I started this as a Facebook status and it just kept going, so I moved the frustrated ramblings over here when they started become more coherent.
OMG, I must have had a lot of suppressed anger and frustration to work out... I was at a "tragically hip" hair salon with terrible service and the owner of the shop threw away my knitting (because knitting was not cool) and when I found out, I beat her up, alot. Later in another dream, Muslims were keeping mini Westerners in cages and my thought was, "Do Westerners keep miniature Muslims in cages?"
It was a lot of weird and a lot of frustration in a dream melange.
I think I was working out a lot of feelings about the killings in Libya and riots around the world re. some stupid anti-Islamic movie that 99.9% of Americans didn't even f***ing know about. I really don't have a problem with religion per se, I just have a problem when religious belief leads to violence and rioting that is more based in ignorance & misguided anger. For these crazed protesters to say that the US govt was behind the film or alternately say that the US govt reacted "too late" to the film... How in the hell can a government apologize when we have free speech? And how can they react to something they don't even know about?
Now the film maker is in prison in California, I don't know why. I am not saying that the riots aren't in some measure his fault, but he has free speech in this country, no matter how distasteful his words are. And I think that is something that the people in countries where they are protesting inherently just don't understand. And what I don't understand is people being able to riot, pillage and kill over the destruction of a book (unless it's a Fahrenheit 451 situation, where ALL books are being destroyed), a cartoon just depicting their long dead holy man, and stuff like that, instead of caring more about starving children and all the Muslim on Muslim violence.
Really, I think ignorance, fear and an imposed powerlessness have something to do with it. They don't feel like they can do anything to help the people, so they turn to protesting the only thing that they feel they can... and their governments channel that rage into the religion so it isn't directed at them. Religion is the opiate of the masses has a ring of truth here.
I would further use Fahrenheit 451, but since I have honestly never read it (and plan to now), I don't want to be dishonest about my knowledge base or look ignorant either. However the concept of keeping the masses ignorant is long known to be a useful political tool. We are certainly not only seeing it play out in many Muslim countries, as well as China, Iran and too many other places around the globe.
The United States is far from immune to this... there is a pervasive distrust and devaluation of education in this country and I believe that the Republican party is purposefully drumming up the debt crisis and pushing tax cuts so as to justify cuts to education. The Right Wing, which is heavily financed by the Koch Bros who want to bust unions and create a "thrifty working class" (to quote Mr Potter from It's a Wonderful Life). These huge corporations only see their bottom lines getting fatter and that is all that most of them want. They can't see the connection and value of paying their workers well, which allows their workers to participate more broadly in the economy, thus making the economy grow for everyone.
The current Republican party just wants to keep most people dumb and docile. If you don't know your options, you don't have any... as the saying goes, and I posit that it is true. In 2012, the Republican party knows that it can't win on the merits of its record or ideas, so they have simply resorted to lies. They are also trying to sell the whole kit and kaboodle to a group of people who respond to magical thinking, while wearing rose-colored glasses in their wayback machines. From my perspective, a large slice of their target electorate lives in world of belief in the halcyon days of the 1950s, a time that never really existed except in their memories.