"Islamic Terrorists" Should be Dropped from the Lexicon

We've heard two presidents, one Republican and the other Democratic, say that "we are not at war against Islam." I concur.

However, there's a phrase circulating around the media, sometimes from the mouths of our politicians and other government officials, to describe Osama bin Laden and his followers: "Islamic extremists" or "Islamic terrorists." I have serious concerns over those phrases.

First, our presidents can't keep saying that we're not at war against Islam, and then have the media and other officials use the adjective "Islamic" to describe the enemy. That adjective phrase makes null and void efforts to preach religious tolerance to the masses.

Second, our two spheres of philosophy, the Orient (East) and the Occident (West) have what's called Ur texts. These texts are the foundation for much of what is written or spoken in these respective societies. In the East, that text is the Holy Koran. In the West, it is the King James Bible. All laws, good stories, and yes, good movies are taken from some part of these texts. But just as law makers and myth makers use these texts to provide order to society as well as entertainment and moral instruction, so do people who are in simple quests for power and dominance.

Ever since Reconstruction, certain Americans have been terrorized by other Americans. The rhetoric of the Ku Klux Klan is filled with "Bible talk." They burn the cross to signify Christ, and kill in the name of God. However, I would not call these people, "Christian terrorists," though by the logic of the media concerning Al Qaeda, I could.

Just because Al Qaeda, Taliban, and other Eastern terror factions use the rhetoric of the Koran, it doesn't make them "Islamic terrorists." Just like their American counterparts, many of these leading terrorists find people who are young and idealistic, and maybe living in poverty, and use the words of the religion to turn them to evil. Much of what the Klan and Al Qaeda says cannot even be found in their foundational texts. For instance, the Bible specifically says that there is no male nor female no Greek nor Jew in the body of Christ. Yet, the Klan, by some twisted logic, has used the Bible to justify the torture and killing of innocent African Americans for decades. To make matters even worse, the Klan has whole churches, complete with their own Klan-inspired hymn books, dedicated to preaching hate and intolerance.

The Koran commands that women should be treated with respect and if a woman is due some sort of inheritance, she should have it. It commands that a widow be taken care of by family, even if that family is her husband's. Yet, the Taliban, by some twisted logic, has forbidden women by law to inherit property. In many countries, widowed women and children are left on the street to starve, since the Taliban has also forbidden women to work and attend school. Also, there is nothing in the Koran about blowing yourself to bits for heaven and 70 virgins.

See a pattern here? So call these people what they are: misguided people who have been influenced by power-hungry ego-maniacs. In my book, Osama Bin Laden is the same as Timothy McVeigh. Please don't conflate these two with religious leaders...of any sort. I just want the media to drop "Islamic" when describing these terrorists. Drop "Islamic" because the Klan is not "Christian."

The False Deification of Ronald Reagan: Whatever Happened to Republicans Like Ike?

As I listen to Republicans yell and scream about smaller government, balanced federal budgets, and lower taxes, I began to wonder when any Republican president ever balanced the budget. I know that Republicans have deified Reagan, holding up his presidency as the Holy Grail of conservatism and fiscal responsibility. But they know, as well as the general public knows, that this is all malarcky. As a kid of the 1980s, I don't recall Reagan's presidency being all that great.

As a matter of fact, I'm the child of a Vietnam veteran and a school cafeteria lady. Reagan's cuts to domestic funding for veterans and his trickle down economic policies were devastating to my family, and thousands of others like my family across America. He grew government, and increased the deficit to astounding proportions, the likes of which the world had never seen. However, through it all, he kept saying he believed in smaller government and lower taxes for all without actually implementing those beliefs.

My curiosity about the discrepancy between Republican rhetoric and the way they actually govern led me to a wild google search for the last Republican president to actually practice what he preached. That man, who is never mentioned by today's crazy, ubher-Right Wing, TEA Party Driven, birther infiltrated Republican Party was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yes, the last Republican to actually shrink government and balance the budget served when my mother was a toddler, from 1953-1961. As a leader, Eisenhower was a Republican's dream....A five-star general, a southerner, and former supreme NATO commander.

