The HyperTexts
The Glob Blog: Everything including the Kitchen Sink and sometimes the Garbage Disposal!
The purpose of this blog is to keep readers informed about The HyperTexts' continuing efforts to
"talk sense" in an increasingly nonsensical world. Topics include racism,
sexism, homophobia, bigotry, intolerance, fascism, Trumpism, politics, religion,
arts, science, global warming and Trump's hairpiece, or whatever it is. —Michael R. Burch, Editor, The HyperTexts
THE COLD, INHUMAN LOGIC OF GENOCIDE
by Michael R. Burch
Many years ago I observed that, by following the dark path of the Nazis, one day
Israel would come to the same ghastly "final solution." The cold inhuman logic
of genocide is that millions of people who keep reproducing are too expensive
and too dangerous to keep alive.
From the perspective of the extremists, Hamas has given Israel an excuse to do
what they have long desired: get rid of the Palestinians once and for all. Those
who are not murdered should be absorbed by other nations. This is how the
extremists think.
It's the same way Hitler thought about Jews and Gypsies and other
"undesirables." But of course other nations were unwilling to absorb millions of
destitute refugees, and thus Hitler was never able to expel the "undesirables"
in sufficient numbers for his purposes.
According to Hitler's cold, inhuman logic, this left only one "solution" to his
vexing "demographic problem." I'm afraid Israel sees itself in the same position
today. The world must step in to prevent genocide, but will it have the courage,
will it have the resolve, and will it have the means?
When the Jewish resistance committed acts of violence against their Nazi
enslavers, torturers and murderers, they were considered heroes. When the
Palestinian resistance commits acts of violence against Israel, they are called
terrorists, savages, animals, etc. But the systematic terrorism of Israel
against millions of children and their mothers goes largely unmentioned.
I do not support Hamas. I do not condone acts of violence against civilians. But
I understand that Israel has committed far greater acts of violence against
civilians, has destroyed far more homes, and has left millions of civilians
destitute and rightless, the majority of them children.
Hamas is fighting fire with fire, with little chance of winning. The idea that a
people should submit to tyranny is antithetical to the American Declaration of
Independence. Do white Christians have the right to go to war for "life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness" but not darker-skinned Muslims?
If Israel did to American children what they do to Palestinian children, the
United States would be raining down missiles on Tel Aviv. This is the terrible
hypocrisy much of the world seems far too comfortable with: Palestinians should
submit their children to what we would never accept for ours.
If the people being strafed in Gaza were Jews, all around the world Jews would
call it another Holocaust, and they would be correct.
Hamas is fighting fire with fire, however we disagree with their methods, as I
do. Millions of children and their mothers are caught in the middle. Our hearts
must break for their plight, but what will we say, and what will we do?
by Michael R. Burch, an editor, publisher and translator of Holocaust and Nakba
poetry
THICK AS THIEVES: THE CONTINUING PLOT TO MAKE TRUMP THE FIRST
AMERICAN DICTATOR
by Michael R. Burch
October 21, 2023
Trump’s attempted coup was easy enough to predict, since he lusts after
dictatorial power like a stag in heat. Or, in his case, like a hyperactive
shrew.
What happens when a wannabe dictator acquires a cult? The cult serves its
master’s whims. Once Trump expressed his desire to remain president despite
losing the 2020 election, his disciples began competing to see who could commit
the most felonies in the process of obliging him.
And we’re not out of the woods just because the first attempted coup failed.
Trump is planning something similar, but much more far-reaching, if he wins the
2024 presidential election. At the New York Times, Jonathan Swan,
Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman have created a report with frank admissions
from various Trump associates that he’s planning a political purge of the entire
federal government, “in order to bend it to his will.”
Trump is intent on setting up a dictatorship. The report begins: “Donald J.
Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power
over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in
2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater
authority directly in his hands.”
And this is being done in the open: “Trump and his advisers are making no secret
of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website,
describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.”
Trump has long seen the president as having the “right” to do whatever he wants.
In 2019, he told a cheering crowd of cultists, “I have an Article 2, where I
have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
But now Trump has a plan to take total control of the federal government, if he
wins the 2024 election. Early in Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Steve
Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Now there’s a
plan to make it happen.
How do we know Trump longs to be an all-powerful dictator like his heroes
Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Rodrigo Duterte, Saddam Hussein, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Mohammed Bin Salman and Xi Jinping?
Because he told us so, repeatedly...
Trump “fell in love” with the murderous North Korean despot Jong-un:
“And then we fell in love, okay? No really. He wrote me beautiful letters,
and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Trump said this about Jong-un during an interview with Steve Doocy of Fox News:
“He's the head of a country and he's the strong head. Don't let anyone think
anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my
people to do the same.”
Trump has expressed admiration for Jong-un’s “great character” and has even
expressed “love” for him in “love letters.” But as Human Rights Watch notes: “A
2014 UN Commission of Inquiry found that abuses in North Korea were without
parallel in the contemporary world. They include extermination, murder,
enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual
violence. North Korea operates secretive prison camps where perceived opponents
of the government are sent to face torture and abuse, starvation rations, and
forced labor. Fear of collective punishment is used to silence dissent. There is
no independent media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom.”
Trump bragged on tape to Bob Woodward about “saving” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
Bin Salman from Congressional retaliation after the CIA concluded that he was
behind the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump has talked about killing drug dealers like his hero Duterte, who has
murdered thousands without bothering with trials:
According to Axios, Trump wants the death penalty for American drug dealers,
with one senior White House official telling the outlet: “He often jokes about
killing drug dealers... He'll say, ‘You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t
have a drug problem. They just kill them.’”
Trump has praised Duterte for his extrajudicial murders of drug dealers more
than once. And those murders have been estimated at 7,000 or more.
Trump also praised Saddam Hussein's efficient killing of terrorists, also
without trials.
Trump favors a China-like dictatorship for the US. This is what he said
regarding Chinese president Xi Jinping during a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago,
according to CNN:
“He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look,
he was able to do that [abolish term limits]. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll
have to give that a shot some day.”
Trump did, indeed, “give that a shot” with his attempted coup. And he’s gearing
up for another shot.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump said of Jinping:
“He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well.”
Trump also expressed deep admiration and liking for Egyptian dictator
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi:
“I will tell you, President al-Sisi has been somebody that's been very close
to me from the first time I met him. I met during the campaign, and at that
point there were two of us, and we both met. And hopefully you like me a lot
more. But it was very long. It was supposed to be just a quick brief meeting,
and we were with each other for a long period of time. We agreed on so many
things. I just want to let everybody know, in case there was any doubt, that we
are very much behind President al-Sisi. He's done a fantastic job in a very
difficult situation.”
Tapes from Bob Woodward’s book Rage reveal Trump saying he gets along
better with foreign autocrats the “meaner and tougher” they are. “The easy
ones,” Trump said, referring to America’s allies, “I maybe don't like as much or
don't get along with as much.”
Trump said he'd rather be a dictator than a “dumb person” while bragging about
“acing” a cognitive test for dementia. May I state the obvious: that Trump’s
doesn’t set the intelligence bar too him for himself, and probably not for the
murderous dictators he hero-worships?
I have read several articles in which journalists have mentioned Trump’s
“dictator envy.” It’s common knowledge, plain as the orange nose on his orange
face. Historians agree. Philip Rucker, writing for the Washington Post,
observed that historians say “no U.S. president has been as free in his
admiration of dictators and absolute power as the 45th.”
“Trump has dictator envy,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at
Rice University. “You start being more attracted to people like Kim and Putin
because they look like they could be presidents for life. And if they have
enemies, they don’t have to resort to Nixon keeping an enemies list. You just
destroy your enemies’ lives with a phone call. That’s attractive to Trump.”
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has also mentioned Trump’s disturbing
dictator “envy,” calling it “depraved.” In an interview on Closing Bell,
Summers said, “What’s tragic is that we’ve got a president who reaches out,
admires, envies, celebrates and seeks to foster closer relationships with
dictators while at the same time dissing, disregarding ... and failing to build
relationships with America’s traditional allies.”
“Trump has been remarkably consistent as long as he’s been on the public stage
in exhibiting authoritarian instincts,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard
University professor who recently co-authored the book How Democracies Die.
Hell, Trump even expressed admiration for Putin when he invaded Ukraine and
began mass-murdering Ukrainian children and their mothers. Trump lavished praise
on Putin, calling him a “genius” and “savvy.” Trump even called Putin’s excuse
for invading Ukraine “wonderful.” Of course Putin’s excuse (“Nazis”) was
completely bogus.
Trump also called Hezbollah “smart” for attacking Israel from the north, after
Hamas attacked from the south.
Trump has displayed other dictatorial tendencies:
(1) Trump is like his strongman heroes when it comes to wanting to control the
press. In June 2018, Trump declared the media to be “our country’s biggest
enemy” and he has repeatedly voiced his desire to punish journalists who
criticize him. During a trip to Singapore, Trump noted how positive a female
news anchor was toward Kim Jong-un on North Korea’s state-run television, and he
whined that Fox News was not as lavish in its praise of him. Trump is galled not
only by criticism, but by praise of him not being lavish enough.
(2) Trump condoned violence against protesters during his campaign rallies, and
sometimes called for it. As president Trump advocated jailing his political
opponents, including Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey.
(3) Trump used his presidential clemency powers to help loyalists such as Roger
Stone, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.
(4) Eliot A. Cohen, a senior State Department official under George W. Bush,
said Trump “has classic traits of the authoritarian leader. The one that’s
always struck me most is this visceral instinct of people’s weaknesses and a
corresponding desire to be seen as strong and respected and admired.”
(5) Trump has repeatedly praised murderous strongmen. For instance, he called
Jong-un a “very talented man,” a “smart guy” and a “very good negotiator.” He
even complimented Jong-un’s “great personality” and went so far as to say they
exchanged “love letters.” This is a man who starves his own citizens, sends
political opponents to labor camps and has assassinated family members. During
an interview with Fox anchor Bret Baier, Trump called Xi Jinping “an incredible
guy,” and celebrated his consolidation of power that resulted in him becoming
China’s dictator-for-life. And I don’t believe Trump has ever said an unkind
word about Putin, a warmonger, mass-murderer, and notorious poisoner of his
political opponents.
(6) Trump has an almost complete disregard for American values. “There hasn’t
been a president who’s really disavowed the values side so much,” said Thomas
Wright, a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at
the Brookings Institution in Washington.
(7) Trump is a fascist in the way he worships strength and disdains justice. He
subscribes to the theory that “might is right” according to Amy Zegart, the
director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford
University, who says Trump’s embrace of authoritarians “is a jagged and
dangerous departure” from prior American foreign policy. For example, this is
Trump praising China for its brutal attacks on peaceful protesters: “When the
students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it.
Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength.”
(8) Trump goes out of his way to kowtow to the strongmen he admires. Topping
this list is Putin. Alexander Vindman, the former Director of European Affairs
for the National Security Council, called Trump a “useful idiot” and an
“unwitting agent” of Putin. “In the Army we call this ‘free chicken,’ something
you don’t have to work for—it just comes to you,” Vindman told Atlantic
editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. “This is what the Russians have in Trump: free
chicken.” A good (or bad) example of Trump being an “unwitting agent” of Putin
occurred at the 2018 Helsinki summit, where Trump infamously sided with Putin
over US intelligence regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. In
defense of his preference for Putin, Trump tweeted that American intelligence
officers were “slime” and “lowlifes” and “misfits.” Never, not once that I can
remember, has Trump used such expletives in reference to his friends among the
despots.
According to a Forbes article by Andrew Solender, “Trump may have his
own dictatorial ambitions, having repeatedly mused at recent rallies about
negotiating for a change to the Constitution so that he can run for a third
term, which he said he feels ‘entitled’ to.”
And so Trump’s attempted coup was no surprise. He admires totalitarian strongmen
to the point of hero worship. He prizes strength over justice. He wants to
control what other people say about him, the antithesis of democracy. He wants
government officials to be loyal to his person, rather than to their country,
countrymen and Constitution. He loves displays of power, regardless of who gets
hurt or how unjustly. He wanted to remain in power like his heroes.
Trump made his desires known and his cultists did what cultists do: they served
their master.
The American founding fathers risked life and limb to gain independence from
King George the Third. A cult of dumbed-down right-wingers were willing to
enthrone King Gorge the Turd, and did their damnedest to make it happen. Those
who are not in jail or facing jail terms continue the attempts.
