Some Thoughts on Hijackers

[Niki1 2]

Some Thoughts on Hijackers
We say “hijackers” brought down the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11. The 20 Muslims on those 4 airplanes weren’t the real hijackers. The real Muslim hijacking started in the ‘20s when (some one whose name I can’t remember from a History Channel program) started writing about the militant or negative aspects of Islam. This theme was taken up again in the ‘50s by (some one else whose name I can’t remember from the same History Chanel program) and got a much better foothold no doubt because of the creation of the state of Israel. These hijackers ignored all the good and compassionate parts of Islam and consecrated on the most harsh aspects. They called this the “fundamental” tenants of Islam. But the Muslims don’t have a monopoly on this type of hijacking.

The teachings of Jesus emphasize love and compassion and forgiveness. There have always been the “hellfire and damnation” preachers but at some point in the ‘70s (after our sexual and cultural revolution of the ‘60s) they began to call themselves “fundamentalist” Christians. To them, the outward appearance and behavior was more important than the inward attitude and feeling of Jesus’ teachings. They also started being political. They preached for elected officials to be “God fearing Christians.” They started reinterpreting our Constitution’s 1st Amendment to mean that the government should not put one Christian denomination over another.

The thing that makes democracy work is the willingness of the minority to be governed, ruled, whatever word it is, by the majority. Without this willingness, insurrection begins. Insurrection is sometimes bloody as in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems we are seeing a different kind of insurrection lately. Politics has been described as, “the art of the possible.” Compromise has always been what has let the minority subject themselves to the majority. Without compromise, there is no reason for the minority to trust the majority. The majority can act like a bully, at best, or a dictator at worst.

Now we are seeing a group, actually a minority but a subset of a larger political party, throw away what has made our representative democracy work for the 222 years that we have had a Constitution. This atmosphere of “us vs. them,” “if you’re not with us, you’re against us,” “you are all wrong and we are right about everything,” is a poison to what makes compromise impossible. It may not be long before these hijackers start calling their movement “Fundamentalist Democracy.”

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?