After reading several academic articles in Foreign Policy Magazine, and all of the valid google articles I could find, I wonder why more Republicans do not celebrate the fiscal genius of old Ike. It's probably because as a general and commander of the armed forces, Ike knew that no army can survive without the well-being of its foot soldiers. Yes, Ike did balance budget while avoiding killing job creation and overly-taxing the rich, and without making the poor and disadvantaged carry the entire country. Ike, though hesitant and conservative concerning racial issues at first, realized the danger inherent in oppressing such a large and important segment of the United States population. Like a true general, Ike saw unequal treatment as a national security threat, which is why he intervened in Little Rock. Also, Ike saw the REAL ramifications of being unwilling to compromise simply on ideological premises alone. Somewhere out there, real people suffer due to abstract arguments in Washington. He reached out to his Democratic Congress and worked to balance the budget. He even put defense on the table, and cut back on defense spending by opting for weapons that were slightly less expensive. He expanded many of the New Deal Policies, and invested in infrastructure by implementing an national interstate system program. Did I mention he also balanced the budget?

While Republicans try to justify giving gifts to their rich benefactors, and ask themselves what would Reagan do, I wonder why Ike's legacy, one of the greatest Republican presidents this country has ever seen, lies in the background collecting dust?

Immigration and Planned Parenthood Are Social Smoke Screens

As a woman, I am really alarmed at the assault on women's health that has been taking place since January 2011. But, I have to lay aside my emotions, and see things rationally: this Planned Parenthood debate, just like the immigration debate, is a social smoke screen.

Republicans have a pattern: whenever they are in trouble for their obvious hypocrisy, they raise a social issue. Republicans run on platforms -and win elections - based upon fiscal responsibility. Yet, once in office, they do the opposite. When the Right speaks of Ronald Reagan, they can never credit him with balancing the budget. He didn't. As a matter of fact, he ran up the biggest deficit and ran a bigger government than the country had previously known. He just kept saying that government should be smaller. He just kept saying that we needed to balance the budget. He never really did it. Instead, he distracted us with a war on drugs campaign. George W. Bush, who simply re-implemented Reagan-style trickle down economic policies. But in this world, a world with 24-hour news cycles and dozens of political commentary shows on the Right and the Left, he could not get away with it as easily as Reagan. People began to ask questions: how were we going to pay for two wars, tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of the company, and a gift to the pharmaceutical companies via the Prescription Drug plan for seniors? If Republicans were supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility, they certainly did not actually govern that way. What did Bush do? Start a roaring debate on immigration.

Remember immigration? Remember the border patrol? Remember the fence the United States wanted between us and Mexico? Yeah. Whatever happened to that? Well, like I said, we live in a 24-hour news cycle society. Some political science professors simply got on some of the television shows and stated the obvious: if we were really serious about immigration reform, we'd simply punish the companies that employ illegal immigrants. Since many Republican lawmakers have financial interests in those businesses, they killed the debate they started. It really died when a camera crew visited Lamar Alexander, a represented from Tennessee and very vocal anti-immigration lawmaker, at a construction site. Yes, he owns a construction company. Who was working there? Illegal immigrants.

But, Planned Parenthood is safe. Those clinics are largely federally funded, and no one has any financial stakes in them. And, since it is illegal to federally fund abortions, this debate and possible defunding of Planned Parenthood, get the base all heated and upbraided without actually affecting abortion anyway. Perfect. And, and...these cuts affect only 12% of the entire budget. We have been focusing so narrowly on this 12% that we haven't asked a pivotal question: what the hell else is contained in the other 88% of the spending?

What's With the Politicization of Education

One of the easiest ways to oppress a people is to systematically deny them a quality education. One of the easiest ways to systematically deny people a quality education is to defund education. One of the easiest way to hide the racist/classist/elitist motives behind defunding education is through subterfuge and opacity. Thus, we have the modern-day American educational system.

