http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24759141>1=43001
“NAIROBI, Kenya - A group of up to 300 young men have burned to death 11 people suspected of being witches and wizards in western Kenya — in some cases slitting their victims' throats or clubbing them to death before burning their bodies, officials said.”
Thus begins an associated press article for world news posted some time on the twenty second. This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen such news. A month or so ago a similar, much more humorous article hit the Rutgers weird news category that Kenyan (and forgive me if I have the wrong country) men were calling police stations and explaining to local authorities that local witchdoctors were “stealing their penises”, magicing them away I suppose.
Despite assurances to the contrary, these men apparently sincerely believed this. And I somehow have a problem believing that 300 young men in Kenya had a vendetta with the majority of the recent victims, quoted by the article to be in their seventies to nineties. The crime of these folks was “making smart children in the villages dumb”. (How is it we haven’t noticed the folks who produce television programming for our young folks are doing this very thing yet? Are there shrines to “you know who” in network offices?)
Granted, I’m very uninformed about society over there. If Voodoo and similar practices are to be believed (and I see no real reason to doubt true believers don’t experience something) then maybe these people really were into some kind of powerful stuff. But really, will we ever know? Two villages, and the police are pretty much helpless to figure out who’s at fault and why. Superstition has a way of getting out of hand, and nothing proves it more than this kind of activity. And before you think we’re talking about folks in mud huts, we’re not. The folk in the article’s picture look much the same as you’d likely find in some of our neighborhoods across the US. (Maybe a little more rustic, but I’ve seen such about.)
So very glad I’m not in Africa. For you see, I’m a pagan. I go about wearing my pentagram in public, considered by many of my acquaintances to be a brave move in the middle of Bible-belt America. Brave or foolish, take your pick. (I believe it to be honesty more than the two.)
I’ve long given up any interest in witchcraft practices though. To me the concept of spell casting was nothing more than over-glorified prayer. (To the outsider, the catholic mess with the wine and the wafers looks to be something similar - but try telling that to them.) I just didn’t see the need or have the time, and have since decided I’m kind of like the villager in ancient times. I have my candle, my prayer, and my custom. Anything deeper and it’s time to go see the priest(ess). And even that’s far fetched. While I love something of nature and loathe most of anything that smells of modern church, I am not the wholehearted green fanatic that preaches saving the whales and rainforests. I don’t recycle and I surely don’t live healthy. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t wear tie-dye and I don’t smoke anything at all. No, I do live my beliefs - I don’t drive a car, and I don’t think of God as particularly masculine, but I’m equally happy to live by the Ten Commandments and follow the golden rule.
But I do like my pentagram. And you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve caught a person’s gaze meeting my face with a smile, before traveling down to my chest and turning into a very stiff frown. I’ve had people get that look, and cross to the other side of the street to avoid walking too close to me. No, I don’t feel persecuted at all (mostly) but sometimes I’m willing to take bets that it’s because people don’t take my faith seriously.
(Why should they? It’s my faith, not theirs.)
But this is kind of pointless right? I mean the days of Salem are long behind US. Aren’t they? It can’t happen here anymore, thankfully. We have other, more viable witch-hunts to occupy our time. … Right?
But no. I’m not in favor of a wholesale shift to “Christian Politics” thank you very much. What’s “Right” in this country can and oft is well and good for the whole. But what is “Right” isn’t always right, and sometimes the mentality can go too far.
k
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
UULOC 1 - Unimportant, Uninformed and Left Of Center
Hopefully this project won't turn into a waste of space-time, or a huge shouting match. While I encourage discussion, and will admit I'm wrong, I have gotten super tired of feeling trod upon, held under fire for my beliefs and suppositions.
Yet, I also know that in many things I am mistaken. What can be expected from someone who doesn't have the time to spend on endless hours of research, on-line or otherwise, looking for backing to prove out my beliefs? In this age, anything can be done, said, and found to uphold a distorted position on anything at all. And arguments are not worth losing friends over. Thus, the title. May it serve you well.
-
There's a lot to talk about. You'll find me over at DeviantArt.com too, but there I've decided to get away from the social-political BS, because honestly, who wants to read my work while I'm ranting about things that have nothing to do with my authorial attempts? I know I don't generally want to wade through similar garbage from the people I watch. When you're not in the mood, you're not in the mood, no? http://katarthis.deviantart.com/
Anyway, for the first post: Voting. I don't know who you're going to vote for, but I know who I'm not. I find it interesting, how friends here in the states (and abroad) have set their sights on the party whose ideas and customary platform is an anathema. These people have loudly proclaimed to me that they would never vote Democratic in the general election; that they despise both candidates and everything they stand for. And yet, for purposes of the primary they decided to hit the polling places, only to vote one candidate over the other, in order to keep the candidate they detested the most from winning the vote.
