Left and Right Burning America Down

In her seminal novel The Parable of the Sower, the late, great author Octavia Butler describes a dystopian future in which roving bands of madmen take a drug called Pyro that makes people want to set the world aflame. The fire gives them a rush. Looking around America today, I fear Butler’s book wasn’t a novel at all; it was a prophecy.

There are two inferno-centric movements burning up the blogs at the moment, both of which are scheduled for September. The first, on September 11, will occur at the allegedly non-denomination Dove World Outreach Center in Gainseville, Florida, where Pastor Terry Jones has called for an International Burn a Quran Day, during which he and his equally enraged flock will burn Islam’s holy book.

According to Jones, who also penned a book called “Islam is the Devil,” it’s their duty as Christians to warn the world of Islam’s inherent evil. “We feel, as Christians, one of our jobs is to warn,” explained the clearly misguided Jones. “Islam and Sharia law was responsible for 9/11,” he said. ‘We see the effects of Islam on Europe. As it has done nothing, Islam is beginning to take over there. Islam is presenting itself as a religion of  peace. We want to stop its spread here.”

To that end, Jones will present Muslims with a choice: convert or become enemy number one. The second fiery protest rivals Jones’s in terms of both flamboyance and absurdity.

An anonymous, progressive blogger calling himself General JC Christian has asked Americans from coast-to-coast to burn the Confederate flag at Tea Party rallies on September 12th, a date that’s holy to Tea Partiers who heeded Glenn Beck’s cry to turn back the political pages to the days after 9/11, when “we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.”

The General claims that burning the flag will force Tea Party protesters to either embrace the confederate flag, so often associated with slavery, or decry the “racist” image, thereby cleansing the movement of its unsavory elements.

Neither Jones nor “Christian” are on the right track. First and foremost, burning books or flags recalls the Nazis early days, when they gleefully singed anything, everything and anyone who opposed their restrictive, oppressive ideology. As for Jones, his protest only perpetuates Islamophobia and goes against the very Bible he holds so dear: would Jesus approve of such tinder box shenanigans? I highly doubt it.

Christian’s protest, meanwhile, rests on a myopic view of the Confederate flag, one that he readily buys into: “I can imagine people showing up at the tea parties, which I’ll do at my local one, and the tea party backers will start explaining why [the flag] is about state’s rights, not slavery, and all that and basically hang themselves.” Well, actually, the Confederate flag is about state’s rights, and even if it weren’t, trying to burn the flag away censors a part of our history that’s integral to our nation’s growth. We can’t pretend that the civil war didn’t happen, nor can we fool ourselves into thinking it was simply about slavery.

Our nation’s collective sanity seems quite tenuous these days: Joe Stack flew his plane into an IRS building, a man named Terry Hoskins bulldozed his house and just today a man shot eight of his coworkers because he lost his job. Now we have people on both sides of the political divide calling for mass arson.

If Americans wants to save this country from itself, I suggest they spend more time engaging one another, rather than burning the bridges we need for a more prosperous, harmonious future.

Image via Paul Burgess