Immigrants and Islam: We're All Rednecks Now (Part 1: Mosquemania):
Let us mourn now for the passing of the days when we could mock the rednecks. As backwards ass country fucks, these assholes wore their stupidity and ignorance as badges of pride, penning songs to celebrate how immune they are to progress and how much they love white racist governors. Whether we lived among the rednecks in South or Midwest or West of the United States, or if we sat in our liberal brownstones of the wicked Northeast, we whose necks remained unburned could feel vastly superior to the rednecks and scoff as they wallowed in the mud of their own inbred pool of devolutionary thinking. When George W. Bush was elected, "Quel horreur," we thought as we ironically drank our Pabst Blue Ribbons and got into alt-country music, as if overcompensating for being made to feel unAmerican in the reflection of the redneck uber-patriotic mirror. Sure, we could dismiss the Bush election as the primal yawp of the yahoos. We didn't vote for him. They did. Our little island of tolerance was shrinking, though. Oh, for the comfort of the myth of geographical identity.

But now, with the surge in Islamophobia and the anti-immigrant tear the nation is on, we cannot deny it anymore: we are a redneck nation, even here in the supposed bastions of liberality.

Look around: in New York City, the idea that a mosque (really, a mosque inside a Muslim YMCA) is going to be built close to Ground Zero of the 9/11 attacks has driven Yankee rednecks nutzoid. Jewish groups have been circumcised dickheads about it, with the Anti-Defamation League, you know, defaming the effort. Joe Lieberman has been acting Liebermanly about it. Some of the 9/11 families, whose staggering amount of control over the architecture of lower Manhattan would make one think they all have civil engineering and city planning degrees, are agitated. And redneck politicians from all over the map are speaking out against the development. It's for one reason and one reason only: because it's Muslims. And apparently Ground Zero and the surrounding area must be a no-Islam zone because some stupid, deluded assholes crashed the planes there. (This is not to mention that there is already a mosque near Ground Zero.)

What's a non-redneck to think? It's easy, really. The Rude Pundit would rather a dozen mosques be built right on the ashes of the World Trade Center than for a single politician to tell him one shouldn't be. And he doesn't even give a shit about Islam (or Christianity or Judaism or Cock-Worshiping Temples of the Cum Gods). And, luckily, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is not a redneck (yet), said, "I think it's fair to say if somebody was going to try, on that piece of property, to build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming."

But, oh, how filthy we are with rednecks now. Mosque-building has been opposed by people in places expected and unexpected. In Arlington, Texas, someone set a mosque playground on fire and left graffiti of Uncle Sam and Allah fucking. (Although, really, away from a place where kids are going to slide and swing, that image is kind of funny.)

Here's the deal, rednecks of all income levels and corners of the country: you want freedom of religion? This is what you get. You want unregulated capitalism? Well, motherfuckers, telling someone what property they can buy and where they can build is pretty much as anti-capitalist/government-interferin'/fascist/communist/whatever-the-fuck-you-idiots-call-it as you can get. And if you really think that the growing Muslim population is gonna bring Sharia law to America, then you should probably stop trying to create laws against things like gay marriage based on your Bible and get on board with the separation of church and state. 'Cause, see, that works for all faiths, not just the ones you choose.

The thing about rednecks, though? They don't learn. As far they're concerned, they're right, you're wrong, and fuck you for thinking differently and using "facts" and "logic," you elitist pussy. Grunting, heaving emotion is what works. Shit-tossing instead of dialogue.

Tomorrow: Oh, so many Mexicans.