CREDIT: AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE
Not. It ought to be against the law to use the public airways to spew hatred, bigotry, and misinformation, but it's not, so Alabama's CD 5 Congress Critter Mo Brooks went there when he made an appearance on Radio Boy's show. "We’re paying them about $15,000 a year in free health care, free food, free shelter, free clothing, free transportation,” Brooks said. “That answers very quickly why so many of them want to come to the United States of America.”Yep, Mo used the public airways to misinform the uniformed, and turn the victims into criminals.
“We’re paying them to come here,” the Alabama congressman concluded. “It’s a paid vacation!”
Instead of viewing refugees as people fleeing the violence that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, Brooks saw a host of incoming welfare queens intent on taking advantage of Americans’ generosity.Psst Mo! Sweet Home Alabama is the last place Syrian Refugees would want to "vacation". They are trying to flee violence and despair.
Thousands of civilians have been victims of mass shootings and gunfire between government forces and insurgents. In one case documented by the United Nations, more than 100 people, including at least 49 children, were killed in Homs on May 25, 2012. Most were shot at close range.What is most troubling to me is the fact Mo Brooks is an elected official, and has been most of his adult life. For an elected official to have this point of view is dangerous, because he also has to the power to act on his beliefs.
The U.N. reports that armed opposition groups have also executed children, but lack of access in areas controlled by the Islamic State has prevented systematic documentation. “In places like Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, it’s almost impossible to verify the information,” said Bassam al-Ahmad, spokesman for the Violation Documentation Center in Syria.
In its essence, racism is culturally sanctioned strategies that defend the advantages of power, privilege and prestige which "Whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities." This deliberate political, economical, religious and sociocultural structuring of privilege, does not take place in some moral vacuum. It has behind it the moral force of an ideology of supremacy, an ill-will that claims racial superiority and pride of position. By ideology I mean a system of ideas and beliefs about the universe, to which a people adhere in order to justify their attitudes and actions. This ideology can have a religious or a scientific basis, depending on which one shapes our worldview. Nevertheless the outcome is the same, where one group benefits and the other does not.They say parents are the first teachers, so I have to assume Mo Brooks was raised with this point of view, and he raised his children with this point of view, and they are raising their children with this point of view, and that it will go on, and on, and on. Sigh
We can't stop people from being racist, but we damn well can stop electing them to office. The only problem is finding someone to vote for. Surely there are more people of good will than there are of... them.