Anyone could have predicted what Trump would eventually attempt back in 2016
when he announced his candidacy for president. I noted at the time that Trump
sounded like a Mafia don. What happens, I asked, if a Mafia don ends up in the
White House? A Mafia don would get rid of everyone not unconditionally loyal to
the don himself, by replacing naysayers with yes men and yes women. And that’s
exactly what Trump did, by getting rid of James Comey, Rex Tillerson, General
John F. Kelly, and everyone else who stood up to him. By the time the coup was
launched, there was no one left in the White House to stand up to Trump.
What Trump said and did was no surprise to anyone who grokked him for what he
is: an Al Capone with less personal courage and less loyalty to his lieutenants.
However, the extent of the capitulation was a surprise. My former party, the
GOP, has shown remarkable disdain for the Constitution, for the right of voters
to elect their leaders, for American democracy, and for their country and
countrymen. All that can be thrown away, like so much garbage, to serve the
whims of a cowardly, lying, two-bit con man.
As Tweety Trump would say, “So sad!”
MUST WE LIVE WITH THE UNTHINKABLE, YET AGAIN?
by Michael R. Burch
October 16, 2023
As you read this, please keep in mind that I am an editor and publisher of
Holocaust and Nakba poetry, a longtime peace activist with a concentration of
the plight of the Palestinians, and the author of the Burch-Elberry Peace
Initiative, which attempts to establish a just, lasting peace in
Israel/Palestine. If I had a magic wand to wave, I would wave it and create
peace, but I don't. Thus, I am forced to deal with incredibly painful reality.
A very real danger is that, with the pressing need to defeat Trump in the 2024
election in order to preserve American democracy, Democrats will make
"strange bedfellows" with Israel. Trump is the greatest danger the US has faced
since WWII, and every lost vote is a step toward a Trump dictatorship, so this
is a very real political calculation, however grotesque and unthinkable.
Americans are faced with two horrors. We have to understand the political
reality, as much as it turns our stomachs. If Joe Biden can navigate his way
through these perilous waters and still win the 2024 election, while avoiding a
major war in Gaza, he should get the Nobel Peace Prize. If he capitulates, as
Barack Obama eventually did when he received no support in Congress, we will be
forced to recognize what Abraham Lincoln recognized when confronting the
abomination of slavery: American presidents are not immune to public opinion.
A major problem for the US is that it seems unlikely Democrats can stand up to
Israel's rampant racism and systematic ethnic cleansing, and yet win enough
elections to stop Trump and the GOP from destroying American democracy. If
anyone has a real-world solution, I would love to hear it. I admit that I am at
a loss.
I made the point before the 2016 election that liberals refusing to vote for
Hillary Clinton due to her track record in the Middle East would open the door
for a Trump presidency. I was the Lone Ranger at the time, and I lost many close
friends among the peace activists I knew, when I pointed out the consequences of
their not being willing to accept the lesser of two evils, if they considered
Clinton evil. All the predictions I made unfortunately came true. If one has
cancer, radiation treatment is no cakewalk but may be the only way to remain
alive. Today we are facing something similar with Trump and the GOP.
I wish I had a better solution, but winning the 2024 presidential election is of
utmost importance and pretending otherwise is to risk any ability to do anything
positive in the future, once Trump becomes the first American dictator and the
rest of us become the equivalent of North Korean serfs.
I oppose the horror of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, but it remains
imperative to vote for the only person capable of defeating Trump in the 2024
election. To do otherwise would be to flush American democracy down the toilet and
accept serfdom for ourselves and future generations. That is the very
unfortunate political reality in which we find ourselves. I only wish my
ultra-liberal friends had been realists during the 2016 election. They turned
their votes into vapor by either not voting or voting for unelectable fringe
candidates, and we ended up with a career conman as president and would-be
dictator.
Principles are wonderful things and I'm glad to have them, but Albert Einstein,
a lifelong pacifist, said that he would have joined the military to oppose
Hitler, if he had been young enough. An acted-upon principle that turns your
family and friends into rightless serfs may be a "bridge too far."
The bottom line? I am sick about what Israel is doing to Gaza. I will always
oppose Israel's abuse of Palestinians. But I will vote for Joe Biden and
electable Democrats in future elections because there is no other real-world
option. Flushing democracy down the drain for nothing in return, on "principle,"
would be an incredibly foolish thing to do, and that was tried in 2016 with
unfathomably terrible results.
I hope everyone will vote for electable Democrats in 2024, since the GOP has
become the personal cult of Trump. As I have been known to say, "When one
candidate is Hitler, it's a no-brainer to vote for the only person who can
defeat him." And that is the position we find ourselves in, with the 2024
presidential election rapidly approaching.
***
Letter to The Tennessean,
March 2, 2018, by Mike Burch
Graham Crackers
In Rhonda Lowry’s opinion piece (“Billy Graham blessed Operation Andrew”) she
claims Graham spoke of “God’s love.” But it goes without saying that a God who
condemns all living creatures to suffer and die is not loving. The animals
didn’t “sin” or obtain “the knowledge of good and evil,” so why murder them all?
Murdering all the unborn babies, toddlers and animals in Noah’s flood was no act
of love, and the destruction didn’t accomplish anything, so it wasn’t wise
either. Forcing human beings to guess which of the earth’s myriad religions is
the “correct” one is not loving. Sending people to hell for guessing wrong is
the height of evil. Is the praise for Billy Graham merited, really?
Letter to The Montreal Gazette, December 9, 2017, by Tom Merrill
The first of the promised series of stories from Charlie Fidelman about drug addiction in Montreal, which appeared in the Saturday Gazette, is excellent. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of
the series.
Fidelman understands that drug addiction should be treated as a medical and not a criminal issue. He espouses the neuroscientific view, based on brain studies, that addiction results from a born
predisposition—from brains that are differently wired—and that addicts are at the mercy of their individual makeups just like everybody else.
It is clear to me that if the state took control of the entire recreational drug industry the possibility of drugs such as fentanyl, carfentanil and
W-18 ever showing up in the mix would be
eliminated. With one simple piece of legislation the crisis would be over. There would be quality control of "substances," and thus vastly fewer OD deaths. And there would be help
and understanding for anyone looking for relief from an enslaving addiction.
Portugal decriminalized drugs more than 15 years ago and the post-decriminalization statistics—as provided by The Transform Drug Policy Foundation—are highly encouraging all across
the board. Not only have there been vastly fewer drug deaths; disease transmission has been vastly reduced, and there has even been a small reduction in the size of the addict population. Not
to mention a huge reduction in the case overload borne by courts and the penal system.
It is time for other countries to learn from Portugal's successful experiment. The War on Drugs is just one more idiotic, unwinnable and in fact counterproductive war.
There's a way to end the "opioid crisis" in case the powers that be are really interested in saving lives—one that's been shown to work.
Tom Merrill
Montreal
Letter to The Tennessean, November 26, 2017, by Mike Burch
Republican “fact” truly is stranger than fiction. As a result, we appear to be
living in an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” White House Press Secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders recently tweeted: “Guess who’s the new head football coach at
the University of Tennesse [sic]. Yup. The guy who covered for Jerry Sandusky. #GregSchiano.”
Does Trump’s spin-mistress make any sense? Her boss is a self-confessed sexual
predator who bragged to Howard Stern about barging into teenage girls’ dressing
rooms to ogle them in the nude, and to Billy Bush about non-consensually groping
women’s genitals. She and her boss are supporting Roy Moore, who has been
accused by nine women of propositioning and taking advantage of much younger
women, including underage girls. How does one allegation that Schiano may have
“known something” compare with what Sanders knows about her boss and Moore?
Letter to The Tennessean, November 3, 2017, by Mike Burch
Praise the Lord and pass the ammo!
Whew, I’m breathing a tremendous sigh of relief! I had been harboring the
fear that our supermajority of conservative Christians would surely be damned to
hell for the cardinal sin of hypocrisy. Imagine allowing guns to be carried into
public parks and pizza parlors, endangering the lives of innocent children, but
not into legislative halls where fat-cat politicians sit (or doze) protected! But now I see that my fears were groundless, because
firearms will be allowed in government buildings after all. Glory! Hallelujah!
It turns out the Tennessee Taliban are not shockingly hypocritical, just stone-cold crazy.
I’m sure the Good Lord will be immensely pleased and will immediately shower us with innumerable
blessings, because we all know how Jesus Christ loves Glocks and Rambo-like
disciples! #ChristianRambos
Letter to The Tennessean, October 31, 2017, by Mike Burch
The new, highly-touted Republican budget is bogus! Everyone knows that global
warming is a hoax, created by China! We all know how "smart" President Trump is―because
he keeps telling us―and he sagely warned us not to buy Chinese propaganda. But now there's
a provision in the Republican budget to allow oil drilling in Arctic regions that
must still be covered by miles of ice! And why has the U.S. Navy created a Task
Force Climate Change (TFCC) to prepare for something that clearly isn't
happening? Is it "smart" to spend billions of dollars on a hoax? I hate
to admit it, but I'm beginning to suspect that Trump isn't as "smart" as he
claims! #bogus #budget #GetSmart
Letter to The Tennessean, November 3, 2017, by Mike Burch
As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise! Surprise!” Guess what happens when we elect
Republicans? Politicians who claim to be Bible-believing Christians immediately
start doing exactly the opposite of what Jesus Christ did when he lived on
earth. Jesus provided free healthcare to all comers, but Republicans like Donald
Trump and Paul Ryan are social Darwinists
who have no compunctions about denying healthcare to millions of their less
fortunate brothers and sisters. They insist on denying assistance to the poor,
but Jesus told a rich young Republican of his day that before he was eligible to
become a Christian, he had to help the needy. Jesus called the religion-spouting
hypocrites of his day “a brood of vipers” and “whitewashed sepulchers full of
dead men’s bones.” One wonders what colorful things Jesus will say about Donald
Trump and his supporters, when on Judgment Day he separates the sheep from the
goats!
Letter to The Tennessean, December 17, 2017, by Mike Burch
Omarosa Manigault Newman claims there’s a “lack of diversity” in the upper
echelons of the Trump administration. I think we can easily confirm her
accusation, since the Trump administration just instructed the CDC not to use
the shocking word “diversity” in its forthcoming budget request (along with
other alarming terms like “transgender,” “science-based” and “evidence-based”).
But I have to question Newman when she says Trump is “racial” but not “racist.”
Isn’t that like saying the Unabomber was “fanatical” but not a “fanatic”? Who
keeps making racially charged statements, but a racist?
Letter to The Tennessean, December 17, 2017, by Mike Burch
It’s hard to take Diane Black seriously. She says elected officials are “public
servants” who “must be held to the highest of standards.” But what about the
president she supports? Black just got a 4K contribution from Mike Pence for her
“strong stand with our administration.” But that administration is headed by a
man who has twice bragged about his sexual sins in public: first to Howard
Stern, then to Billy Bush. And multiple women have come forward to confirm that
Trump did indeed do exactly what he bragged about doing. Ironically, Black was
harassed on an elevator and that was one of Trump’s favorite places to sexually
harass women. Is she really fighting for “transparency” and to “hold
perpetrators accountable,” or does she just “go with the flow” when it benefits
her personally?