N'gugi wa Thiong'o once said that after the canons of the night came the chalkboard of the morning, and of the two, clearly the chalkboard has been most effective in colonizing the mind. That may be true of the British colonial educational systems left behind in Anglophone Africa and Caribbean nations. America, however, operates by a different strategy. Simply keep people stupid. Keep people stupid concerning the real history of America. Keep people stupid concerning how policy eventually effects the pocketbook. Keep people stupid by using confusing and emotionally-charged rhetoric that will guarantee the person using it that he/she will get poor white people to vote against their own interests.

So far, this has been the Southern/conservative/Republican strategy. There is a reason why they always rally against the national department of education -as if it matters in the first place. Heaven forbid if the American public receives a real education and political discourse must be elevated past anti-intellectual gabble. How would they ever win office? Would the governor of Wisconsin have won office had he explained that he'd be a union-busting corporate pawn? Probably not. So he used flowery languaged and slipped one past the people of Wisconsin, and now they are sorry.

As a person who is pursuing a degree in the humanities, I am also the victim of Americans' beliefs that the only professions are in law and medicine. When was the last time you saw a riveting television drama about a history professor? An English degree? It's just a big waste of time, and I feel that from most of my friends who are outside of the humanities. I have a friend who is an education major that I love dearly, but every time I talk to him concerning what it is that I do, I get a hint of condescension from him. They feel that our degrees do nothing practical. I say that they have everything to do with practicality. It's the reason why humanities professors, and not business, law, or education professors, are perpetually listed by Conservative think tanks as the most dangerous intellectuals in America: we PURPOSELY expose the politicization of America's educational system. When we see the state of Texas literally try to rewrite American history, stripping it of the ugly truths it contains, we are not afraid to say that the educational system here (sadly) serves the same purpose as those of the imperialist European nations: to keep certain races and classes at the bottom, and to maintain an elite hegemony.

Words DO Mean Something

Words mean everything to me. They have to, I'm attempting a Ph.D. in English. And even though some may call me melodramatic, the recent shooting of a United States Congresswoman should prove that there's something behind my bombast.

I'm not trying to be too cold here, but Saturday's shooting was no surprise to me. With today's gun rhetoric and political labeling, I'm only surprised that it didn't happen sooner. I'm not playing the blame game here. As a student of history, violence can come from the Left and the Right. Indeed, there was a time in this counry when most of the violence came from the Left via war protests and bombings.

However, with 95% of talk radio time being consumed by the Right, it is safe to say that most of the gun talk and revolutionary rhetoric comes from the Right. Just listen to the hate-filled speech of Rush Limbaugh and the gun play of Palin. To some, what they say is just red meat for the base. To them, I personally believe that their talk is just a way to make $12 million in one quarter. To some psychopathic fringe elements, their words are God-sent gifts. Their words give them a way to dehumanize people who don't agree with them. Crosshairs on a map become real political targets. People become enemies. Enemies that must be snuffed out by any violent means necessary.

Ironically, Right-Wing Conservatives play down the importance of words. Some even advocate the eradication of English departments across America; afterall, we don't DO anything productive for our societies. We only deal with the words of dead men and the bitter ones of living minorities. Thereby, we poison the minds of the youth of America, with words.

What then, after this horrible tragedy has occurred, do we call the hate-filled, fear-inducing rhetoric of someone like Glenn Beck? Even more dangerous, gun lobbyists, with words, successfully lobbied Congress to let the assault weapons bans to expire. What words, following this horrific act, will convince our conservative public servants to place a stricter ban on assault weapons that could more than likely harm or kill them?

Scrambling for a Story

I'm always talking about how President Obama does not give the political journalists enough controversy from week to week. Well, with all of the legislative battles taking place in Washington, it would have been hard to prove my theory earlier in the year.

However, turn to the political shows now. Take your pick. FOX, CNN, MSNBC has a plethora of them every afternoon. What are they talking about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The pundits keep trying to drum up controversy over what President Obama saide about Vick, but is that all they have? Really, that's all they have. President Obama is in Hawaii enjoying a shaved ice cream treat and keeping his briefings and other official dealings away from the prying eye of the public. That leaves the pundits with a ratings rotten egg.

