In some ways, every country is as many countries as the people who live in it. If you can socially navigate away from bother or threat, that’s what you do. If not: keeping quiet may be what you have to do for a while.

The “politics of hate” are difficult everywhere because the communities that generate the same — not only in Islam: look at Russia — enable criminals to acquire power, and then they are interested in being powerful and holding on to power, not in the doing of good things. The wrong personalities get their hands on the wheels and levers of governance, and then they are hard to deal with.

It’s good to hear from you.

Some people “check in” — and they’re far more interesting than me, but it’s hard to see the same fully when they feel constrained or intimidated by their political atmosphere from sharing background, insight, or news at length.

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The Jewish story that begins with exodus sends its signal down through time about the character of men who would be gods. With the help of God, so goes this story, the Jews pleaded, God interceded, and the Jews fled Pharaoh and what he represented.

Who were the Jews?

What manner of human gathered out in the desert to do things perhaps a little differently?

These throwbacks under the black flag seem the pestilence of each generation, and, as my old Haggadah stated, “With every generation a little more freedom is won.”

Jewish Universalism may have gotten a bit of a push by Hillel the Elder who died around 10-CE, a date significant for what may have been left for Jesus and later Paul and Constantine to both pick up and exploit against the backdrop of decayed and restive Rome, and the same may then have come into Muhammad’s purview. Two of the three monotheist houses have been vying a long time to suppress and eliminate the people who first abandoned Pharaoh, and to do it, it seems some keep becoming Pharaoh-like in their ambition, political absolutists served by an immoral and vacuous loyalty above all.

I think that’s where we all are and we ought to come forward of those old positions, say hello, embrace, and get on with being done with the bloodiest of despots.

However, it’s a large job, and watching Lord of the Rings doesn’t really help us anymore. 🙂

The Catholic Church dropped its habitual charge of Deicide against the Jews in 1964 (the Lutherans of the U.S. took a decade or two longer), and parts of the Christian community have moved on to a pro-Zionist position based on their eschatology.

Islam may be more challenged, but deep down in it, one hears . . . Hillel: ” whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” It too will shear away from the barbarism sustained in the existence of the Muslim Brotherhood and its many associates.

And if we are lucky, we may all come through being a little bit something else, even more Jewish but equally more wise in being ourselves.

WWWIII: solved.

Wake me for the next one. 😀

Live Leak (18+) reference: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cbf_1376774737 – 8/17/2013 – a storning.

My response:

With regard to Islam in developing or failed states — e.g., Somalia, now Syria, certainly today unsecured northern Iraq — our chatyping class may not appreciate the investment in both evident lore, legend, and promise as well as underlying social formulas that have to do with the exercise of cruelty, force, and will. Some have difficulty leaving their own yesterday, and that thought may apply well to the sentimentality of many a modern Muslim otherwise discomforted by this display of barbarity that well may have been customary in Muhammad’s 7th Century experience.

While the Jews have worked against the infantile and tyrannical from Pharaoh and forward, a look-up of “Hillel and Shammai” — http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/helicopter-carrying-yazidis-crashes-iraq-report-n178681 — may tell that the Jewish navigation of an ethics and morality has entailed a long and enduring progressive intellectual evolution: we argue everything! 🙂

The renegade reading of “The Binding of Isaac” suggests that God’s test was not of absolute obedience (in the text of the Torah, God sets out to “prove” Abraham, but what he’s testing is not explicitly defined) but a test of conscience and courage _that Abraham fails_! Some believe Abraham should have questioned God and defended Isaac’s life.

Among the modern, if we are so, we may want to “come forward” of our own fixed positions and find our better way, now globalized, forward. Clearly, what the Muslim Botherhood groups do and what their counterparts among “malignant narcissists” is not the way any large population should wish to travel.

“Come forward” (of your previous fixed position) may become as much a trope here as “Muslim Botherhood”.

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