Narrow Minds

On the subject of "civil discourse" I am pretty pessimistic. As a scion of a large Southern Fundamentalist Baptist family, I, a suspected apostate and borderline anathema, haved lived through the destruction "force" of non-thinking people. Immersed in a separate bizzaro world for nearly 40 years, a hermetic ante-inferno of DO NOTS, STAY AWAYS, and WE ARE CHOSENS, I learned that intellect, dissent, debate, and worldviews were foreign anti-God convictions. Those notions could be conceived only by one who followed the Devil. The hypocrisy of these most proud crusaders and creators of schisms doom them to a lifetime walk in a circle of uncertainty. Their faith is not strong enough to be challenged and their fears are allayed by deconstructing opposition. Their surmisings are self fulfilling prophecies as they make enemies in pre-emptive strikes against anything different. Their way of life, they say, is threatened and everybody else must be stopped. The scary thing is I believe THEY make the world a dangerous place and my non-violent nature may be tested as they become more irrational and paranoid. Diplomacy and disclaimers are a given for reasonable people, and bumper stickers may be a good way to let the steam out. Fundamentalism is not open to negotiations, is deaf to prefaces, and illiterate to profound liberal speech. The very literal mission of these extremists is EXACTLY like those we see in all of those other "uncivilized" societies. I am tired of prefacing everything I say so let me say here at the end - I AM A BELIEVER too, just not perfect like you.