How frakkin' dumb can people get?

OK. So a Buddhist Temple here was vandalized, with specifically Christian messages spray painted on the temple and signage, and statues defaced. This is the second time this has happened this year. (Story here and here)

In the comments on both of those stories, one can find statements like "It's not fair to assume the people who did this were Christian." and similar sentiments. Now look, I'm not saying this one act can be laid at the feet of all Christians everywhere. That's a basic fallacy of composition. However, I think it is absolutely fair to assume that it was done by a Christian, with an agenda of intimidation. The messages read "Buddah is in hell" not "Gooks go home." That would certainly seem to indicate that the motive isn't racist, it's not anti-immigrant, it's not an outburst of stress brought on by tough competition for jobs in hard times.

The temple was covered in crosses and sayings like "Christ lives." The motive is religious. Pure and simple. It is one more example of the mindset that this is a Christian country, and 'pagans,' like athiests, are not welcome here in the 'land-of-the-free-to-be-Christian.' However, the more serious problem lies in the immediate leap to defend the obvious religious motivation here.

When we then engage in dialog not about why religiously motivated hate crimes occur and are allowed (even sanctioned, though there has been no sanction, but also no condemnation from area churches in this case), but in attempting to diffuse the issue we ourselves facilitate those very crimes. Regardless of how one chooses to construe the Harris Poll's findings, I think it is quite clear that the rhetoric of violence, rebellion and insurrection in the name of Christianity is on an alarming rise. The 'Tea Party' movement has been proclaimed the 'new face of American democracy,' after all, and Palin is flogging the 'new revolution.'

And that makes this one act of violence significant. it makes every act of violence on religious (or political) grounds significant. We cannot keep excusing this. We cannot keep defending it, or dismissing it as a "few extreme individuals." Let's call a spade a spade, and let's get over our hesitation to call BULLSHIT when apologists try to de-emphasize the role of religion in hate crime.

The Harris poll, some perspective....

I am going to assume many of you have seen or heard of this: the Harris poll showing that outrageous numbers of people believe outrageous things about President Obama.

Now there is a lot of hoopla in the media about the poll being unreliable, the data being skewed, etc. I am not a statistician, so I can't evaluate these claims too well. I will say, in all fairness, that there seem to be some reasonable questions being asked as to how accurately the sample can be extrapolated out to represent the entire population, and some equally reasonable explanations in defense of the poll's methodology.

However, none of the issues the poll raised are exactly virgin territory. All of these things have been present in the national political and social dialog before now. So, we could fart around quibbling over whether the reported 32% of all Americans think Obama is a Muslim is really 30%, or 25%, or 40%. However, the fact remains that whatever the exact percent may be, it is a staggeringly huge number.

Look at it this way. The population of the US is just under 310 million, of which a bit over 3/4 is adult. So that leaves us with about 233 million adults. If the percentage of adults who think Obama is a Muslim is even 20%, far lower than the Harris poll suggests, that still means nearly 47 million people think this. It's one out of five adults in the US. It's larger than the entire population of Spain. Think about that. For comparison's sake, the largest stadium in the Western Hemisphere is Beaver Stadium, which seats 107 thousand. You would have to fill that stadium 434 times to equal even the lowball estimate of the number of people who really think Barack Obama is a Muslim.

The percent of 'birthers,' those who believe that Obama is not a US citizen and not eligible to be president, listed by the Harris poll is 25%, which, if accurate, represents 58 million people, nearly the population of Italy, and enough to fill Beaver Stadium 544 times.

So think of the largest sporting event or concert you have ever been to. On average, it was probably about half the size of Beaver stadium, roughly 53,000. So multiply the biggest event you have ever been to by about 1,000, and that's how many people (remember we are low-balling here) think our President is not legally our President.

Multiply that event by about 800 times and that's how many people think that our President is a domestic enemy who should be removed by violence, about 18% (a substantially smaller number than reported by the Harris poll). About that same number think our President is the anti-Christ.

Rather than quibbling about the accuracy of the Harris poll, shouldn't we be focusing on the fact that terrifyingly large numbers of people believe these things? Shouldn't we be worrying about the future, not only our own, but that of our government, our peace and stability, our safety? Shouldn't we be focusing on what to DO about these numbers, rather than getting into pissing contests over whether the number of people who think our elected leader is a domestic enemy is 25% or only 15%? Seems to me, either number is way too many. Let's keep our eye on the ball people, shall we?