- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Posts
- 118,231
- Reaction score
- 28,000
- Points
- 113
The US has a tradition of free speech... and that tolerance includes ugly, hateful speech.
What we can do is vote these demagogues out of office. They get into office by appealing to the lowest common denominator- evangelical activists who vote in primaries. Or they depend on votes in states where party "straight ticket" is allowed- all a voter has to do is walk into the booth and check a single box to vote for everyone in that party.
The global trend has been that religious moderates aren't active in their religions. Liberals and reformists are increasingly agnostic or cynical about organized religions. This leaves conservatives and extremists which unfortunately also overlap with lower socioeconomic groups who also have higher birth rates.
He wasn't an observant Muslim- he was clean-shaven, he didn't cover his head, he was apparently sleeping with women outside of marriage and there's little evidence that he observed the five pillars of Islam.
What these guys always have in common is that they start with an agenda and they find religious justification that supports their existing beliefs. From the people who knew him, it sounds like this guy was mentally ill- to the point that his first wife left him to escape an abusive marriage and his coworkers quit to get away from him. Multiple people had reported him to police and the FBI because of fictitious claims that he made about being associated with terrorist organizations.
Mental hospitals are full of people who claim to be divinely inspired. That's probably where he belonged.
This bears repeating often.
It is the same thing that drives poorly educated, lower socio-economic status voters flocking to white supremacist movements...and now...to Donald Trump.
I still suspect that the Orlando shooter was also wrestling with his own homo proclivities as well.....but we'll never know.


