Letter to The Tennessean, November 9, 2017, by Mike Burch
Colin McArthur called Saturday’s lead story about the proposed tax bill a
“blatant hatchet job.” That’s an interesting choice of words because—if I follow
McArthur’s logic—he’s saying that it’s okay for a hatchet man to hack off one of
my fingers, as long as he hacks off two of yours! I’m sure we’d much rather keep
ALL our fingers, thanks very much. One person being robbed of a state income tax
deduction doesn't make it somehow okay to rob someone else of a smaller state
sales tax deduction. And it seems obvious that the real beneficiaries will be
the super-rich, because they only spend a tiny fraction of their enormous wealth
on taxable purchases. Thus, it would be like the hatchet man handing over our
missing fingers to the Donald Trumps of the world, so that they could unfairly
have more fingers than the rest of us! #TaxHacks
Letter to The Tennessean, October 6, 2017, by Mike Burch
Trump is aptly named. Should a rich white man’s religious beliefs “trump” a
working woman’s? Allowing a woman’s boss to decide whether she can obtain free
contraceptives is not “religious liberty,” but religious tyranny! What if the
roles were reversed and a Muslim boss wanted to force his religious beliefs on
female employees? Then the right-wing advocates of “religious liberty” would
scream bloody murder. The same people who want to allow Bibles and prayers to
Jehovah in public schools would have nervous breakdowns if Korans and prayers to
Allah were being allowed. Such blatant hypocrisy is hard to swallow, especially
when the founder of Christianity saved all his sternest criticism for the
religious hypocrites of his day. #TrumpWarOnWomen
Letter to The Tennessean, October 1, 2017, by Mike Burch
Republicans are very good at bitching about Obamacare, but not nearly so good at
actually governing, since with seven years to prepare they couldn’t come up with anything
better. Now, many Tennesseans will pay very extravagant prices, as premiums
rise 21 to 42 percent, with the bulk of the increase being attributed to
uncertainties caused by said bitches, er Republicans. Meanwhile, Mr. Art of the Deal spends
most of his time playing golf, preening for cameras, and threatening to “totally
destroy” a nation of 25 million souls. Why? Because Kim Jong Un makes threats
identical to his own! Anyone who thinks President Obama was “worse” must be in
deep denial. Or perhaps wading
through horseshit imagining it to have been extracted from rose petals. Which
works out to the same thing. #deep #denial
Letter to The Tennessean, Nov. 3, 2017, by Mike Burch
Are American conservatives “Christians” as they claim to be, or are they really
social Darwinists in lamb’s clothing? The truth can clearly be seen in health
care legislation. A picture of Trump giddily kissing the GOP tax postcard has
just gone viral. Such ecstasy! But the GOP tax bill is yet another example of
Republican social Darwinism at work, because it kills the tax deduction for
medical expenses. Over and over, Trump and the GOP have tried to deprive poorer
and middle-income Americans of healthcare assistance, while shifting the
“savings” to big businesses and the richest, most advantaged Americans. How is
that “Christian”? Wasn’t Jesus a provider of free healthcare to all comers?
Didn’t he sternly rebuke the Republicans of his day—the Pharisees?
#GOP #slop
Letter to The Montreal Gazette, June 17, 2017, by Tom Merrill
On Saturday June 17, two days ago, an old friend of mine and I had a wonderful
time playing pingpong in Gamelin Park before succumbing to the rather intense
heat and settling into a couple park chairs with lemonades to cool off and relax
a bit before leaving.
When sufficiently refreshed we got up and exited the park on
the south side. A quartet of male cops was standing on the pavement by one
of the park's garden beds. My friend evidently found a member of the
quartet amusing enough in his posture and stance to make a flippant remark about
it as we were walking past them. This triggered a response, there was
a brief verbal exchange between them―the cop's attitude menacing, my friend's
devil-may-care―at the conclusion of which my friend and I continued walking in
the direction of our intended destination.
A minute or two later I noticed we were being shadowed by the
whole quartet, who indeed were only a few steps behind us. They stopped us
near an entrance to Place Dupuis on St. Catherine St. I was ordered to
"get out of here" and my friend was then escorted by the quartet, flanked by a
pair on each side, to the corner of St. Hubert and St. Catherine, where they
all turned right heading north.
Afraid for my friend, I followed them, keeping my distance to
about 30 to 40 feet. A short ways beyond the St. Hubert Street entrance to
the Governors Hotel the steadily proceeding formation turned into a shocking
event: what in fact can only be described as a violent assault. My friend, who
had simply been shuffling along between his captors, was suddenly, very
suddenly, slammed, and slammed hard, by what looked like all four of them, into
a concrete wall. He then was very roughly manhandled for a moment or
two before his wrists were violently―quite violently―twisted behind his back and
he was marched like a convict with arms pinned behind him to a nearby cop car
and subsequently made to bend over its hood for about twenty minutes.
It ended with him being issued a ticket for $321 for
something he had not done, to wit, using park furniture in a way for which it
was not intended. The only park furniture he had used was a chair to sit in
while sipping a lemonade. I used the one next to his. The chairs are
for public use.
It also ended with a shoulder and wrist that are still sore today (2 days
later). My friend is black. He also is tiny (5' 3" 120 lbs.) The four
cops were bruisers. Based on the incident I witnessed―a combination of racial profiling, assault
on a citizen, and concocting a false charge―it is quite clear that Mr. Pichet's
commitment, as avowed in a recent letter to The Montreal Gazette, to restoring
public confidence in The Montreal Police, is very much in order.
Tom Merrill
Montreal
Open Letter, November 8, 2017
Please be aware that
right-wing "culture warriors" are suppressing and attacking artists in Poland!
Letter to The Tennessean, November 6, 2017, by Mike Burch
Mike McDaniel condescendingly and demeaningly called “girls” who chose to kneel
during the national anthem “children” (his quotation marks). In so doing,
McDaniel made himself seem very immature, since they were actually
highly-educated young women―Vanderbilt basketball players―who only knelt after
careful consideration of the pros and cons. And here’s a puzzler for McDaniel:
Was it wrong for German Jews not to salute the German flag, even though millions
of German soldiers valiantly served the glorious fatherland it represented?
Should American slaves have been forced to salute the Confederate flag? Or did
they have every right to protest grievous errors perpetrated under those flags?
#flag #drag
Letter to The Tennessean, November 9, 2017, by Mike Burch
Colin McArthur called Saturday’s lead story about the proposed tax bill a
“blatant hatchet job.” That’s an interesting choice of words because—if I follow
McArthur’s logic—he’s saying that it’s okay for a hatchet man to hack off one of
my fingers, as long as he hacks off two of yours! I’m sure we’d much rather keep
ALL our fingers, thanks very much. One person being robbed of a state income tax
deduction doesn't make it somehow okay to rob someone else of a smaller state
sales tax deduction. And it seems obvious that the real beneficiaries will be
the super-rich, because they only spend a tiny fraction of their enormous wealth
on taxable purchases. Thus, it would be like the hatchet man handing over our
missing fingers to the Donald Trumps of the world, so that they could unfairly
have more fingers than the rest of us!
Letter to The Tennessean, November 6, 2017, by Mike Burch
Many Trump supporters seem to have “fish memories.” How terrible that anyone
should say anything negative about Trump! Have they so quickly forgotten what
Trump said about President Obama? Trump was, of course, the earth’s most
prominent “birther” and he later admitted that his claims were bogus. And have
Trump supporters so soon forgotten how the conservative media castigated Obama
at every turn? As for there being “no collusion” with Russia—well, Trump himself
publicly pleaded with Russia to provide the emails that swung the election his
way, even though there was nothing of consequence in Hillary’s emails. But what
would Trump do if someone were to provide his emails and tax returns to the
public? Of course the orange-hued hypocrite would have a hissy fit! #FissureKing
Letter to TIME, November 17, 2012, by Mike Burch
Thank God for exorcists!
Praise the Good Lord! Now that the Roman Catholic church has wisely decided to
train more exorcists, the Vatican can finally do something about that malicious
little imp who keeps whispering deadly, deceitful lies to Pope Benedict XVI:
"You're the Vicar of Christ, which makes you infallible! Now quick, go tell
highly impressionable children that using condoms is a sin, so that they when
they grow up they can contract horrible diseases, suffer terribly, and die! Tell
poor people that using contraceptives is a sin, so they'll have more babies
until the world implodes beneath their weight! Tell everyone who'll listen that
euthanasia is a sin, so that suffering people can die agonizing deaths, even when
all hope is gone!"
Yes, once the Pope has been successfully exorcized of such evil madness,
we can all breathe a bit easier.
Letter to TIME, November 17, 2012, by Mike Burch
Israel claims the right of "defense" against
terrorism, while practicing terrorism itself on a much larger, daily, systematic
basis. Israel lacks is a national sense of justice. The U.S. went
through a similar period of national brat-hood, when it denied justice to Native
Americans and African Americans. The result was massacre after massacre and the
Civil War, with more than a million casualties and much of the nation in
flames. Large-scale racial injustices will always result in large-scale violence
on both sides. Here on planet earth, peace requires justice and justice requires
equality. So Israel has still not learned the first and most important thing
about democracy, which is the need for equality and justice.
Letter to TIME, March 25, 2012, by Mike Burch
The GOP’s alpha male chauvinists read their
Bibles very selectively. The Bible clearly teaches that Christians should always
obey their rulers because they’re appointed by God (the “divine right of kings”)
and must always pay their taxes (“render unto Caesar”). But of course Republicans
praise the American founding fathers for refusing to pay their taxes, and for
going to war with King George. But when it comes to their own imperialistic rule
over women, everything changes, and verses that aren’t even in the Bible
(“contraception is a sin”) are invoked. According to Richard the
Zion-hearted, women should either give up sex entirely, or have as many babies
as nature dictates (pun intended). How can we prevent these new King Georges
from sending women back to the Dark Ages? Vote for Democrats until they recover
their lost marbles.
Letter to TIME, March 8, 2012, by Mike Burch
Family values, oh really? While conservative Christians rally behind
Rick Santorum because of his “values,” even a cursory examination of those
“values” raises huge questions. It seems clear from his 2008 speech at Ave Maria
College and other public statements that he considers Americans who use
contraceptives to be deluded by and following the Devil. Thus, he wants to make contraception illegal
as a way of stopping Satan in his tracks. He also speaks bellicosely of going to
war with Iran, and of “spiritual warfare.” So it seems he would force women to
have as many babies as nature dictates (please pardon the pun), then send their
babies off to war in the Middle East when they reach fighting age. Granted, this
is what the Roman Catholic church did during the Crusades, but are these the
“family values” of most American women—to breed Holy Warriors for the glory of
church and state?
Letter to TIME, March 20, 2010, by Mike Burch
Bobby Ghosh’s article about the Catholic Church ("Sins of the Fathers")
raises a new theological conundrum: if someone confesses to an unrepentant
pedophile, does it count?
Letter to The Tennessean, February 18, 2010, by Mike Burch
If Americans must elect celebrities, shouldn’t they
at least pick well-informed, well-spoken ones? According to
The Tennessean, Sarah Palin is "unconventional" and "unpredictable" with
"striking good looks." Well, so is Paris Hilton.
Letter to The Tennessean, May 3, 2011, by Mike Burch
Israel's government has publicly admitted that it is practicing apartheid, even
though Jimmy Carter was roundly denounced for using the term in the title of his
book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The Afrikaans word "apartheid" means
"separation." So does the Hebrew word "hafrada," which is being used by Israeli
officials to discuss government policies. Why did Israel criticize South Africa for practicing "separation"
when its own government officially practices "separation"? Israel
calls the wall it built to annex land in the West Bank the Hafrada Wall, which
means the same thing as "Apartheid Wall." Defensive walls are built along legal
borders, but Israel's highly offensive wall snakes through Occupied Palestine,
stealing land and water resources from Palestinians, while separating them from
their farms, olive groves, schools, hospitals, places of worship, families and
friends. Pregnant mothers, unborn babies and small children are dying in the
shadows of those dividing, conquering, killing walls. According to international
law, Israel should build its wall along its borders (established by the UN in
1967), and remove its "settlers" (who are actually robber barons) from the land
they stole from an increasingly destitute people: millions of them completely
innocent women and children.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 21, 2010, by Mike Burch
Sarah Palin is a poet. No, make that a Poet with a capital "P." She is a
Poet of Rare Magnitude. At times she rivals Yoda, and we all know how wise he
is. At other times, being our most spiritual of poets, she easily out-gurus Yogi
Bear and Yogi Berra, "without even thinking." But usually she is just absolutely
unique: a maverick rogue, in rouge.
Palin is not content to limit herself to ordinary language. No siree!
Like all Great Poets she invents new, breathtaking words. Has there ever been a
more spectacular coinage than "refudiate"? When asked to explain what would have
been a verbal gaffe for anyone else, Palin displayed the luminosity of her
intellect, while artfully belittling and shaming her naysayers, by saying:
"Refudiate, misunderestimate, wee-wee'd up. English is a living language.
Shakespeare liked to coin words, too. Got to celebrate it!" In the process she
either created another new nonsense word, "misunderestimate," or borrowed it
from another well-known charismatic moron, whose identity must be concealed, to
protect the ignorant.
Like George W. Bush, Palin seems intent on taking Yoda-speak to new
heights. She is also the inventor of a new type of Yoda-ism I have dubbed the
"Palin-drone." A palindrome (with a lower case "p" and an "m") makes sense
whether one reads the letters backwards or forwards. One of the cleverest
palindromes of all time was a campaign slogan for Teddy Roosevelt: "A man, a
plan, a canal: Panama." But a Palin-drone (with an upper case "P" and an "n")
makes no sense, regardless of anything the reader does. For example: "Our
opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect."