Am I reading that right? Instead of voting the tickets as we ought, choosing the person we find best suited for the position, we're actively choosing people we don't want to win? And what if this goes all the way back to the beginning? Who gets chosen to run for president anymore, and how does the process start? For the life of me I cannot understand how we've come to the point where our options are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to start with... how we no longer vote for the best man, but for the lesser of two dweebles.
And as for the Democrats, what exactly is the problem?
Clinton, who has her past involvement in Whitewater, which most of us don't understand anyway, and the "baggage of Bill" which I cannot see how that matters.
And Obama, who apparently now has "terrorist, black supremacist" ties.
... It isn't who you know as much as who knows you? And if what you say and how you say it was a real problem, our current office holder would be deep in it too, as there is a pile of Presidential gaffe just waiting to be read by anyone digging for goofs.
Meanwhile, McCain, who seems to have promised us four more years of the same Iraq, the same social economic status quo, and more sabre rattling with our "new potential foe" Iran, isn't getting a peep of dissention from the media. I suppose that's likely because he's got his nomination cinched and hasn't had any real opposition from any angle for some time. But could it be...?
When you look at the line up, and the first in line is the good old white boy, while the opposite corner is held by, gasp! A woman and a man of color... (Is he a black man with a white mother or a white man with a black father? Berke Breathed always makes me proud.)
Maybe I'm reading too much into all of it. We've been about style over substance for so long it's hard to find anything to be optimistic about. For every time we've been promised this "change" that's being thrown about, we've gotten the same old delivery. Would we have prospered better under Mondale than Reagan? Gore than Bush? It seems to me that the point, like this upcoming election, is rather moot.
How's this for an idea? You want to produce change? Take Money Out of Politics. It's hard to feel represented fairly when the folks running for office don't seem to live in my part of life. (read: poorly.)
lol. Like that will happen. Oh well, it is my lot to dream.
k
Yet, I also know that in many things I am mistaken. What can be expected from someone who doesn't have the time to spend on endless hours of research, on-line or otherwise, looking for backing to prove out my beliefs? In this age, anything can be done, said, and found to uphold a distorted position on anything at all. And arguments are not worth losing friends over. Thus, the title. May it serve you well.
-
There's a lot to talk about. You'll find me over at DeviantArt.com too, but there I've decided to get away from the social-political BS, because honestly, who wants to read my work while I'm ranting about things that have nothing to do with my authorial attempts? I know I don't generally want to wade through similar garbage from the people I watch. When you're not in the mood, you're not in the mood, no? http://katarthis.deviantart.com/
Anyway, for the first post: Voting. I don't know who you're going to vote for, but I know who I'm not. I find it interesting, how friends here in the states (and abroad) have set their sights on the party whose ideas and customary platform is an anathema. These people have loudly proclaimed to me that they would never vote Democratic in the general election; that they despise both candidates and everything they stand for. And yet, for purposes of the primary they decided to hit the polling places, only to vote one candidate over the other, in order to keep the candidate they detested the most from winning the vote.
Am I reading that right? Instead of voting the tickets as we ought, choosing the person we find best suited for the position, we're actively choosing people we don't want to win? And what if this goes all the way back to the beginning? Who gets chosen to run for president anymore, and how does the process start? For the life of me I cannot understand how we've come to the point where our options are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to start with... how we no longer vote for the best man, but for the lesser of two dweebles.
And as for the Democrats, what exactly is the problem?
Clinton, who has her past involvement in Whitewater, which most of us don't understand anyway, and the "baggage of Bill" which I cannot see how that matters.
And Obama, who apparently now has "terrorist, black supremacist" ties.
... It isn't who you know as much as who knows you? And if what you say and how you say it was a real problem, our current office holder would be deep in it too, as there is a pile of Presidential gaffe just waiting to be read by anyone digging for goofs.
Meanwhile, McCain, who seems to have promised us four more years of the same Iraq, the same social economic status quo, and more sabre rattling with our "new potential foe" Iran, isn't getting a peep of dissention from the media. I suppose that's likely because he's got his nomination cinched and hasn't had any real opposition from any angle for some time. But could it be...?
When you look at the line up, and the first in line is the good old white boy, while the opposite corner is held by, gasp! A woman and a man of color... (Is he a black man with a white mother or a white man with a black father? Berke Breathed always makes me proud.)
Maybe I'm reading too much into all of it. We've been about style over substance for so long it's hard to find anything to be optimistic about. For every time we've been promised this "change" that's being thrown about, we've gotten the same old delivery. Would we have prospered better under Mondale than Reagan? Gore than Bush? It seems to me that the point, like this upcoming election, is rather moot.
How's this for an idea? You want to produce change? Take Money Out of Politics. It's hard to feel represented fairly when the folks running for office don't seem to live in my part of life. (read: poorly.)
lol. Like that will happen. Oh well, it is my lot to dream.
k
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