Light and Darkness, Part Three.

America counts millions of Muslims among our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms, and dads, and they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.

This is a great country. It's a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth, and it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as I do. I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to come by, and may God bless us all.

~George W. Bush, remarks at Islamic Center of Washington D.C. September 17th, 2001.

Let me tell you a story.

There was this guy, once, he was going through a rough time in his life. He was in the process of getting divorced, and because of this many of the people he had previously relied on for support in times of trouble were mostly no longer present in his life. On top of that, there were the constant Yahoo Instant Messenger arguments with the ex-wife, who he was also still fucking on a fairly regular basis even though it never started out that way and he always knew he shouldn't. He was trying to move on with life, working two jobs, repairing his college GPA, building new networks of friends, restarting old friendships and rebuilding strained relationships with family.

And on top of that, he was losing his religion.

Then, as now, it seemed the world was on fire. He'd literally seen it on TV a couple of months before, when the second airliner hit the South tower of the World Trade Center, he was more aware than most of an under-the-radar tide of religious craziness that had followed, which had also impacted how his life was going.

There were some people who made things a little easier. College friends from different countries and cultures...or from the same, but with similar life-experiences...younger women who might offer physical companionship without judgment, Atheistic, Agnostic, and non-Christian religious friends who might answer questions or provide the kind of spiritual support that most of his fellow Believers had brutally slammed the door on...it seemed, for no damned reason.

Wasn't he the same person he'd been a year, or two years before? Not to many of them, he wasn't.

On this particular Friday night, some of his Muslim friends had asked this dude if he might join them for something they had planned. All were going to the house of another guy everybody knew...the hippie liberal Pagan college professor some of these people, including our protagonist, had a class with, who'd responded to a question about a local space for worship by offering his own back yard...the only caveat being that he wished to observe.

So, this dude and several of his friends all packed into a couple of cars and drove out to the old man's house one chilly November evening. They were of multiple nationalities, Arab-American, Egyptian, Turkish, and his friend from a former life who was simply visiting and wished to join in. That man was a convert to Islam, with skin as black as a night in the desert.

By the time they all got out to the old guy's house, he had a fire blazing in the fire pit in his back yard...and it had begun to get dark. He'd arranged some things, having done his own research. Most of the Muslim men, and the one woman present, each donned a long robe, most of them white, save for the Egyptian dude, whose robe was multicolored and that seemed to evoke the Coat of Many Colors that Joseph is said to have worn in Genesis. The young Turkish man also sported a bright red Fez. The African-American gentleman...who had no robe, as he was not a Sufi or anything similar...was appointed to some kind of religious duty by the others, the disabled white non-believer was asked to beat the drum that would be used to keep the time, and our host was seated in a place of honor for the gathering, as the honorary Sheikh...despite his own beliefs being damned near antithetical to theirs...but it was his house.

And so the drum began to beat, in procession the dancers passed the host three times and offered greetings as brothers...for the brotherhood of all Mankind  is an important Islamic belief, and doubly so for Sufi mystics...the man given the religious duty began to chant...

La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...

There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.

And each Dervish turned on the ball of their left foot and began their whirling dance.

La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...La Ilaha Illah Lah, Wa Muhammad Rasul Allah...

The chanting...called Dhikr...is meant to invoke "Remembrance of God."

And deep into the cold Northern Michigan night, a group of people all sought a loving communion with God.

I was the guy on the drum, the accident I was in several years before that pretty much means I can't dance worth a crap, but they wanted me to join them anyway. 

I cannot tell you how long the dance, nor the chanting nor the drumming went on, only that time itself seemed to drop away and that, by the time the last of the dancers fell out and we all packed up our stuff and drove back to campus it was well into the small hours of Saturday morning, and my visitor spent a few hours crashed out on the extra bed in my dorm room. I cannot really describe the effects of participating in all this except to say that I felt more at peace than I had in some time, and it held for just long enough to keep me sane.

Only some of those people were Americans, only some of those who weren't would go on to become Americans...but they all took the time to care about at least one of us, when too many of our own couldn't be bothered.