This is the same as saying we are our own worst enemy, which in the case
of a Palin-led dumb-ocracy would undoubtedly be the case.
Letter to The Tennessean, February 9, 2010, by Mike Burch
As with her polemics
on chastity, Sarah Palin’s words have come back to haunt her like
avenging angels (or perhaps more like angry, anti-hypocrisy
poltergeists). Should a cutesy-pie bimbo cheerleader with crib notes scrawled on her palms
criticize the class nerd for more intelligently using a teleprompter?
Letter to The Tennessean, January 18, 2010, by Mike Burch
The solution to Haiti’s main problem (devil worship) is obvious. We should
send Pat Robertson there, like an avenging angel. Robertson can pray for even
more terrible earthquakes to pummel the remaining children of Haiti until the
adults finally repent and "believe." How many children will have to suffer and
die, and how many adults will have to burn in hell for all eternity, until
sufficient numbers of Haitians have converted to Christianity? God only knows.
Once Haitians have exchanged their inferior gods for the
superior Christian god (the one who maims, kills and tortures people for not
"believing" in him, even though he deigns to introduce himself personally), all
Haiti’s other problems will be miraculously solved, just as ours have been!
Er, scratch that last thought. I just checked and it seems that, despite the
fact that over 90% of Americans believe furiously in the correct God, none
of our problems have been solved. Perhaps having the "only true religion" isn’t
quite the panacea I had assumed.
Letter to The Washington Times, July 31, 2010, by Mike Burch
I was disturbed by the hysterical opprobrium I discovered on the front
page of Friday’s Commentary section. According to Tom Tancredo, President Obama
is a “dedicated Marxist” and the first American president ever to assume more
powers than those granted him by the Constitution. (Oh, really?) According to
Jeffery Kuhner, Barack Obama is a gangster, traitor, Balkanizer, socialistic
dictator, babykiller, the anti-Christ and—one must assume—Beelzebub in human
clothing. (I’m reminded of Goebbels spewing vile filth. Methinks the laddie
protests too much.)
Since I live in Tennessee and seldom read The Washington Times, I
hadn’t realized it had become such a (what’s the polite word?) debacle. Can just
any Chicken Little run around screaming, “The sky is falling! The sky is
falling!” and expect to see his name heading the marquee? Does a
once-respected
newspaper now specialize in printing hissy fits and nanny-nanny-boo-boo namecalling?
(Ooopsy-daisy! My bad! I made the mistake of assuming that The Washington Times
had, at one time, been a respectable newspaper. But I did a quick bit of research and
discovered that the Times was founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon
for the express purpose of propagating far-right "Christian" propaganda. Mr. Moon now claims that his deceased son exists on a higher spiritual
plane than Jesus Christ. Sheesh!)
While I am not a practicing Christian, I feel quite certain the Good Lord
must have brought this abysmal situation to my attention for a reason. I rather
doubt The Washington Times will grant me equal time (since I’m not an hysterical
lunatic), so I will be concise:
President Barack Obama really is “the smartest man in the room.” He can
outdo Republican morons (er, “politicians”) like Sarah Palin, even in the
straightjackets his detractors force him to don, seemingly in the hope the
United States will implode before he can save it. But he will succeed, so get
over it.
You can now resume your tantrums.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 15, 2010, by Mike Burch
The NAACP didn’t call the tea party movement a racist movement. The NAACP
cautioned the tea party movement to be cognizant of “racist elements” within.
That’s like me cautioning a friend to be aware that he sometimes does rash
things when he drinks. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” It seems the
NAACP just gave friendly advice to people who would do well to consider it.
The chief spokesperson for the tea party movement, Sarah Palin, has said
that we should bomb Iran and must “support” Israel at all costs, even though
Israel practices systematic racism and injustice against Palestinians on a daily
basis. If anyone wants evidence of racism in the tea party movement, just
consider how her rabid warmongering sounds to nearly two billion Muslims.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 20, 2010, by Mike Burch
Many Americans seem to believe there is a monolithic religion called
“Islam” which causes Muslims to hate Americans, to despise our “values” and to
want to kill us for irrational reasons.
But Syria’s government just banned the wearing of the niqab. Other
predominately Muslim nations like Turkey have attempted to prevent or discourage
the wearing of veils and headscarves by Muslim women. So obviously there isn’t a monolithic Islam, after all.
Not so very long ago, Christian Puritans dressed only in black and white,
abhorred musical instruments, and put red-hot pokers through the cheeks and
tongues of peaceable Quakers. The first American “freedom of religion” colonies
— Providence, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania — were created largely to allow
other Christians to escape the repressiveness of the Puritans.
We don’t damn all Christians for the excesses of the Puritans. So there
is no reason to damn all Muslims for the actions of extremists. And we need to
keep in mind that Christianity has ameliorated since the days when “heretics”
and “witches” were burned at the stake. Does it make sense to assume that only
Christians are capable of positive change, or is that symptomatic of bigotry and
intolerance?
Letter to The Tennessean, June 13, 2010, by Mike Burch
Thank heaven for John McCain!
While I didn’t vote for McCain, primarily because I didn’t agree with him
on the wisdom of keeping American troops in Iraq for decades and because I
didn’t think Sarah Palin was qualified to be second-in-line for the presidency,
I do admire McCain for his obvious patriotism. He clearly wants what is best for
our country, and doesn’t stoop to lying about Democrats in order to help get
Republicans elected, even himself. Unfortunately, many conservatives feel free
to slander President Obama publicly. As a result, a recent Harris poll indicates
that 40% of Americans believe he’s socialist, 32% think he’s a Muslim, and 24%
of Republicans say he’s the “Antichrist.”
John McCain has repeatedly rejected such slanderous insinuations,
pointing out that Obama is a good American, a good father, and a good Christian
man. Personally, it wouldn’t bother me if Barack Obama was a Muslim, as long as
he was also a patriotic American, like John McCain. What bothers me is that so
many “Bible-believing” conservatives feel free to spread vile lies and ludicrous
gossip, rather than following McCain’s far better example.
Letter to The Tennessean, April 21, 2010, by Mike Burch
There’s a world of difference between Sarah Palin’s “tea
parties” and the original one. The American patriots who threw the Boston Tea
Party opposed taxation without representation, and scuttled tea belonging to the
British monarchy and its hirelings. But these new “tea parties” involve
Americans dumping their own goods, at considerable expense to themselves.
Whatever happened to the basic premise of democracy, which is that everyone
should have a vote, with the will of the majority becoming the law of the land?
What happens when fifty states have fifty armed militias, each opposing every
edict of the federal government with violent force? Then the terrorists will
have a field day. It’s time to recognize the “tea party” movement for what it
is: the collective temper tantrum of disgruntled “conservatives” unwilling to
accept majority rule, led by a ludicrous Robin Hood without an arrow in her
quiver.
Letter to The Tennessean, March 2, 2010, by Mike Burch
I believe Leonard Pitts hit the nail on the head with his
perceptive article “Tea Party members can’t accept change.” The real problem
isn’t overt racism (although latent racism is undoubtedly a factor), but fear
and trembling on the part of people who resist change like the very Devil.
Conservatives by nature and definition want to conserve: to keep things the
same. They’d rather cling to failed policies and settle for second-rate thinkers
like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, than accept that the world changes and
human evolution continues. Conservative pundits prey on their fears because
doing so makes them fabulously rich and famous. So the rich, famous Chicken
Littles cry “The sky is falling!” and everyone else mills around in fear and
despair. It’s not a pretty picture.
Letter to The Tennessean, August 1, 2010, by Mike Burch
The fiercest attack of the Christian faith
Faith-launched attacks are nothing new. I once edited the autobiography
of a Hiroshima survivor, Takashi Tanemori, who came to America seeking vengeance
only to succumb to radiation poisoning. Fortunately, a Christian nurse helped
him in his time of need. Impressed by her good example, Takashi became a
Christian, then enrolled in a conservative Bible seminary. There, he experienced
one act of racism after another. On the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated,
Takashi saw Protestant pastors-to-be celebrating the death of a Catholic
president.
Takashi eventually left the ministry, in disgust.
I still shudder to think of what happens to gay children in Christian
churches, as their pastors and parents condemn them to an “eternal hell” that
was never mentioned by the Hebrew prophets. But it’s not just homosexuals who
suffer, because the churches I attended as a boy clearly taught that sexual
desire is “evil” unless it’s sanctioned by marriage. Boys are logical creatures,
so we all knew we were condemned to “hell,” with no way to escape it, since we
wouldn’t be able to marry until our twenties or thirties. The worst thing by far
was that our irrational mothers agreed with our irrational pastors.
The most fearsome attack of the Christian faith is launched against
young, sensitive, highly impressionable children, by their parents and pastors.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 27, 2010, by Mike Burch
The Great Flood (of Irrational Fear)
I continue to suffer from the “shock and awe” of reading the vile bilge I
discovered on the front page of Friday’s Commentary section of The Washington
Times. Tom Tancredo accused President Obama of being a “dedicated Marxist.”
Jeffery Kuhner in effect called Barack Obama a gangster, traitor, Balkanizer,
socialistic dictator, etc.
Are these “facts”?
If not, are the editors of The Washington Times doing their jobs? After
all, their guidelines for submissions clearly state: “Fact check before you
submit.”
I’m an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry. When I give writers my
editorial guidelines, I not only expect them to abide by those guidelines, I
take the time to carefully read their submissions. I only publish writing that
meets the standards expressed in my guidelines. If I see things that don’t meet
my guidelines, I either decline to publish the work, or I work with the writers
to eliminate any problems that would preclude publication.
In other words, I edit, because that’s my job. I have never made a penny
for any of the editing I’ve done (I own a computer software company that pays my
bills). I edit because I’m passionate about good writing. But I am also
diligent.
I live in Nashville, Tennessee. I and my neighbors recently experienced
the Great Nashville Flood, which was a very real event. We met the flood with
courage, resolve and determination not to let the flood overwhelm and master us.
It seems to me that The Washington Times may be either succumbing or
pandering to a Great Flood of Irrational Fear. Or perhaps the editors of The
Washington Times have merely leaned too far in the direction of freedom of
speech. There are discernable differences between facts, opinions, outright lies
and character assassination. Wise, intelligent, diligent editors should be able
to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I hope the editors of The Washington Times will be both passionate and
diligent, in the future.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 18, 2010, by Mike Burch
Mona Charen and William Haupt the Third should take “chill pills.” The
NAACP didn’t call the tea party movement “racist” but merely pointed out that it
contains “racist elements,” which it obviously does. Organizers of tea party
events have themselves openly admitted seeing white supremacists crawling out of
the woodwork. When a group’s calling card is maverick radicalism, it’s bound to
attract radicals the way flames attract moths. No one is calling the movement
itself the devil, but quite obviously the tea partiers need to beware of certain
nefarious imps in their midst.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 16, 2010, by Mike Burch
The death toll of American soldiers in Afghanistan is the highest it’s
ever been and senior generals are telling us to expect even higher casualties.
The Taliban is clearly targeting our NATO allies, knowing they’re close to
calling it quits and leaving Americans to fight and die by themselves. What will
happen seems obvious: first our allies will abandon the sinking ship, then
eventually we will too, just as we did in Vietnam. But how many American
soldiers must die, be maimed, or end up psychologically devastated, before our
government finally admits what everyone already knows?
Is there any “honor” in sending our troops to suffer and die, when the
“cause” is not only hopeless, but no one even knows what it is? Our goals in
Afghanistan are clearly contradictory. We want to “win” the war and preserve
American “honor” but we don’t want to cause civilian deaths because that’s not
honorable, so we force our soldiers to fight with one hand tied behind their
backs, which means they can’t defeat the Taliban. And we’re not really fighting
the terrorists who attacked us; for the most part we’re fighting fiercely
patriotic Afghanis who want to defend their homeland from foreign invaders.
When a Senator like Bob Corker says even he can’t understand our
“incredibly vague” strategy, we should all question why our soldiers are risking
life, limb and sanity in Afghanistan.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 15, 2010, by Mike Burch
While Ron Paul and Barney Frank may seem like strange bedfellows, their
plan to slash military spending by $1 trillion over the next ten years makes
perfect sense. After all, if our government goes bankrupt, there will be nothing
to “protect.” On the other hand, if we spend enough money to protect ourselves
from invasions, but not enough to invade nations like Afghanistan and Iraq, we
may find to our surprise that we live in a safer world. One of the main reasons
for 9-11 was our government’s bullying of Muslim nations, in the search for
“cheaper” and “more secure” sources of oil. But all our government did was drive
the price of oil sky-high with its military adventurism, then the drastically
higher price of oil led to more “adventurous” drilling for oil in the Gulf,
which of course led to the BP oil spill.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 31, 2010, by Mike Burch
Rev. Locke, repent!
