Saturday, October 15, 2016

Conservative Madrasas [Political]

Having just read my umpteenth post about the undeniable evil of the Clintons it occurs to me that we now have an entire generation of children that have grown to adulthood, raised within an environment where things are viewed through a filter of distrust. Conspiracy theories are endemic. A generation raised not to trust: government, law enforcement, the courts, media, specific groups of people like those who have education and those who don’t think like them. Agents of the New World Order are everywhere. The UN is trying to take over America. Black helicopters with men dressed in black prowl the skies. Being armed is encouraged in order to fight back when the agents come for you. What’s more those who don’t buy into all the paranoia are to be ridiculed. Stay away from those people, you don’t need that kind of liberal negativity in your life.
 There is the actual history of events supported by reality as opposed to a contrived history not supported by the facts. Where does all this alternate faux history and education come from?
Well, that got me to thinking about Madrasas.
Throughout the Middle East there are schools called Madrasas or Madrassas. Madrasa is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious. Some of these schools have come under criticism for teaching a radical form of Islam to children just as we have Christian schools that teach extreme views of the faith.
 These Madrasas are physical locations but these days thanks to modern technology the internet has become an educational institution accessible to anyone with access. (I’m happy, yet sad.) The internet gave a larger voice and reach to the Alt Right movement. You can look up the definition of what the Alt Right movement is on Google. I almost went with the definition provided by wiki but decided to go with one from the Southern Poverty Law Center instead:
The Alternative Right, commonly known as the Alt-Right, is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew “establishment” conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.
Now the above definition is the far Alt Right. If you’re a holocaust denier you would be with this crowd. If you’re not a white supremacist or anti-Semitic you would be to the left of this extreme but still be with the Conservative Alt Right. As example, Brietbart News is considered a conservative Alt Right news source. Pat Robertson would be in the Religious Alt Right.
As far as the Alt Left is concerned I don’t have much in the way of a definition for the Alt Left. The Alt Right would probably call them liberal cultural Marxists and other more colorful nouns. (Throw in neo something or other for both of them.) “Christians Tired of Being Misrepresented” would probably qualify as being religious Alt Left as well as…well…The Christian Left.
In essence the faux history is coming from literally hundreds of Alt Right sites. They started pumping this stuff out through email at the very beginning. As the internet and social media evolved so did the Alt Right. They are exceptional at dis-information. Seriously! I am impressed. They have videos and books as well.
In the beginning I would spend hours checking and tracking all the various accusations passed along to me from these sources. They always ended with the same result: Not factually truthful. I don’t bother doing it any more.
I have friends, or at least used to, of all kinds of political persuasions. From the very beginning years ago the Alt Right stuff poured in starting with email. VCR tapes and books were passed around as well. The Anarchists Cookbook was also popular. That’s kind of ironical. I have received more racist stuff and seen more racist postings in the last 8 years than I have seen in my entire life. What do I mean by racist? A picture of our First Lady morphing into a monkey eating a banana is the type of racist crap that I’m talking about. I have not received this kind of material from my liberal friends.
Here's an example of how people can be duped: there was a family member that was drawn into the “Y2K bug civilization will collapse theory*.” We would receive books, email, VCR tapes and all sorts of references to alternative sources of information provided by those with “inside” information. They became a survivalist, moved, acquired guns, lots of ammunition, survival equipment and provisions enough to make it through the breakdown of society. No, you didn’t miss it. It didn’t happen in spite of all the “information” from trusted alternative news sources that said it would.
What we see now with the Alt Right is a continuation of the same methodology. In other words they just make stuff up with information that doesn’t exist mixed in with real life events. Get people that are already pre-disposed to believing the worst or having a predetermined expectation of what to expect and you have an audience of believers. They will not only drink the Kool Aid they will ask for more and pass it around. It is poison. They are poisoning minds and society.
Then the leadership of the Republican Party started pushing the same narrative because it served their political agenda. Their agenda was to blame President Obama for everything and not to pass any legislation he proposed no matter how beneficial it was to American citizens. This played right to the Alt Right's hands. Liberals are liars. Democrats are liars. Media lies. They were the truth tellers; the champions of the Constitution. Then they turned on the Republican leadership. It turns out that they couldn’t be trusted either—especially if they had principles and put the country before the party.
So, no, I don’t need to watch any more videos about how the Clintons are a part of Murder Inc., Bill Clinton’s love child, Obama is not a natural born citizen, or the endless stream of crap that has been debunked over and over again. To the true believers nothing will ever change their minds. If you see this stuff like “This will end Hillary Clinton’s campaign, The secret video Hillary doesn’t want you to see, etc.” and the link is to some real patriotic sounding name, web site or social media page that you’ve never heard of save yourself some time. If it sounds outrageous don’t bother with it. The problem is that with Trump outrageous is going mainstream.
The Alt Right has to make Hillary Rodham Clinton evil in order to make her one of the lesser of two evil choices. I will state again that I don’t believe either of them is evil. However on the worst day of her life she is more qualified than Donald Trump on the best day of his life.
Yes there’s evil in the world. We don’t have to join in. We don’t have to incite people to violence.  Believe in our system of government. Believe that all the major news organizations are trying to do their jobs. Believe in our legal system though fallible we keep working on it. Believe in normal. Believe that not everyone is out to get you. Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.
If you’re a Christian keep in mind that Jesus was liberal. Jesus believed in the good of people and doing right in the service of others. That was Jesus’ normal. Be normal.

*From Britannica: Y2K bug, also called Year 2000 bug or Millennium Bug, a problem in the coding of computerized systems that was projected to create havoc in computers and computer networks around the world at the beginning of the year 2000 (in metric measurements K stands for thousand).