And it's things like that, that are why other beliefs, other cultures, the simple hospitality between human beings when they decide not to be assholes to each other, should be important to every last one of us. My Medieval History professor didn't have to offer them a place to do their thing, they didn't have to invite me, my visiting friend didn't have to take the time to pitch in...we could have spent the evening playing video games as we'd planned weeks before.

My friend, by then a civilian IT guy and a Michigan Air National Guard Security Forces Lieutenant, graduated and Commissioned the year before after some years working his own education around deployments and duty shifts as an active duty Airman, would soon be deployed to Afghanistan, and later to Iraq, where he was wounded...and he was glad to go and do his duty.

What a different time that was. Among other things, I was a conservative, a Republican, and only in the very slightest sense apologetic or questioning about that as of yet,

But it was a different Republican Party, with leadership that, incompetent as it could often be, still seemed to recognize the concept of "You don't shit where you eat" and "starting ethnic conflicts at home is bad" among other things.

And people on that side of the political fence still had some guts and common sense. Within a year, Trent Lott would be forced to resign from Congress over his praise of Segregationist Strom Thurmond's 1948 Presidential run. God, I miss even that Republican Party...the one where racism was still bad...and those people are why I quit being a Republican.

Now? Every last one of these motherfuckers...and not a few Democrats as well...fears losing their place in the magical city more than they fear losing the civilization that sustains it and them. A majority of these assholes, whether it be Mitch McConnell or Mitt Romney or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi, would rather be an American equivalent to Islam Karimov or Vytautas Landsbergis, ruling over some decrepit successor state...than stand up and take some fucking risks to protect what we ALL have right the fuck now. We don't have to fight to get it...we just have to fight to keep it. 

Speaking as a former Republican...as somebody who liked Reagan, who came of age during George H.W. Bush's term, and who initially enthusiastically supported George W. Bush...this bullshit pisses me off.

It pisses me off even more as a Democrat who became one mostly because the Republican Party gleefully tossed me out the airlock when I wouldn't mindlessly repeat obvious bullshit about a Democratic Presidential candidate being born in Kenya...or accept a Vice-Presidential nominee who was the same kind of Holy Roller nut-bag as my ex-wife...and in no small part because I would not ignore my own knowledge of how stuff actually works.

As I've said, I voted for Obama and I'm glad I did. Now, more than ever after the last few days.

If Republicans don't like that, don't like me, or don't like the country that they were (more or less) hired to govern, they're more than welcome to get the fuck out, as far as I'm concerned. Hell, guys, maybe the North Koreans or the Russians are hiring. It'd be a win-win.

I don't necessarily agree with The Squad on every issue, I don't have to, they're obviously a damn sight better than Trump. Would I rather that AOC, Ayanna, Ilhan or Rashida spend their first couple of terms fetching Nancy Pelosi's lattes and learning the job? Hell yeah, but the situation we're in doesn't allow for that and if Democratic senior leadership has fallen down on the job that damned much, maybe it's time we try something different? Do I like it? No, but I didn't vote for this mess in the first place. Too many other motherfuckers straight up dropped the ball, though.

And for fuck's sake, Obama didn't finish out his first Senate term before he ran for President, that turned out OK and god damn but I miss that guy right now. 

Putting too much value into outdated metrics and things that don't apply to the average person is a big damned part of what got us Trump. The vast majority of the people I know don't care how Wall Street is doing, they're struggling. Nobody gives a shit about stock options when they have to borrow $20 to get through until the next payday...and they just got paid.

And among other things that's how you end up with socialism, but I digress.

Also, I'm just sayin' when a nationalist, racist lout like Boris Johnson says you done fucked up, Donnie, you done fucked up.

Old Boris doesn't exactly sound all that thrilled about potentially leading a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country...but at least he seems to understand that if he ends up being PM that's what his fucking job will be.

Just fucking saying.

This shit is ridiculous.

As things stand right now, I see way too many people ready to throw everything away because they don't like how the future looks, because it's brown or female or comes wrapped up in a Hijab or she openly believes in social democracy and taxation schemes that don't put even more money in the pockets of the ultra-rich at our expense.