As I read Kenneth Locke’s article encouraging Christians to welcome
Muslims with open arms, I was struck, full force, by the terrible problems he’s
creating for Jesus Christ. After all, Locke is asking Christians to be more
tolerant than God!
This will not do!
How can Christians be more tolerant than God? Surely this will upset the
moral equilibrium of the universe!
Christians of yore who burned heretics at the stake understood the
schizophrenic nature of Jesus, who was full of compassion one minute (such as
when he rescued the adulteress from religious fanatics who were about to stone
her to death), then a demon the next (such as in the Revelation of John of
Patmos, who said Jesus would murder the children of an adulteress, presumably
for the “sin” of being related to her).
Of course if men were to murder children because their mothers had sex,
we’d lock them up and throw away the key. But God has given Jesus free rein to
murder people who don’t “believe” in him, then send them to an “eternal hell.”
And according to most Christians, Muslims are at the top of his “hit list.”
So Rev. Locke, please don’t show Jesus up, by being more loving,
compassionate and tolerant than God Himself! If the Bible is “infallible” and
Christianity is the only true religion, isn’t it obvious that Christians should
also practice intolerance?
Or did Christian theologians make a mistake, somewhere?
Letter to The Tennessean, July 31, 2010, by Mike Burch
I’m still scratching my head over Kenneth Locke’s article about
Christians accepting Muslim imams with open arms. It seems to me that Locke
probably is wonderfully accommodating of Muslim imams, at the expense of the
children sitting in his own pews. But on the chance that I may be wrong about
Locke, please allow me to invent a fictitious pastor, called Cluck, for purposes
of illustration.
My fine-feathered friend Cluck has an existential dilemma. He knows the
Bible is far from “infallible” and no longer believes that anyone goes to “hell”
because “hell” was a very late, very clumsy addition to the Bible. After all,
the God of the Hebrew Bible and his prophets never breathed a word about “hell”
to Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses, David, et al. So Cluck can
embrace Muslims, knowing there’s no reason to believe people go to “hell” for
not believing in Jesus.
But Cluck is not nearly as kind to the children sitting in his pews,
because he has bills to pay and he needs their parents’ money. So Cluck condemns
them all to a “hell” he no longer believes in himself, because that’s what
Christian pastors do. If the children are especially bright and sensitive, as I
was when Christian Clucks condemned me to “hell” in the name of God, they will
suffer the most exquisite torture, but what do Clucks care?
It’s a strange religion that compels pastors to have more compassion for
the adults of other faiths, than for the children of their faith. And what do
Clucks tell their own children, I wonder? It seems to me that a Christian Cluck
must either lie to his own children, and so convince them they’re in danger of a nonexistent “hell,” or admit that he’s a fraud,
which is difficult for fathers to do.
If Christian Clucks were wise they would never have children, but the
Clucks who squawked about “hell” to me were hardly oracles of divine wisdom.
Letter to The Tennessean, July 21, 2010, by Mike Burch
Last night I had a wonderfully encouraging dream, which I’d like to share
it with others who may be in need of a “lift.”
I sometimes have dreams that come true. I hope this is one of them. As an
example of my “ability,” in 2004 I had a dream in which the Tennessee Titans
scored 48 points. This was during a season when the Titans struggled mightily on
offense. The next Titans game was at Green Bay, where no road team had ever
scored 48 points at Lambeau Field. But sure enough, the Titans scored exactly 48
points! They hadn’t scored 48 points combined in the previous three games, and
they wouldn’t score 48 points combined in the next three games. So my dream
coming true was highly unlikely.
In any case, last night I dreamed that I was watching a competition
between various American presidents. They were on an obstacle course, and many
of them failed to navigate it successfully. But finally Barack Obama took his
turn and performed like a virtuoso. Boy, was he moving fast, wowing the
audience! I was very, very impressed.
I certainly hope my dream comes true and that President Obama proves to
be one of our greatest presidents.
Perhaps the “smartest man in the room” may have figured out small things
that can make a big difference, such as expressing American support for Israel
while holding firm on the point that building settlements in Occupied Palestine
is a major impediment to regional peace, and thus to world peace. Hopefully such
small changes may pay big dividends in the near future.
Letter to the Montreal Gazette, circa 2009, by T. Merrill
Regarding two recent articles in the Gazette on euthanasia, an
editorial in the Sunday edition, and an opinion piece by Henry Aubin published
the day before, both hostile to the notion and advising against, and both
characterizing euthanasia unflatteringly, the former calling it "planned
killing," the latter calling it "legalized killing":
I personally think, as do some
friends of mine, that euthanasia should be made available to anyone, for any
reason, at any time it is desired, so long as the person opting for it may be
assumed to possess a clear understanding of the choice he or she is making and
of its irreversible consequences, and can reasonably be assumed to be
genuinely committed to that choice. (In the case of children, adolescents,
and the immature in general, some method would need to be established for
distinguishing passing moods from a more deep-seated, immovable desire to be
permanently relieved of the burden of living. I certainly am not
advocating that every yeller of "I wish I was dead" should be automatically
granted his or her wish).
This means that everyone serious,
lucid and cognizant of the price, should have the right to leave life as easily
as possible whenever he or she pleases―and not just because of a terminal
illness, or because the person is enduring obvious intractable pain. Life
is not an elective condition. No one has chosen it. It is imposed on
everyone by birth, no one having been consulted beforehand, or asked if he or
she would care to enter the state of existence. Everyone is here without
his or her consent, and in all fairness, everyone should be accorded,
finally, the right to say no to a totally involuntary lot, and access to the
easiest and most civilized means of release from it available. Life is
precarious, treacherous in the end, and often an affliction and ordeal,
and everyone is stuck with the hand he or she is dealt. And too often, the
hand picked up is a very bad one indeed.
Religion is not a factor for many.
Many do not believe in life after death, and therefore do not regard questions
of heaven or hell, or of sin, as relevant to their choices. I certainly do
not regard them as relevant to mine. What Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists or
Jews might think about the moral character of a choice such as suicide, assisted
or not, makes not a whit of difference to me. What does matter to me, is
my being allowed the option of escaping, with minimal difficulty and certainly
with minimal torture, a place or condition that, for one reason or another, I no
longer wish to inhabit or experience. To deny people this right is tantamount
to holding them captive against their will. Because life's conditions are
imposed, and because one has no obligation to accept them, unconditional
euthanasia for all serious petitioners should be wholeheartedly embraced, and
concerns about "abuses" should be ignored, as should evaluations of people's
motivations for such a choice. Why should anyone else be the one to decide
what can validate your desire to vacate the premises? Must one be
screaming in pain to qualify for release?
T. Merrill
Letter to the Vatican, circa 2009,
by Mike Burch
Dear Vatican,
Please tell fucking Ratzinger/Benedict to let people die without suffering,
if they prefer to.
Your friend immortal enemy,
Mike Burch
P.S.—In addition to informing him that euthanasia is not a "sin," can you please have fucking Ratzinger/Benedict stop harping on "be
fruitful and multiply," so that fewer of us will be faced with committing Hari Kari
in the near future? Here’s a bit of doggerel I penned to help him reflect, repent and
gain wisdom:
"Be fruitful and multiply!"
Great advice for a fruitfly,
but for women and men,
Simple Simon, say "When!"
Letter to The Tennessean, January 27, 2010, by Mike Burch
One thing that would make any city a better place
to live would be a park or "green zone" where homeless people could go if they
were unable or unwilling to live inside four walls. Why not have a park with
showers and benches where homeless people are welcome, and most of the rules of
"polite society" don’t apply? If every city relaxed its "rules of order" within
such an area, the homeless would have a place
to go where they would be welcome and not forced to conform to rules of society
that seem not to work for many of them. Caregivers who are especially
empathetic could be hired to administer the area, and the police could leave
everyone alone as long as they abstained from physical violence.
Letter to The Tennessean, April 2010, by Mike Burch
I’m very thankful that The Tennessean published Darrell Scott’s piece
about his daughter Rachel’s challenge. I think the words of the essay she wrote
shortly before her tragic death at Columbine bear repeating: “I have this theory
that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will
start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little
kindness can go.” Her second sentence is a poem, and a good one to live by. It
is, after all, the message of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets, to practice
chesed (mercy, compassion, lovingkindness). It’s always good to do a good
deed, but it’s even better to do a good deed in a spirit of tenderness, kindness
and compassion. Our schools should not only end the bullying that leads to
tragedies like the one at Columbine, but they should also teach classes on
compassion from the earliest grades up. Teachers can communicate no more
profound knowledge than the benefits of compassion to individuals and human
societies. I hope every child (and every adult) will accept Rachel’s Challenge,
and help create a chain reaction of kindness.
Letter to The Tennessean, April, 2010, by Mike Burch
Reports by the New York Times and other major publications suggest that
the Catholic Church has been shielding pedophiles for decades. Some priests
molested hundreds of children, so there are probably thousands of lawsuits yet
to be filed against Catholic dioceses. Individual plaintiffs have been awarded
settlements in the millions of dollars, so the cumulative cost is immense and
continually growing. Will churchgoers continue to tithe, as they see their money
disappearing down a bottomless abyss? Now a lawsuit has been filed directly
against the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI and other high-ranking Vatican
officials. Will the Catholic Church go bankrupt? One wonders what the papal
tiara and scepter might fetch on eBay.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 18, 2010, by Mike Burch
RE: Theological debacle
I sympathize with the Haitian woman who flung her Bible into the fire. She
seems more honest than Christian missionaries whose "all-powerful" God controls
the elements but can’t control his temper sufficiently to avoid killing
innocent children. If men abused and killed children, we’d throw the cretins in jail,
then throw away the key. But how many children are suffering and dying in Haiti,
today? If God is responsible, doesn’t that make him a child abuser and a child
killer? Will Christian missionaries "comfort" suffering Haitians on the verge of
death by telling them, "If you don’t believe in the vengeful God who killed your children, he’ll
condemn you to hell for all eternity"?
How can such a religion be a comfort to anyone? How can anyone "love" such an
unjust "god"? How is such a "god" an improvement on Papa Legba?
It seems the Haitians who subscribe to both Voodoo and Christianity are
caught between a rock and a hard place.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 15, 2010, by Mike Burch
RE: Theological debacle
Pat Robertson, the self-proclaimed "prophet," accuses Haitians of being
responsible for their most recent, terrible calamity. But innocent animals and
babies lie suffering and dying: how can this be "justice"?
When Katrina struck New Orleans, Christians "prophets" instantly declared it
the wrath of God against homosexuals, while ignoring the corpses of
Christians who had choked to death, suffocating on sewage-ridden stormwater. One
of the saintliest men I ever knew died from the aftereffects of swimming through
Katrina’s rancid filth to save others. Is there any evidence that heterosexual
Christians have any special favor with God, or that changing religious or sexual
practices will spare human beings from natural disasters?
No.
None of the victims—Christian or otherwise—deserved such fates. Pat
Robertson’s incoherent babble is merely the visible tip of a terrible iceberg
created by Christian theologians, when they decided the "grace" of an all-powerful
God was reserved for Christians, despite all the stark, manifold evidence to the
contrary.
Christian theologians have no explanation for the suffering of innocents.
Nature is amoral: to human beings this makes nature seem cruel and unjust. When
a religion teaches that an all-powerful God sits in heaven pulling every string,
suddenly the suffering of innocents is attributed to God, and God becomes
unjust. So Pat Robertson should be careful about accusing other people of "Devil
worship." If his God indiscriminately slaughters innocents, what does that make
him?
Letter to The Tennessean, January 6, 2010, by Mike Burch
Should fifth-graders be given Bibles by the Cult of Hell, aka Gideons
International?
