Maybe if you were a worm you’d be safe

You could down burrow deep where no one would see you

Hiding away where you cannot be found

You could live your life the way that you want to

Not like the Rhino who’s too big to hide

Not like the Rhino who dies for your pride

To grin and show off an erection gigantic

To impress only you and your ego fantastic

Not like the fox or the seal, or the beaver

Who die for your coats that you show off in winter?

Not like the turtle who dies for its shell

So you can have bracelets or earrings to sell

Tuna and swordfish are gourmet delights.

We gobble them up with no thought of their rights (more…)

As a world community, are experiencing increasing violations to our collective belief systems. The iconoclasts are running rampant. Violations of long respected social codes, values, mores are everyday occurances. Nothing is sacred, Nothing and no one is above derision. Hatred, extremes of verbal abuse, hideous senseless acts of violence abound. Indeed they are often applauded or subtly sanctioned. These acts are becoming so commonplace, we stopped defining these behavioral extremes as aberrant outliers. They happen every day. We’re getting immune to them. People who just a few years ago defined themselves as mainstream Americans have gone off the deep end. They put up with things they would never have put up with before. They tolerate even encourage abusive obnoxious language and laugh or clap, or stand up and cheer for it. Corrosive, toxic words and ideas are spewed, hateful, crazy actions occur and instead of people being appalled they applaud.

Through war after war, treaty after treaty, court ruling after court ruling, we as a global collective have worked incrementally to amass a broadly accepted set of social standards. Society has strived to achieve as ordinary, a reasonable standard of conduct, fair rules of social engagement, political correctness, respectful problem solving, restrained discourse, humanitarianism, cohesive cooperative government, environmental responsibility. In this country we’ve strived to achieve Equality under the Law, a Fair and Just Court System, Civil Rights for all Citizens…we’re not there yet but we have improved. We keep trying.  Through generations civilization  has assembled generally accepted social guidelines that strive to provide safety, maintain order and regulate themselves in accordance with some semblance of reasonableness.

We teach our toddlers to ‘use their words’ rather than hitting or spitting. We try to socialize, raise and train our children to be responsible and respectful, to be polite and considerate even if they disagree or play on opposite teams. Now, it seems without our knowledge, agreement or approval those social guidelines we struggled and died to achieve are being trampled.

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Syrian and Iraqi refugees abandoned their homes and everything familiar in a desperate search for safety. Carrying their babies and scant worldly possessions they trudge across the burning sand, pile into battered boats, face a hazardous Mediterranean only to land on strange lands seeking shelter. They want be safe. They are not going through all this because they’re bored or greedy. They aren’t seeking better paying jobs, nicer clothes or bigger cars. They simply want to avoid being slaughtered by the same maniacs who are threatening the rest of the world. We’re on the same side of this war, folks. It’s not like they’re friends with the terrorists. Even if a bad guy sneaks across with them, it doesn’t mean they invited him. However, several Republican presidential candidates have lost their program guides.  Instead of standing by the words inscribed on our Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These pompous candidates are determined to slam that golden door in their faces. And why? Because immigration and terrorism are hot button topics and they want votes. So before you jump on the closest political band-wagon think about this:

1. Terrorists can go wherever they want to go – Syrian immigrants or no Syrian immigrants.
2. They are well funded. Their groups have money and means, passports and bombs. Islamist extremists have been getting into the USA for years. On student visas, work visas, in freighter cargo holds or as stowaways on Boeing 747’s.
3. Not all terrorists are imports from the Middle East. Some of them already live here. Some were born here. Many are not and have never been Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Druze, Yazidis, or any other ethnic minority who call the middle east their home
4. Groups like al Qaeda are transnational groups made up of many nationalities and based in many countries, so let’s not discriminate against one terrorized nationality.

It’s abhorrent that these political wanna-be’s spout simplistic, reductionist ideas and pretend that they are solutions. It’s even more abhorrent that so many potential voters swallow this crap as if it were the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

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