I'm tired of "Conservatives" who have forgotten what that word means, who think it only means "conserving" their political power, social status or wealth and the hell with our environment, the planet, what's good about America and all the stuff previous generations have fought for.

But I'm damn tired of "Liberals" who refuse to be, ya know, liberal. And I'm even more tired of people who are so jacked up on their pet policy positions or what color of a wrapper is on the future or whether this person is more "woke" than that one, or whatever.

There's fully a third of the population of this country that's basically joined a cult. But if we want to keep that 33% from being the wedge that splits America...we're all going to have to pull together, Republicans are gonna have to stand up just like Democrats, and older white Democrats are gonna have to stand up just like young Black or Brown ones do. From where I sit right now, it looks like too many people don't have the fucking guts.

And let me tell you, that's the way this ends, keep letting people do as they will, for profit or political points, encourage only those who will naturally stand up or see their own privilege or work for a higher good than "what's in it for me" to do so...and that's exactly how you get a bunch of more fucking people that don't. Do you think we'd have ever won a war, or survived any given national emergency or existential threat if only conservatives or liberals had done their duty to the republic in any given case?

Somebody brought up that "Flight 93 election" bit the other day. I had to remind them that, in that analogy the "Flight 93 election people" aren't the passengers. They're the angry men in the cockpit shouting "Takbir" as they nose the aircraft towards the earth and firewall the engines. The trouble is, the plane is America, and the rest of us are the damned passengers, fighting to survive and take our future and our lives back from the fanatics who've taken control of things.

And if you don't think that's going to end badly, you have another thing coming.

The smart thing to do here would have been to not teach people to be unquestioning, rabid fanatics regarding politics and religion, each with barely more going on in the brain-pan than some illiterate Pashtun tribesman in the mountains of Afghanistan who can't read the serial number on his AK-47.

Fanaticism, Racism, Theological Primitivism, Tribalism. These are not the attributes of advanced societies.

But it sure as hell wasn't liberals who gutted education budgets and started preaching about the glories of the Dark Ages.

And you know what? I'm here to tell you that my Twitter feed is full of people who were responsible for exactly that, who recognize that this mess has gone too far and become dangerous. People like Bill Kristol, David Brooks, David French, David Jolly, Justin Amash, Rick Wilson, Tea Party Joe Walsh, and others. Even many people who actually fucking voted for Trump have turned against him and found ways to stand up, on whatever basis they could. There's people I wouldn't agree with about one other damn thing in the world...that I can agree with about Trump and how much of a threat to all of us this bullshit has become.

The question is...why can't you? Why can't you find common ground with your fellow citizens...even those you may not otherwise agree with...and then act?

Like it or not, this is a Democracy. A majority of our elected leadership is only going to get off their ass if We the People make them.

America is all of us. Black, Brown, White, Native...Christian, Jew, Muslim, Pagan, Sikh and yes, Atheist...Bi, Gay, Straight, Trans...Poor, rich, somewhere in the middle...Citizen, non-citizen, legal and undocumented alike. What happens to one of us can happen to all of us, if we permit it as a people.

And when we cease to be one people, to embody the spirit of E. Pluribus Unum given to us by our forefathers...who said that America was as much for the Christian as for the Mohammedan, the Hindu and the Infidel of every denomination...when we let these rich motherfuckers atomize us into all these "Special interest groups" (to use a turn of phrase from my generation) that's when we die.

Maybe not as individuals, or even as cities, states or whole regions...

But that's when America breaks down and becomes two or three...or four or five...countries instead of one.

And if you think things are ugly now...you ain't seen nothing yet. If it comes to that the only people who profit will be the weapons manufacturers.

We can stop this, but only if we get off our ass, stand together, and maybe, most of all, care about one another if nothing else on the basis that we're all Americans.

Because either we are, or we're not. There can be no middle ground, hemming and hawing or hand-waving here. That's what Trump is counting on people trying to do. To say this one is, but that one isn't...because then we will fail.

No. Either it is, or it isn't, across the board. One of these things is not like the other one. Are we, or aren't we? It's a yes or no answer.

It's really that simple.

The light, or the darkness with its fires.

You pick.

Part 1

Part 2