As a fifth-grader, I tested at the reading level of a college sophomore. My
delighted parents handed me the Bible, suggesting that I read it from beginning
to end. But for the bright, sensitive boy I was
at the time, reading page after page of the horrendous
atrocities attributed to God and "men of God" like Moses, Joshua and King David was a
soul-shattering experience. Moses commanded the slaughter of innocent women and
children (Numbers 31) and that rape victims be stoned to death or sold to their
rapists (Deuteronomy 22). David killed every woman when he "smote the land" and
ordered the slaughter of the lame and blind when Jerusalem was taken from the
Jebusites. In his horrific Revelation, John of Patmos said human beings would be
tortured with fire and brimstone" in heaven, in the presence of the Lamb and Holy Angels."
So much for hell being "separation from God."
Parents should understand what happens when children are
subjected to such palpable evil while being told it’s "the word of God." Do the
adults at Gideons International have the right to inflict emotional and
spiritual abuse on small children? Not in my book.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 6, 2010, by Mike Burch
RE: Chicken Little and the Clucks
Conservative pundits continue to imitate Chicken Little—wailing "The sky is
falling!"—while insisting that Americans must sacrifice our way of life and our
highest ideals in the mad dash to avoid an imminent Armageddon.
Cal Thomas clucks fearfully that our choice is between "freedom" and
"slavery," insinuating that Al-Qaida will soon have Americans in chains. But of
course his fears are irrational. Our navy is more powerful than the next 13
largest navies in the world combined. Al-Qaida could no more take over
the U.S. than I could defeat the entire Tennessee Titans football team
singlehandedly in a scrimmage. While a motley flotilla of pirate tubs might
manage to board an occasional ship and hold it for ransom, no nation on earth
has the ability to send troops through our defenses and "enslave" us.
Furthermore, as a Chinese leader once pointed out, Americans own so many weapons
that defeating our armed forces would be only the beginning of an invader’s
woes.
Robert McNamara recently admitted the main premise of the Vietnamese war was
bogus. The greater world was never in imminent peril, just because the
government of South Vietnam might have changed hands. The "domino theory" was a
symptom of incipient paranoia. Now once again we have legions of
pundits crying that the sky is falling, when it obviously isn’t. Shame on them,
and shame on us for believing them. The real danger is that the U.S. will make the
wrong decisions, abuse its power, and end up causing multitudes of
unnecessary deaths, just as we did in Vietnam.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 6, 2010, by Mike Burch
RE: The fog of war
The five detained men who claim not to be terrorists because they intended to
fight against coalition forces in Pakistan have a point. It’s all too easy to
label every opponent of the United States a "terrorist," as if to disagree strongly with the United States is automatically
"evil." Some Muslims call the United States "the Great Satan." Many Christians
slap convenient labels on Muslims. Demonizing one’s enemies is a longstanding
human tradition.
But the pictures generated by war are always murky. The CIA has been using
unmanned robotic drones to target "enemy commanders" in Pakistan. But not only
"enemy commanders" are being killed. Innocent women and children have been
killed in attacks launched at funerals and other domestic congregations. What
would Americans say if our women and children were being killed as they grieved
for their lost loved ones at funerals? As we demonize our enemies and justify
our own atrocities, we sink deeper and deeper into the fog of war. Killing
women and children is just as wrong when we do it, as when our enemies do it.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Pakistan is ostensibly our ally, not
our enemy. What would we say if our citizens were being killed in attacks
sanctioned by the Mexican government? Of course Americans would be lining up,
volunteering to retaliate.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 3, 2010, by Mike Burch
On December 29, 1890, an estimated 3,000 Sioux Indians were massacred at
Wounded Knee. The prevailing fiction was that white settlers had a "manifest
destiny" to own (i.e., steal) Indian land. If Native Americans had to walk a
Trail of Tears, that was self-evidently "the will of God." So much for equal
rights, truth, justice and the American way: they all flew out the window
whenever settlers spied "free" land. But it came at a terrible price: the blood
of innocents.
Today Israel just reasserted its "manifest destiny" to colonize Palestinian
land. But there is a crucial difference: the Palestinians have 1.8 billion
Muslim brothers and sisters who deny Jews any "God-given" right to take land
that means life to millions of innocent women and children.
This time American troops are vastly outnumbered and we have no taste for
more wars on Muslim soil. Wouldn’t we do far better to learn from history: who
can afford the blood of innocents? And what will the ultimate cost be, to our
own innocents, if Israeli settlers keep claiming "free" land, at our expense?
This land is not "free," but incredibly expensive to Palestinians, Americans
and the world. Should world peace be held hostage for the sake of 700 Israeli
settlers, when much of the land taken from the Palestinians in 1948 lies fallow
to this day, inside Israel? Israel has more land than it can use; why
then this inexplicable appetite for Palestinian land?
Letter to The Tennessean, November 10, 2009, by Mike Burch
RE: Three Holocausts: One Fell Purpose
In 1936 Hitler created the SS-Totenkopfverbände (the SS Death’s Head
Division) to guard Nazi concentration camps. A hundred years earlier, in 1836,
Fort Armistead soldiers became the jailers of Native Americans. In both cases
the goal was the same: Nazis demanded "Lebensraum" (living space) from
"inferior" races, while white Americans demanded Indian land as their "manifest
destiny." The people who stood in the way—even women and children—were soon
trampled underfoot in horrifically bloody land grabs. Now Americans mourn the
fates of Indians who walked the Trail of Tears, and of Jews who endured the
horrors of the Holocaust, but they continue to fund and support the latest
Holocaust: the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of the Palestinians. Yes, we should honor
and mourn the fallen, but far more importantly, we should save and comfort the
living. Until we learn this simple lesson, we will continue to see the corpses
of women and children mount to the skies, as the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza
now "live" (if we can call it that) on the margins of existence. I’m a Holocaust
poetry editor with Cherokee ancestors, and it shames and galls me that my
government continues to inflict such unbelievable horrors on innocent women and
children, to this day. Why bother to mourn the dead, if we are going to
perpetrate similar horrors on the living?
Letter to The Tennessean, September 11, 2009, by Mike Burch
September 11 is a day to mourn and honor our fallen dead. But when this day
of solemn remembrance is over, Americans must consider what we can do together
to prevent such attacks in the future.
Pundits like Cal Thomas and politicians like Jim Cooper blithely and
dangerously ignore the all-too-obvious reasons for the 9-11 attacks: our
government’s support of Israel’s brutal, racist Injustice Machine, and our
incessant interference in the internal affairs of Muslim nations, primarily due
to American "interests" in their oil fields. Do we allow them "interests" in our
wheat fields? Now the price of oil has soared, and we would obviously be far
better off today if we had simply paid the going price for oil and saved the
lives and money we’ve wasted so heedlessly and so needlessly.
Unless Americans educate themselves and understand that Muslims have
completely legitimate fears and grievances which simply must be addressed,
another event like 9-11 seems inevitable. The next one may lead to World War III
and a nuclear holocaust. Palestinian children are being spat on and cursed by
Jewish "settlers" and the Israeli soldiers who protect the robber barons rather
than their innocent victims. When elderly Palestinians die, Jewish "settlers"
who scan obituary columns daily for fresh victims show up with bulldozers and
mallets to destroy their homes and claim them as "unoccupied," before their
families can mourn their passing. If such things were happening to our loved
ones, we too would be raining down missiles on Israel, only far more accurately
and unremittingly.
Letter to The Tennessean, April 29, 2009, by Mike Burch
Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. It has been suggested on
the pages of The Tennessean that torture is a matter of little or no concern.
Please pardon the mixed metaphors, but can overly picky Americans be making
mountains of molehills?
I submit that we all know torture is wrong, because we don’t want our
loved ones to be tortured. Humane shelters prove Americans really do care about
cruelty, even to animals. And as sure as the sun rises and sets, we know it’s
wrong for American soldiers to be tortured.
Suppose an attack had been launched by terrorists based in London, and
Britain refused to let us blow them to kingdom come, because innocent Londoners
might die. Suppose we went to war with Britain, while Princess Diana was alive
and visiting Nashville. Would we strip her naked, make her crawl around on all
fours, and waterboard her hundreds of times, on the chance that she might know
something about the terrorists? Of course not.
The debate has little to do with torture, which we all know is wrong, and
much to do with the great American creed. Do we really believe all human beings
are equal, or are some of us somehow "more equal"? What would Jesus say about
Americans singing, "God Bless America," then only torturing dark-skinned people
from Middle Eastern countries?
Letter to The Tennessean, April 29, 2009, by Mike Burch
(excerpted in TIME magazine)
Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. The Bush administration
struggled mightily with the question of how far interrogators can go before
their tactics constitute "torture." In a recent Esquire interview a Bush
advisor, John Yoo, publically confessed the tremendous struggle he underwent
before finally "seeing the light." Yoo’s "eureka" was that inhumane treatment,
however reprehensible, is not "torture" if it doesn’t result in organ failure,
permanent damage, or death.
According to Yoo’s yahoo logic, yanking out a boy’s teeth constitutes
"torture," since permanent damage results, but yanking out his fingernails
doesn’t, since fingernails grow back. To paraphrase a basketball catchphrase:
"No permanent harm, no foul!"
In such mighty strugglings over semantics, something essential is lost: how
do we want our soldiers—our own children!— to be treated? Do we want their teeth
yanked out, or their fingernails? Of course not.
All interrogators should have one simple, golden rule: "Don’t do anything to
anyone that you wouldn’t want done to yourself, or your loved ones."
At the end of World War II, Germans on the eastern front fled west in order
to surrender to Americans rather than Russians, believing they would be treated
humanely. Instead of torturing them, we offered them the Marshall Plan, a
shining moment in American history. I, for one, hate to see the goodwill of
those good and valiant men squandered in dark, evil torture chambers.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 31, 2010, by Mike Burch
All the boys I knew became sex addicts when we reached puberty, so I find
"experts" debating whether such an addiction exists rather amusing.
Unfortunately, many of us went through severe emotional trauma when we
reached puberty, thanks to our mothers and pastors, although of course we didn’t
understand what was happening to us at the time. Our "Christian" society remains
deeply rooted in Puritanism and the strange idea that after God gave human
beings sexual desire, he became enraged when men merely looked at women (since
Jesus said thinking about sex is the same as committing adultery, and the Bible
says all adulterers go to the lake of fire). Is thinking about sex a crime
worthy of eternal damnation? According to the Bible, yes.
Christian theologians can't think their way out of wet paper bags. They say
homosexuals can't go to heaven unless they "repent." But of course no boy truly
"repents" of his sexual fantasies, and the Holy Spirit doesn't "cure" sexual
desire, because human sexual desire is not a disease. So in their lust to
condemn homosexuals to an eternal hell, Christian pastors and mothers
unwittingly condemn their own children to hell.
Should Christian mothers torture their children in this life, by teaching
them God will torture them in the next? Is this fair to innocent children?
Having been a boy judged "evil" by an irrational, compassionless religion, I
find it horribly unfair for mothers to have human children, then condemn them
for not having been born sexless angels. Perhaps one day they’ll stop torturing
us and we’ll behave better.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 31, 2010, by Mike Burch
Bob Smietana’s article on the Church of Christ was fascinating. But it calls to
question whether our famously "free" and "independent" press is either free or
independent. The Tennessean runs one article after another about the goings-on
at local Christian churches. But has The Tennessean ever reported the emotional
and spiritual abuse suffered by thousands of Nashville-area children on a weekly
basis, when they’re told human beings will be damned to an "eternal hell" for
(take your pick): wearing shorts, being gay, having sex outside marriage, or
just fantasizing about sex before marriage (since Jesus said lust is the same as
adultery, and the Bible says all adulterers go to the lake of fire)?
According to our wonderful churches and wise pastors, if a young girl
questions Christian dogma and chooses not to believe that "Jesus saves," she
will be condemned to "hell" for having the audacity to think for himself!
Is this not brainwashing of innocent, highly impressionable young children?
What sort of newspaper prints one article after another about child abusers,
and never says a word on behalf of the children being abused?
Is this the best a "free, independent" press can do for our children?
Letter to The Tennessean, January 30, 2010, by Mike Burch
Bubba’s Dilemma . . .
Americans incapable of self-examination or reflection will continue to
misunderstand Osama bin Laden when he says Americans will suffer as long as
Palestinian women and children continue to suffer. Therefore our government will
continue to pour money and advanced weapons into Israel, while vetoing U.N.
resolutions that might check Israel’s reign of terror. Thus Israel will continue
to abuse, degrade and kill Palestinian women and children with impunity.
Perhaps we Tennessee rednecks might "get" bin Laden’s point if we rephrased
things like this: "Bubba, think of the biggest, baddest man you know—the one
you’d never want to tangle with in a million years. Now, what would happen if
you beat and humiliated his mother, wife, sisters and children on a daily
basis?"
