America’s Chance To Shine Fizzles Out
By Michael Boyajian
America had a chance to shine recently. It had an opportunity to show the world everything we were supposed to stand for in the land of the red, white and blue with the beacon of the Statue of Liberty shining so brightly for the sake of freedom.
It had the opportunity to do so but failed miserably. Moderate American Muslims wanted to build a YMCA style center in lower Manhattan that would contain not just a swimming pool and theater but a mosque and the press and right wing politicians went after the plan like rabid dogs. Few reported that there was already a mosque down there and that the owners of the property had held title for a long time and that the center was to be more of a Y than a mosque.
No, the media showed maps showing how close it was to the burning towers at Ground Zero while right wingers fumed with blind hate and anger. No one cared that the man whose idea it was is sort of a hippie type and that he promised local leaders that he would reach out to and hire members of the LGBT community to work at the center which was to employ over a hundred people.
No one cared that they had the Constitutional right to build there. No one cared that the local residents and New York City’s duly elected officials supported the plan. The raging mob carried the day. Right wing politicians started referring to the terrorist attack on 9-11 as an attack on America not by terrorists but by all of Islam. They compared these moderate Muslims to Nazi goons saying that until they build churches in Saudi Arabia than we should not build any mosques in this country.
Two centuries of American history were flushed down the toilet so that the media could sell papers and right wingers could chum for votes. Then came news that 7 out of 10 Americans opposed the mosque. That is when I started looking at my neighbors differently. They were no longer amiable friends but angry bigots.
But then the president of the United States stepped forward holding forth a shining light in his brilliant oratory in defense of religious freedom. But then the next day he vacillated taking back his words and looking like a bowl of quivering jello to friends and foes alike around the world.
So my belief in the country has been sorely tested. My American flag flies in front of my house 24/7 but I am now ready to fly it upside down as a symbol of distress. I think about leaving the country as do many others but then we realize that if we do leave then the wackos we leave behind will destroy the entire planet. So we are consigned to a life of holding these extremists in check for the rest of our lives for the rest of history for the sake of the planet, not the country for the country is lost.
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