The (Least) Favorite aspects of your culture.

[bloogleford]

Thanks for the clarifying statements Darkside.

Naturally I agree about the people threatening death to infidels etc. being alarming, and disgusting. However, there are also people who show up at protests against Obama saying things nearly as harsh, and on the left I remember attending anti-war rallies myself years ago where some people had words about Bush which were almost as harsh.

I think it's hard to separate rhetoric from reality, especially with a cultural gulf..how do we know which Muslims are simply using inflammatory language (the legality and ethics of it being another question), and which actually mean it? For every Muslim with a banner proclaiming they should kill Christians, there is some ignorant twit here in the US who is happy to say things like "bomb the middle east into the stone age" or "kill all these savages and let god sort them out". These are real quotes BTW. In both cases it's very harsh rhetoric essentially threatening violence..I think this is one of those rare instances where the double standards swings both ways at times. While there are times where people are over sensitive to the wider Islamic world's misunderstandings of things like free speech, there are also times where we let things be said and in some cases done to Muslims here in the US that we would never tolerate with another group.

I can't speak for how it is anywhere else, but I do feel that here in the US it is much more dangerous at this time to be a Muslim than it is to not be one, for all the hand wringing about "appeasement" of the Muslim world and supposed political correctness that comes from certain corners here, there is a distinct, virulent, and very angry strain of anti-Muslim fervor in the US, which has been there before these protests of course. I'm sure you've heard about the Mosques getting burned down and similar things.

On industrialization/media stuff.

I am not sure that people are any dumber today, I think if anything it's the opposite..at least a little at least more can read lol. More likely is just that the old methods of controlling people - The Church, religion, more rigid class structures have been replaced with other ones - mass media, modern forms of nationalism and political and economic thought etc.