"Duh, he’d kick my stupid butt!"
Exactly, Bubba. Now you get the picture.
Men like bin Laden will never accept the bizarre idea that Jews and Americans
should be allowed to abuse Palestinians because God "loves" Jews and Christians
and it is their "Manifest Destiny" to tell other people where and how to live
(or die). Muslims know full well what "Manifest Destiny" did to Native Americans
who walked the Trail of Tears, to Australian aborigines, and to black Africans.
Osama bin Laden "gets" it, Bubba. You’re the one with ADD.
It’s time to "get a clue," Bubba. If you care about your women and children,
tell your stupid government to stop harming theirs.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 31, 2010, by Mike Burch
All orthodox Christian churches such as the
Church of Christ and the Southern Baptists face the same problem, and it’s a lot bigger than whether
people go to hell for wearing shorts. The really big problem is hell itself. The
early Christians thought "all the world" was a fringe of communities surrounding
the Mediterranean Sea. But the world was a lot bigger than they realized. The
Americas wouldn’t be discovered for another 1,500 years. If belief in Jesus was
required for salvation, what happened to millions of Native Americans who had never heard
of Jesus? If they didn’t go to hell for not believing in Jesus because they
hadn’t heard of him, the worst thing anyone could have done was mention Jesus to
them, since his name flung open the gates of hell. If they went to hell and
Jesus hadn’t bothered to speak to them personally despite his superpowers (which
presumably include the ability to communicate), then Jesus is neither "just" nor
"good."
When "hell" was clumsily cobbled into the later-written books of
the Bible (the Old Testament and the earliest-written Christian texts, the
epistles of Paul, never mention a place called "hell"), Christian theologians turned
Jesus into a unjust tyrant who petulantly condemns billions of souls to eternal
suffering for not "believing" in him. Churches that preach this infernal gospel
will continue to shrink because people with hearts and brains want to believe
something better. The result will be small, clannish Christian churches with
ghetto mentalities, all trying furiously to believe the correct dogma in order
to be "saved" from a "loving" God, which of course makes no sense, and never
has.
Excerpts from a continuing dispute, circa August 2009
"I desire mercy, not sacrifice."—Yahweh aka Jehovah
"Who the fuck cares what fucking mass murders desire?"—Mike Burch
Anyone who quibbles with my calling Yahweh/Jehovah a mass murderer should read
Numbers 31, in which his prize pupil Moses commanded the slaughter of captured
women and male babies, with only virgin girls being kept alive (obviously as sex
slaves). Or please peruse Deuteronomy 22, where Moses commanded that girls who
had been raped must be stoned to death or sold to their rapists (whereafter they
could be raped "legally" the rest of their lives). Christians call King David
the "man after God's own heart," but according to the Bible, David killed every
woman when he "smote the land" and he ordered the slaughter of the lame and
blind when Jerusalem was taken from the Jebusites. He never "repented," but
remained a hypocritical backstabbing murderer to the bitter end, because with
his dying breath David commanded the assassination of Joab, ostensibly because
Joab had "shed innocent blood." But it was David who had awarded Joab the
captaincy of his armies for butchering the handicapped! Like mass murdering,
backstabbing heavenly father, like sons. Et tu, Yahweh?
Letter to The Tennessean, February 11, 2010, by Mike Burch
After Binyam Mohammed was tortured, having been subjected to "cruel, inhuman
and degrading treatment by United States authorities," with the complicity of
the British MI5, the charges against him were dropped and he was released. Let me repeat: the charges against him were dropped and he was released.
The problem with torturing people is that torture is a primitive, barbaric,
error-prone effort to extract information the torturer only suspects his
victim of knowing. If the torturer knew anything beyond a shadow of a doubt, he
wouldn’t have to torture his victim.
How would we feel if someone suspected our loved ones of "knowing
something," then tortured them to obtain a "confession"?
Letter to The Tennessean, February 10, 2010, by Mike Burch
Religion continues to play an important role in American politics, as
evidenced by the appearance of Sarah Palin at a Nashville "tea party." Palin is,
of course, the darling of the Religious Right. Like many evangelical Christians,
she "knows" that non-heterosexuals who don’t "repent" will go to an "eternal
hell," along with the saints of other religions like Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.
But not long ago, Christians "knew" that the earth was flat, that the sun
revolved around the earth, and that slavery was "the will of God." After all,
they found these "truths" in the Bible.
Now 230,000 Haitians lie dead. If Jesus Christ is an all-wise, all-powerful
God able to control the elements, this means he deliberately murdered them. How
then is human life sacred, according to God?
Obviously, Palin and friends don’t know the mind of God. Their certitude on
matters of homosexuality, chastity, abortion, etc., is laughable. If God is
all-powerful, he certainly doesn’t consider human life "sacred." The Bible
doesn’t say human life is sacred, but that God can murder whomever he pleases.
Obviously, it’s human beings who value human life.
The Religious Right seems incapable of admitting what they obviously don’t
know. This is why many of us see Palin – the poster child for the Religious
Right – as a danger to the United States. Her ignorance and credulity are
frightening.
Letter to The Tennessean, February 2, 2010, by Mike Burch
Americans are understandably upset about their money being squandered and
their wishes ignored. But we only get one vote, so we have to make it count. If
we want positive change, we should tell ALL politicians that to earn our votes
they must do three things:
(1) First, bring our troops home, now. The premise of the Vietnam war was
fallacious. Obviously, the nations of the world didn’t topple like dominoes when
South Vietnam fell. Well, the rest of the world won’t collapse if Iraq or
Afghanistan fall. No Muslim nation has the remotest ability to invade a Western
superpower. So we can bolster our defenses and keep our troops at home, where
they belong.
(2) We must immediately stop funding and supporting the ongoing Holocaust
of the Palestinians. When we provide hundreds of billions of dollars in
financial aid and advanced weapons to a racist, brutal Israeli regime that
abuses and humiliates innocent women and children on a daily basis, of course
the men who love them are going to attack us. We would do the same thing if the
roles were reversed.
(3) We must stop meddling in the Middle East. The price of oil has not
gone down, but has skyrocketed up. Our government can barely manage its own
affairs. We can save money and lives by simply paying the going price for oil on
the free market.
If we want peace and prosperity, we must make our votes count.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 28, 2010, by Mike Burch
Should the Bible be taught in public schools, or handed out to
innocent schoolchildren who will be haunted for life if they read it and
understand what it actually says?
How would Christians feel if Nazis were allowed to "teach" Mein Kampf
to their children? Obviously there’s a serious problem when "true believers" are
allowed to indoctrinate young children into horrifically erroneous beliefs. The
Bible teaches that racism, sexism, religious intolerance, slavery, homophobia,
discriminating against the handicapped, ethnic cleansing and genocide are the
"will of God" whenever any two-bit, woman-killing barbarian like Moses or David
says so. But anyone can say "God told me to do it." That’s what serial killers
like the Son of Sam say.
The Bible is a profoundly flawed book full of palpably evil verses. But most
Christian teachers won’t admit this to students because it’s what they
"believe." How can they contradict "God" when "God" says evil is good?
Germans "knew" Hitler was "right" when he preached racism, intolerance and
world domination. The God of the Bible preaches exactly the same things: racism
(Jews are favored), religious intolerance (Christians are favored) and world
domination (Jesus Christ will return to slaughter billions of non-Christians and
send them to "hell," then kiss away tears from the eyes of obedient Christians only).
The Tennessee Board of Education should note that even Gideons International
doesn’t hand out the Old Testament to young children. But actually the New
Testament is even worse, since it introduces the bizarre idea that
non-Christians go to an "eternal hell." Revelation concludes with human beings
being tortured with fire and brimstone "in the presence of the Lamb and Holy
Angels." Do we want highly impressionable young children to believe heaven is
another Guantanamo Bay, run by a more powerful Hitler called "God"?
Letter to The Tennessean, January 24, 2010, by Mike Burch
Why, dear God, Why?
Pat Robertson must be right. Obviously, if Jesus Christ is all-powerful and
hundreds of thousands of Haitians now lie decomposing in mass graves—many of
them babies and small children—they must have done something to incur his
wrath. But then every Christian eventually suffers and dies. So Robertson has
not taken his religion to its logical conclusion because eventually Jesus, who
could have wriggled his nose and made Robertson eternally young and healthy,
will send Robertson to his grave.
Unless Christian theology took a wrong turn, somewhere.
The early Christians claimed Jesus was the Messiah simply because of the
resurrection. Anyone who reads the book of Acts—the self-recorded history of
the early Christian church—can see this. The Hebrew prophets had predicted the
resurrection, and according to Peter, Stephen and Paul, Jesus had fulfilled.
those prophecies. But the prophets had never claimed the Messiah would be an
all-powerful God with the ability to control the elements.
How can Jesus call for compassion, then turn around and slaughter multitudes
of innocents? That would make him a hypocrite, but of course Jesus always
reserved his sternest criticism for hypocrites. By turning Jesus—a
compassionate man—into an all-powerful God who condemns human beings to an
"eternal hell" never mentioned by the God of the Bible, the Hebrew prophets, or
the in the earliest Christian texts (the epistles of Paul), Christian theology
took a wrong turn many centuries ago, and descended into irrational babblings
like Robertson’s.
Letter to The Tennessean, January 23, 2010, by Mike Burch
Should the US prop up governments like Yemen’s
simply because they align with our interests? The Vietnam War was waged on the
fallacious premise that all Asia would fall to communism if South Vietnam fell.
Obviously, this didn’t happen. Today terrorist organizations have no navies, air
forces or any ability to invade or overthrow any Western nation, much less the
US. Yes, terrorism is a global problem. But much of the problem results from the
US allying with corrupt or inept governments, then over-reacting wildly and
irrationally when small numbers of terrorists commit desperate acts. If we align
with despotic regimes, Muslims who want reform see us as part of the problem.
The real danger is the US alienating more than a billion Muslims, the majority
of whom want better governments (which serve their interests, not ours). They no
more want inept puppet rulers than we do.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
is an open letter written
by Bleu Copas, former Army Sergeant and Arab Linguist.
Infalli-BULL
is an open letter by Mike Burch, which points out that to this day the God of
the Bible has never announced the creation or purpose of a place called "hell."
How can the Pope be "infallible" if he condemns people to an "eternal hell" that
was never mentioned to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses, or a long
line of Hebrew prophets? Obviously hell did not exist at any time during the Old
Testament days, but how could an all-wise God forget to mention the creation and
purpose of hell to anyone in the New Testament as well?
Dear Mike Burch . . .
I just read your
Heresy
Hearsay page and suddenly realized
what a horrible religion Christianity is. Thanks so much for opening my eyes! (I
had been out for an extended lunch and didn’t realize how dismal things had
become down there.) It's a shame "grace" is being bottled and sold like cheap perfume. The
idea that I would save Christians by "grace" and send Gandhi and Einstein to an
"eternal hell" would be laughable if so many people didn't make it the basis of
their "religion." Do they really believe I'm such an unjust Ogre?
Sincerely,
God
P.S. Do you know Ratzinger/Benedict's phone number? It seems
to be unlisted in heaven's directory. But then none of the
Protestant evangelists are listed here either. They all seem to be worshipping the Other Guy.
Letter to the Montreal Gazette, August 13, 2009, by Mike Burch
Is Thomas L. Friedman overly optimistic ("Surprise, surprise: Life in the
West Bank is getting better")? There are far more than "41" military checkpoints
in the West Bank. According to a UN report, there were 528 checkpoints and other
obstacles such as roadblocks in the West Bank in 2006, and the overall number
was increasing by up to 40% per year. According to Israel’s Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs—Occupied Palestinian Territories, there are
over 600 military checkpoints and other obstacles in the West Bank. During the
OCHA reporting period that ended in April 2008, while 103 such obstacles were
removed, 144 more were added. If Israel closed some of the 41 checkpoints
Friedman mentioned, that hardly constitutes closing a large percentage of all
the checkpoints and obstacles in the West Bank. Therefore Friedman’s
presentation of the facts seems misleading, at best.
Palestinian mothers in labor and their unborn babies are dying in ambulances
because they can’t reach nearby hospitals. Whether the impediment is an Israeli
soldier armed with a machine gun, a wall twice as high as the Berlin Wall, or a
block of concrete erected in the middle of a road, the results can unfortunately
be the same: the suffering and deaths of innocents. At least a soldier might
possibly be reasoned with. But how can a mother in labor argue with a gigantic
wall or a block of concrete?
