Hijacking your comment to point out that my community, Lebanese Christians, typically tend to have a bootlicking problem. And an unparalleled superiority complex. Apparently Vance attended a Lebanese church the night of the US election and people were acting like the US, in a righteous turn of the wheel of history, will finally turn a page and become an undisputed force for good (it will protect Lebanon(‘s Christians, only) and stop exporting the sex and the trans)
I know what you’re thinking. Surely this jackass on Lemmy doesn’t think the shitheads around him can outdo American exceptionalism. Oh baby.
(In the following rant I’m banging out bits of mainstream political and sectarian thought in my ethnoreligious group. I’m not endorsing these horrible ideas. Not everyone is going to tick all of these boxes, but the point is to give an overview for those who care.)
The body of my comment
Y’know how you do a census in your country? Any country. You count the people so you know how to set policy. We don’t do that here. In 1932, the French colonial government counted the population. 50% Christian. 50% Muslim. Our Parliament is split by sect and not just by district, so that means I can only vote for my district’s Christian seats (technically the seats for my specific flavor of Christianity… yeah).
Since 1932, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn, demographics have changed. Christian areas, with their higher rates of education and income, have not seen the same birth rates as other areas. The Christian population can also emigrate more easily to countries with higher standards of living. The reasons why (and mechanics of) the disenfranchisement of other communities (especially Shia Muslim communities) are a whole thing and I won’t get into it now. But as it stands, the Muslim population has grown considerably since 1932. Let’s say it’s 60% (it’s more).
So it’s illegal to check, because it would “upset” the “correct” balance of power. And it’s not just politicians. The average Christian will not only tell you “we’re” artificially holding on to power, but that it’s critical to do so because the other guys can’t govern.
It’s late here and I had a long workday so I can’t bang out the full rant here. But there’s a lot of cultural nuance that might be hard to grasp for outsiders. Whiteness as a concept is a fascinating social phenomenon. In the mind of the very sharpest tools in the shed, it’s a classical Europeanness, a type of inherent ability to do civilization. Lebanese Christians, generally, see themselves in this lens. We are, in some way, mythical long-lost Europeans, being crabs-in-a-bucketed back into a miserable existence by our misguided cousins. We gave Europe Christianity, our sacred ancient treasure. We gave it its fucking name. Oh you Americans think you’re white? You diseased misceganated mongrel barbarian pagans? We are whiter than you. We are not Arabs, we are Phoenicians, we are the true authors of history and the true creators of commerce and writing and civilization and— (for further reading, I recommend looking into Phoenicianism and Lebanese Christian Nationalism. The former isn’t necessarily relevant on the surface, but is a good representation of the hyperexceptionalist worldview. I veered a bit into hyperbole, but I assure you, I’ve heard the kernel of all of these from people I expected better of)
I don’t believe this, I hope it doesn’t need saying. In my view, we are normal people. Lebanese Christians have been no kinder to the people around them than the others have been to them. Same shit, different toilet.
No, literally, different toilet. The Muslims all have bidets. As does my “self-hating” Christian ass (haha ass). God help me if I need to take a dump in a public bathroom in “my” parts of the country. Why don’t we adopt them? Well, it’s a Muslim thing, so even if it’s cleaner, we don’t do it. Because we’re actually the clean ones. And they are dirty. Not like us. Not like the protagonists of world history.
You need to induce vomiting? Open Twitter and search for “Shia” or “Shias”. Look at what people around me think is funny. Twitter is a cesspit and has become worse lately, but Lebanese hate speech has always been overlooked by moderation and has had a decade of head start over what more people are dealing with now. It’s worse when you understand that they don’t even really necessarily hate them for their religion, this is at least partially hatred of the poor, the people who “proper” society has given nothing for a century.
I’m going way, way, way off the rails here. I appreciate that one person’s rant about his own community’s bigotry doesn’t even begin to explain a two millennia of self-propagating Sisyphean sectarian violence. I can go for pages and pages but the point I’m making is
This guy didn’t just think the leopards wouldn’t eat his face. He thought, in a world of leopards and gazelles, that he is the strong ranger with a gun (and cool sunglasses. His name is Bachir after all). It didn’t even occur to him, not for a second, that any of this could touch him. He thought it could backfire on the dumb hicks, but he’s special. He knew fully well that the administration he voted for was made of despicable people. He’s not the “dumb” conservative who thinks they have values or principles. He knew and understood, explicitly, the oft-repeated concept that “conservatism” boils down to drawing laws around people A to put people B above said law. It’s not a secret to him. It’s what he believes in.
I’m still not sure I’m being clear.
Due to his background, I believe he absolutely knew that people were going to get fucked with arbitrarily. And he explicitly thought he was deeper into the ingroup than even the average member of the ingroup and that he was actually untouchable. There’s every chance he’s a bigger bigot than any klansman would even know how to be.
End rant. Everything is fine. Don’t look up the size of the US embassy being built in my country. Everything is totally normal.
Come back next week for my celebrated other classic rants such as
“The Town Priest Refuses to Pray for Palestine and that Really Pisses Me Off Even Though I’m Agnostic (But Don’t Tell The State That or I Won’t Be Able to Vote or Get Married)”, “QAnon in the Middle East: a Mind-Melting Primer”, “Our Priests Generally Don’t Diddle Kids (So We Imported One Who Does)”, and the fan-favorite “The Western Christian Persecution Narrative Complex as Understood Through the Lens of Eastern Christians’ Very Real History of Horrific Sectarian Violence: Syncretism, Life, Death, and The Jews™”.
Someone take away this keyboard from me before I write something so based the local mob will bury me alive for it.
Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. It’s like kids dreaming of being actors or singers or athletes.
Even if they think their teachers are good people, they clearly see that they don’t drive fancy cars. Even if their parents are middle income earners, they aren’t as famous or rich as the people babysitting them on screen. It may be more obnoxious and more piped straight into their eyeballs now but it’s hardly new.
Hell I’m a grown ass adult and I think about every once in a while.