Hard to feel in a Christmas spirit this morning.
I don’t mean the commercial glut. We don’t embrace that monstrosity at our home. I mean the time to recognize a birth that changed the world.
Not much of that Christmas spirit around. If it is there, it is obscured by hate, bigotry and racism.
Washington Post opinion writer Dana Milbank got a dose of American-style Christmas attitudes over the last two weeks from those who did not agree with his column that correctly labeled the real estate con artist and reality show talking head Donald Trump, who is now incredibly running for President, as “a bigot and a racist.”
The response of Trump’s lemmings? Oh, a sadly-typical vicious and vulgar display of bigotry and racism.
“Let’s not mince words,” tweeted Helios Migistos. “Milbank is an anti-white parasite and bigoted kike supremacist.”
Michael Ban Field sent Milbank an email stating “one thing is certain: The only thing missing from your photo is a cock in your mouth, gay bastard.”
The Trump supporters called Muslims as “Muzzies” and “Mo-Slimes.” A reader of Post commented anonymously that “Muslims worship a man who fucks a 9-year-old.”
Vulgar? Yes. Typical? Sadly, yes as well.
Milbank and his wife are Jewish. That fact alone brings out the crazies of “fundamental” Christianity.
OK, we can say. That’s Washington. That kind of thing doesn’t happen here, right?
Wrong.
Over breakfast at the Blue Ridge Restaurant last week I heard one woman say “I know for a fact that Barack Obama is a Muslim who hates Christians and isn’t even a citizen of this country. I understand he is planning to seize control of the government in 2016 so he can stay in office past the election.”
Uh-huh. Obama is a worshiping Christian. He was born in Hawaii. His mother was an American citizen. He leaves office after eight years and will be replaced by a newly-elected President.
Of course, the current poll leaders for the GOP nomination for President is Donald Trump, an avowed “birther” who buys into the fantasy that Obama is not a natural-born American.
Obama’s election in 2004, sadly, brought America’s simmering racism to the surface. The Tea Party owes it roots to racism and bigotry. Those who follow Trump with Nazi-like fervor are all too often white supremacists, racists and bigots.
On a sadder note, those who proclaim themselves religious leaders who support a faith of love, tolerance and acceptance often use the Christmas season to condemn gays as “sinners” and offer sermons on upcoming “Judgement Days” where those who don’t agree lock, stock and barrel with their religion will face vicious punishments and a one-way trip to hell.
We wake up each morning to a mountain of anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media. A local business owner recently declared that “all Muslims are terrorists.”
Another posted this week that “only Muslims are killers. Christians are not.”
Really? The largest terror attack on American soil before 9/11 was the work of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two American born boys raised in Christian homes. It killed 168, including children, and injured more than 680.
The two young killers who gunned down students in a high school in Littleton, Colorado, were American boys from Christian families. So was the young man whose actions killing parishioners in South Carolina brought out removal of the Confederate flags and other such items.
Christian extremists urge the killing of doctors who perform abortions that are legal in the United States.
Murder and hate is not limited to any one group of extremists from any specific faith or non-faith.
Bigotry and racism is non-denominational and on this day, just four days before Christmas, I sadly see too much of such venom presence in a season devoted to just the opposite.