Patriotism or Fanaticism

I among many of my fellow Canadians were frozen to the news on Wednesday afternoon as reports came of a mob storming the U.S. Capitol building.  But it was not surprising.  The signs had been building for months, with grievance and calls-to-arms posts all over social media.  My first impression was that either the Capitol Police were woefully underprepared, or they were complicit, as quickly shown by videos of officers calmly removing barriers and walking away, allowing insurrectionists past the perimeter.

After the fact, what I call the Holy Book meme is making the rounds again. The top photo is of a young woman carrying a Bible and a gun against a backdrop of an American flag. The bottom photo is of a young woman carrying a Qur'an and a gun against a backdrop of ISIL flags. The caption reads: "Is it just me, or is Republican Christianity starting to look a lot like extremist Islam?"

I've never really understood the correlation between guns and holy books, because the two should not go together.  But many religions are studies in hypocrisy.  They instruct believers to love their fellows, but at the same time, anyone who does not believe like them is to be eliminated.

Religion, by its very definition, is extremist, exclusionary, and hostile to competition.  The entire history of Christianity is marred by extremist behaviour: the Crusades, the Catholic persecution of the Huguenots, the Irish Troubles, and many more.  All monotheism is flawed in this way.  This is why I am not a religious person.

When one looks at the online profiles of many Trump supporters, they tend to espouse devout Christianity.  They somehow righteously feel persecuted, or feel that it's "God's will" and use that as an excuse to behave and think as they do.  They'll be "saved" if they behave in that manner, regardless if it happens to be against the law of the land.

Many politicians know how to exploit this.  Take the disaffected, the shunned, those on the fringes of society, the angry, the isolated those that don't "belong" and give them a banner to join together under, a sense of camaraderie or belonging.  Then exploit their grievances, foster their anger, and point them toward a target.  The attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result.

The absolute mockery and hypocrisy of someone carrying a "Jesus Saves" sign as they rushed up the steps to the Capitol proved that these people are the new ISIL, on home territory.  They should be treated as such.

It has been pointed out that if Wednesday's mob had been a BLM protest, there would have been a bloodbath.  Instead, the mostly white male insurrectionists were able to breach the seat of a democratically elected government, vandalize the place, and take chummy photos with the police officers inside.  All while members of said government were cowering in fear under their desks.

In the past we've seen similar events in other countries and thought that it couldn't happen here.

Yes, it CAN and HAS happened here.  Which is why we need to be more vigilant and less divisive.