Yes, any breath of peace in the West Bank is welcome. But no, we cannot
afford to become overly excited about prospects brightening for a few
Palestinian businessmen when the lives of so many innocents are at stake. Jimmy
Carter recently visited Gaza, an enclave of 1.5 million human souls who have
been cut off from the rest of the world by the Israeli military. During his
visit Carter said the Palestinians there are being treated more like animals
than human beings, pointing out that small children who have suffered through
hell on earth have been denied crayons and coloring books as "security risks."
As long as men like Friedman say the end of the Israeli occupation of
Palestine is "not going to happen," perhaps on the presumption that the economic
and "security" interests of Israel trump the human rights of Palestinians, we
will live in a very dangerous world where events like 9-11 are likely to trigger
wars like the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hitler and his goons arbitrarily decided that the economic and "security"
interests of Germany trumped the human rights of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and
everyone of the "wrong" race and creed. I am an American editor and publisher of
Holocaust poetry who has worked closely with Jewish Holocaust survivors to
strenuously oppose such thinking. I hope Americans and Canadians will consider
the "big picture." The big picture has always been human rights. Would Americans
and Canadians stand for our mothers and children being denied access to
hospitals when their lives were at stake? Would we allow our children to be spat
on and cursed on their way to school, by soldiers with raised machine guns? Why
do we allow Palestinians to be treated so despicably, and expect them to be
content with less than basic human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness? An American slave might have welcomed a cup of water and respite from
the lash after a day of back-breaking labor, but his "happiness" would have been
relative to his suffering and degradation. Has Friedman adopted the perspective
of a "benevolent" overseer? Should we?
Letter to Buzzflash, January 19, 2010, by Mike Burch
Here in the United States, Christian churches
and missionaries obviously want to help suffering, dying Haitians. In Nashville,
where I live, there will be a performance of Handel’s Messiah by white-robed
choirs and country superstars, with the proceeds benefitting Haiti disaster
relief. Now on the surface this all seems well and good. But if Jesus Christ
knew exactly what he was doing when he deliberately maimed and massacred
multitudes of Haitians, should Christians be interfering with his vengeance?
Conversely, if Christians don’t believe that what happened to the Haitians
constitutes "justice," how can they sing the praises of an all-powerful God?
If Jesus is all-wise, all-powerful and controls every aspect of the universe,
as Christians claim, then clearly the poor Haitian children now having their
crushed limbs sawn off without anesthetics are getting what they deserved. But
who can believe Jesus would be so cruel to children?
If such things are patently unjust and should never happen to innocent
children, why continue the pretense that Jesus is in control of the elements,
since such control would make him a child killer and serial murderer?
Ironically, Pat Robertson is right. If God is all-powerful and just, he must
have had a good reason to slaughter so many Haitians. But then why did he
viciously attack so many innocent animals, babies and children? Why didn’t he
send a plague specifically targeting only the adults who merited punishment? It
only took me a few seconds to come up with a better plan of attack; how can men
be wiser and more just than God Almighty?
Now Christian missionaries will undoubtedly rush to spread the "good news"
that suffering Haitians are in danger of an "eternal hell" if they don’t
"believe" in the all-powerful, unjust God who just poured out his wrath on their
beleaguered island. Do the suffering children of Haiti deserve to be terrorized
yet again, after all they’ve endured? Why not deliver aid without the voodoo
religion?
What a terrible price to attach to "Christian" benevolence! Has there ever
been a more irrational, graceless religion?
I implore Christians missionaries not take their gospel of hell to Haiti and
terrorize small, shell-shocked Haitian children with the idea that if they don’t
believe "Jesus saves" their souls will be in danger of an "eternal hell." My
parents and churches terrified me with this terrible gospel of hell when I was a
small boy. I only found relief as an adult, when I decided that calling
evil "good" because God perpetrates it is ridiculous.
Letter to the David Newman, September 3, 2009, by Mike Burch
Dear David Newman,
I am an American editor and publisher of Holocaust Poetry.
I read your article about the response to Dr. Neve Gordon's opinion piece
recently published by the Los Angeles Times. I had also read Dr. Gordon's
article, which had been mailed to me by one of my colleagues. I suppose this
shows what a rapidly shrinking world we live in.
I think your article, which seems balanced, is actually "on tilt" (as we used to
say when pinball machines were in vogue). You seem to advocate a
“balanced” debate, but in my opinion this makes no sense. There was once quite a
"debate" in the United States over the issue of
slavery. Today the "debate" seems nonsensical. Why? Because the free world has
decided that all human beings must have equal rights. Should Americans have
participated in a "balanced" debate over the status of slaves for 100 years
prior to the Civil War? NO. After the Civil War was over, should Americans have
engaged in another 100-year-long "balanced" discussion of the merits of equal
rights, fair laws and fair courts, versus those of Jim Crow laws and public
lynchings? NO. The debate was always entirely one-sided and nonsensical. The
slaves had no say in the laws that enslaved them. They would have been fools and
cowards to submit to the racist laws that kept them enslaved. The same thing was
true for the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising: they had no say in the “debate”
or in the making of the “laws” that made them victims of the Nazi Injustice
Machine.
We do not need to continually “debate” the relative merits of racist versus non-racist laws,
courts and systems of government. The debate is OVER. The free world has already
rendered its verdict: racism is an abomination. Israel has been
using smoke, mirrors, cries for sympathy and tsunamis of propaganda to delude
Americans for sixty years, but now the jig is up. Americans are slowly waking up
– one individual at a time – to the truth, and the truth is shocking and
despicable. Now is not the time for a
balanced debate. Now is the time for Israel to pull the plug on its Injustice
Machine, or suffer the consequences.
Dr. Gordon’s solution has a good chance of working, because economic sanctions
will persuade Israelis to “vote their pocketbooks” (a modern democratic
phenomenon) and replace their current racist government with one led by leaders
more amenable
to peace through justice. But acting as if the Palestinians are somehow an equal
part of a perplexing problem is not helpful. Should the Jews of the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising have obeyed the racist “laws” of their Nazi overlords? Of course
not. If they were heroes and freedom fighters, then so are the Palestinians, for
the same simple reason: it is not a “crime” to break an illegal law.
It is, however, a crime to create racist, and therefore illegal laws. Who wrote
the laws of Israel?
Who established its courts? Israeli Jews must look in the mirror and confront
the racists they find there, then speedily reform their government. It the majority
are not racists, why then is the “democratic” government so blatantly
racist? Why do so many Israelis speak of “democracy” and “healing the world,”
when their laws and courts scream “Racism!” and “Injustice!”
What can Palestinians do, but resist forcefully? Patrick Henry said “Give me
liberty or give me death.” He didn’t mean he planned on committing suicide. He
meant he was willing to kill Englishmen, or be killed, in the pursuit of his
rights, and the rights of his children. But what would happen if my child was
born in Israel
today, not being Jewish? The thought fills me with terror. Why? You might
understand the terror if you considered having a Jewish child in Nazi Germany. I
work with some of those children: the ones who survived. Many others didn't, as
you well know. All you have to do to
understand why the United States
will be forced to “divorce” Israel,
unless Israel reforms, is to
consider what it would be like for your children and grandchildren to be born
inside the walled ghetto of Gaza, if
they were unlucky enough not to be born Jewish.
Do you understand now why I don’t have any interest in a
“balanced” debate? I want the state of
Israel
to end its reign of terror, and reform, or cease to exist, the way the Nazi
state ceased to exist, so that a just, non-racist government can replace it.
You say "two wrongs don't make a right," but that is an old wives' tale.
Sometimes it takes a horrific wrong to correct an even more horrific wrong.
Would the Holocaust survivors I work with say it was "wrong" for the Allies to
kill Germans in order to end the insanity and injustices of Hitler and the
Nazis? NO. Even George McGovern, whom I had the chance to meet and chat with
recently, said that World War II was justified. So did Einstein, who had been an
avowed pacifist before he saw what Hitler and his goons were capable of.
The American Civil War is another instance of a terrible wrong being required to
right an even more terrible wrong.
Now seeing what the racist state of Israel is capable of is convincing
Americans that we have been funding and supporting a new Holocaust. We are beginning to realize that we’ve been led into two wars that could
have been avoided if only
Israel hadn’t demanded our sympathy, money and arms so that Israeli Jews could steal
land and water from Palestinians who are increasingly homeless and destitute.
“Israel” has become an
anathema to us, and the only way that will change is for Israel to
abandon racism and give up its lust for stolen land. Why the ever-mounting
horrors, when Israel
doesn’t have the Jewish population to cultivate most of the land it stole in
1948? Why such brutality and larceny in the West Bank, when so much of the land
stolen in 1948 lies fallow to this day, inside Israel?
Do you really expect me to believe there is a somewhat even “dispute” between
two parties who can’t quite see eye to eye, when Israel has hundreds of thousands of
settlers busily stealing land from Palestinian farmers on a daily basis, while
Israeli soldiers armed with
machine guns curse and spit on Palestinian children on their way to school? Do
you understand the fury I feel, when Jewish professors complain whenever their
rights are infringed on, while Palestinian children can't walk to school without
being degraded and abused? Do you understand how Americans feel when our sympathy for Jewish
adults is demanded, but the rights of Palestinian children have been placed on
“eternal hold”?
How do you think the American public will feel, as it slowly but surely awakens
to the truth? Do you think Americans will want a “balanced debate” or do you
think we will do what had to be done when Southern slaveowners refused to free
their slaves, and when Nazis and Saddam Hussein chose to exceed their borders
and seize “living space” from innocent women and children?
I am an editor and publisher of Holocaust Poetry, not a
racist. I abhor racism. Therefore, I abhor the government of Israel and its brutal, racist
Injustice Machine.
Soon it may be necessary for a new, terrible wrong to correct this abomination.
Like the American slaves, like the Native Americans, like the Jews who suffered
and died during the Holocaust, and like the blacks who suffered at the hands of
white South Africans, the Palestinians had no hand in writing the laws or
establishing the courts that deprive them of their self-evident rights to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. According to the American Declaration of
Independence, they have every right to rise up and kill the people who deprive
them of their equal human rights. Of course I am a man of peace and do not want
anyone to die. But history tells me that people will die in ever-increasing
numbers until the abomination ends, and that the free world will side with the
oppressed, not the oppressors.
Dr. Gordon is right. Perhaps the only thing that will save Israel from
itself is a “shock to the system” that brings about the needed reforms of its government.
Many Israeli Jews seem to be incapable of understanding that the fury felt by
Muslims toward Israel
will be increasingly felt by Americans. Not because we are racists, but because
we oppose racism. Yes, I care about the rights of Jewish professors. But I care
even more about the rights of Palestinian kindergartners to be able to
walk to school unmolested. What sort of evil, brutal, racist regime allows soldiers to
curse and spit on them?
I abhor the thought of children being cursed and spat on by
adults, with their actions being condoned or encouraged by an Injustice Machine
masquerading as a “democracy.” Democracies extend human rights and justice to
all human beings, not just to the Chosen Few. Therefore I abhor the state of
Israel
in it current racist incarnation,
and I will do everything in my power to see it reform, and abandon racism. It
would be better for Israel
to reform itself, than for the world to impose its will on Israel. It would
be better for Israel
to reform itself, than to go through a Civil War, with men like Dr. Gordon on
one side and men like Benyamin Netanyahu on the other. But in the end men like Dr. Gordon
will prevail, or the world will be forced to act. So why delay the inevitable
for even another day? Let the debate end, and let Israel replace
its racist regime voluntarily, or let economic sanctions lead to nonviolent
reform as soon as possible. If you take the time to engage in a balanced debate,
you allow the racist regime to continue to cause the suffering of innocents.
Babies, toddlers and children are self-evidently innocent and cannot be punished
collectively for the “crime” of being born to the “wrong” race. Adult
Palestinians cannot be considered criminals until they have equal rights and
access to fair laws and fair courts. As long as the government of Israel puts their self-evident rights on eternal
hold, Israel
is the criminal, and sooner or later will have to be brought to justice. The
time to debate is over; the time to act has come.
Israel
must establish fair laws and fair courts first, unconditionally and without
excuses, or the Palestinians have every right to resist forcefully, and all the
free world will stand firmly on their side, including the United States of America.
Respectfully,
Mike Burch
The HyperTexts