{"id":15975,"date":"2015-01-09T11:26:22","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T18:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=15975"},"modified":"2015-01-09T11:26:22","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T18:26:22","slug":"friday-bag-o-tribalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=15975","title":{"rendered":"Friday Bag ‘o Tribalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"charlieWatching\u00a0NBC and\u00a0MSNBC reports on the Charlie Hebdo terror killings in Paris, I see very few depictions of the magazine’s cartoons. In print and web-based media, though, the\u00a0cartoons … even the really offensive ones … are everywhere. You’d have to be a cloistered monk not to have seen them, which makes me wonder why our TV networks are so squeamish about showing them.<\/p>\n

I think I’ve established my anti-censorship cred here at Paul’s Thing, if for nothing else than my You Can’t Read That!<\/a> posts. Oh, yeah, and that time I lost a friend for using\u00a0the c-word to describe Sarah Palin. And all the times my wife has told me I shouldn’t have written about this thing or that. Freedom of speech? Bring it on, baby.<\/p>\n

I confess Charlie Hebdo’s style of satire strikes me as gratuitously offensive,\u00a0particularly\u00a0its\u00a0slams at religion, which are based on racial and cultural stereotypes so crude\u00a0they’d embarrass a Republican.\u00a0But when it comes to choosing sides, I’m with the irreverent satirists\u00a0every time. We can’t give an inch on freedom of speech,\u00a0even when —\u00a0especially when —\u00a0those who want to shut us up resort to violence and murder.<\/p>\n

A friend asked\u00a0me to read an interview with\u00a0a former nun who says\u00a0that, contrary to conventional wisdom, religion is\u00a0not the driving force<\/a> behind violence. When it comes to war, I take her point: while religion may be invoked to justify war, wars are fought\u00a0for secular reasons like power, territory, and natural resources.\u00a0Clearly, though, religion, or religion-based tribalism (which I think is a more accurate way to describe it), is\u00a0a primary factor in terrorism.<\/p>\n

The overwhelming majority of\u00a0Muslims living in Western countries are secular, divorced from\u00a0the religion-based tribalism sweeping the Middle East. They condemn terrorism carried out in their name by fanatics. You won’t see me jumping onto the let’s-kill-all-the-Muslims bandwagon, any more than I’d jump on a lets-kill-all-the-Christians bandwagon after an NAACP office or abortion clinic bombing. And I hope you won’t either. There are people\u00a0who react to terrorism by trying to start\u00a0tribal, religious, and racial\u00a0wars. We have to stand up to them the same way we stand up to terrorists.<\/p>\n

It’s not easy. When I see someone driving a pickup truck\u00a0with a 2nd Amendment bumper sticker, I assume certain things\u00a0about that person.\u00a0When I see a woman wearing a hijab my thoughts are not kindly ones. To be human is to be tribal. I get that, because I see it in myself.<\/p>\n

And since I harbor some of this tribalism myself, I don’t expect too much from other people. Muslims in Western countries have been under the gun since 9\/11, and in the wake of recent attacks like the ones in France they’ll face even more prejudice, scrutiny, and suspicion. I can only hope governments act with restraint, targeting just the perpetrators of violence, not entire classes of people.<\/p>\n

And wouldn’t it be nice if Fox News and right-wing talk radio just shut the fuck up for once? Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching\u00a0NBC and\u00a0MSNBC reports on the Charlie Hebdo terror killings in Paris, I see very few depictions of the magazine’s cartoons. In print and web-based media, though, the\u00a0cartoons … even the really offensive ones … are everywhere. You’d have to be a cloistered monk not to have seen them, which makes me wonder why our TV […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,10,189,16,2,22,9],"tags":[48,1772,1773,1774,180,1963,1775],"class_list":["post-15975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-extremism","category-media","category-personal","category-terrorism","category-war","tag-censorship","tag-charlie-hebdo","tag-free-speech","tag-islam","tag-religion","tag-terrorism","tag-tribalism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15975"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15986,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15975\/revisions\/15986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}