch and write Bible verses on them like we do on democracy bombs.
If it sounds like I’m feeding into the Christian persecution complex here, it’s because I am. They make up 70% of the country in which I live and because I always hear that if America just did things God’s way, we’d all be better off. Sure, let’s try that for once. Or you can keep telling me that guns are the only thing that keep the government from taking away our rights while you preach the virtues of respecting authority when an unarmed minority gets killed by police. Or you can keep telling me I should be afraid of Sharia Law while you make Moses a Founding Father and put The Ten Commandments in front of a government building. Or you can keep telling me that Jesus loves everyone equally while you adamantly oppose same-sex marriage. Or you can pray and tell me there isn’t really anything we can do after 20 elementary schoolchildren get executed while you shit your pants in fear and tell me I should worry about my safety when a refugee doesn’t share your exact worldview. If being a Christian is what you choose to loudly proclaim to the world, then by the very definition of that very word shouldn’t you be better than that? Aren’t you the religion that’s “evolved”?
You want to put prayer back in school? Go to school and close your eyes. I assume God can hear one at a time. You think abortion is murder? Fine. God gave everyone free will. If it’s murder, God will let them know eventually. You want to keep Christ in Christmas? Don’t tell me on Facebook, go feed the hungry. You don’t want refugees? Let’s see some of that faith in action. Let’s see some of that religious liberty you care so much about. I’m not sure what it will take, but at some point you have to understand the universe, much less the world, doesn’t revolve around you. There’s other people here. People who love you and are more than happy to let you believe what you want to believe. I know that might be a difficult concept to accept after an evening of Fox News, but we’d all appreciate if you’d take some time for some thoughtful and reflective prayer to think about that before you get us all fucking killed. I have faith in you.