So, whether you are coming from the Left or the Right, before you criticize the President on anything, turn down the volume on your television. Though I am a liberal-leaning Southern Democrat, even I have learned to turn down the yacking. Those shows exist to stir up controversy instead of representing the true views of most Americans, which are right in the middle. But, if you notice, reader, there's a reason why it's called the "boring middle...."It's bad for ratings.

Exactly How Many Political Pundit Shows Did We Have in the 1980s and 1990s?

For the life of me, I cannot name more than four politically-driven shows from the 1980s and early 1990s. Let's see, there was "Washington Week" on PBS, "Face the Nation" on CBS, "Meet the Press" on NBC, and "This Week" on ABC. That's it. Unless my memory fails me and there's more, but we only got politics on Sunday morning. One hour on each network. I knew who the president was in the 1980s, the iconic Ronald Reagan, but America did not see him on television every day. As the 1980s drew to a close and George Bush I became our president, we didn't see his face on television every day, either. Instead, we saw the REAL Gulf War, and we heard about it from real soldiers and saw the real sands of the desert instead of Saturday morning cartoons.
Then in 1992, a young president named Bill Clinton took office. He was every Republican's nightmare. They went on a crusade, following each and every scandal, trying to dig up something that would impeach him. In 1996, a new network, FOX news, sprang up and it followed these details, exclusively. It started a crusade against the "liberal news media," and claimed to be both fair and balanced. If offered conservative political pundits, people who questioned Clinton's sexual life as well as his domestic/foreign policies.
It did not take CNN long to also follow FOX. And for the first time in our nation's history, we saw the President on television every day. Every day was a new episode in the live-action soap opera that was the Clinton Whitehouse. From Hillary's horrendous outfits to the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the government shut-down, there was always something new. Every day.
Then, George Bush II came to office in 2000. Though MSNBC and FOX were roughly founded at the same time, MSNBC began to be a counterbalance to FOX in 2001 by publicly offering more progressive-leaning opinion shows and news. While FOX only offered glittering generalities of the Bush-Cheney Whitehouse, political pundits on MSNBC rose to fame by pointing out the deep flaws of Republican-driven, Reagan-inspired Bush-Cheney policies. And so, once again, we saw our president on television. Every day.
Then came the 2008 Presidential campaign. It was so exciting. So divisive. So filled with distrust and strife. It made for good news. Every day. I mean, I put in 20 hours per week or more between FOX, CNN, and MSNBC. After the election, I was thoroughly let down because I didn't have anything else on television to watch. Then Obama was elected. A cerebral candidate. One who views the chess board from a thousand different angles before he makes a move. One who does not give the press privy to his sharp political intellectualism. One who does not give the press a story. Every day.
After almost two decades of seeing our leaders on television. Every day. We have one who takes his time and refuses to feed into the 24/7 world of media division and political punditry. On the left and the right, we've gotten so accustomed to seeing our Presidents. Every day. That we call Obama's deliberateness a lack of leadership. Is it a lack of leadership, or a lack of a news story which angers us? Several times, on the Left and the Right, media outlets have written President Obama off, saying what he's going to do before he even has a meeting about what he's going to do. For instance, The Huffington Post ran a story saying that President Obama caved on tax cuts for the rich, and he wasn't even in the country and had not met with any of the negotiating parties involved.
Instead of seeing the war on television so that we can empathize with our soldiers, we see a bunch of political pundits talking about how there's a lack of leadership and confusing vision concerning the war. Instead of waiting on a word from the President, the media, on both sides, hangs onto every word even a Whitehouse staffer may say. There are times when I see them literally stretching the smallest details in order to drum up controversy and ratings.
Pundits on the left and the right should be thankful for Sarah Palin. Lord knows she says enough silly things to keep them taking, and that's why she receives so much political news on both sides: our current President is not giving FOX News any controversy by participating in any sexual affairs, and the Vice President is not giving MSNBC any news by shooting somebody in the face.