Star Cross Crescent

The price of gas spiked in the 70s when I was a boy.   I found the epithets used in reference to Muslims, at least in my small circle of family and friends, to be repulsive, egregiously so.   I recall wanting a word like egregious to describe these fits of rage that came over grown men in torrents.   

An opportunity to check the pulse of the old familial anger toward Muslims presented itself this week with the death of my 97 year old grandmother.   I went out of my way after the service to queue those cousins and uncles most susceptible to fits of uncontrollable rage over things that are beyond their control.  I lobbed a few harmless gas price comments.  No takers!  I received a bit of empathy but no ire.  Wow. What the…  I approached the father of a career-Navy cousin.   Nothing.  He was always an easy target, too.   Later, in the privacy of my parent’s home,  I released an old reliable cannon shot on my brothers.  Iranian nukes! What are my conservative brethren feeling these days about Islamic extremists with nukes, I wondered to myself, aloud.  It seems one of my brothers actually read that one article in that big finance magazine.  The one that described how a handful of powerful self-righteous money-lenders in America cornered the market on oil (or something akin to this anyway) last summer with the intention of ruining a competitor who was selling oil short.  They drove their competitor into bankruptcy and America deeper into recession.  

They accomplished something else altogether unintended.  They apparently drove the fear of Islam from my brothers’ collective conscience.   Now, I don’t control these conversations.   I start ‘em then sit back and watch.   Again, nothing.  I found, literally, no xenophobia.   Anger, to the extent that it was revealed at all, was astonishingly introspective.   It seems our war mongers may have cried wolf too often, too passionately.  I sense a new American consciousness.  It’s less hateful, less fearful, more willing to nod in agreement with diversity.

What does all this have to do with the fact that I’m (that we’re) Christian?  Nothing.  Nothing whatsoever. Not a damn thing.   I’ve spoken with normal, everyday, macho, American men who tear-up discussing the possibility that the people of Iran are about to change the world.  Forever. 

Be strong Iran.   They cannot rule without your consent.    This bears repeating.   They cannot rule without your consent.  

guest author / jv