Why I Care…a Brief Explanation
By John Ragland
“Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor.” – Ginetta Sagan• Wonderment as a child, during a Beirut Baptist School (BBS) playground game of world conquest (played with a pocketknife thrown into a circle drawn in the dirt), when one player chose to play for “his” Lebanon rather than a “winning is everything” superpower like America or the USSR.
• Incredulity/embarrassment at widespread, uncritical acceptance of really bad eschatology that favors Israel and castigates Arabs/Muslims (see Hal Lindsey’s “Late Great Planet Earth” and the more recent crop of gilded TV evangelists/charlatans).
• Shock/disgust at the immediate reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing, when first suspicions were Arab terrorists must be responsible.
• 9-11 and the rise of nationalism/fascism in America, along with overt prejudice against Arabs/Muslims/immigrants. The abandonment of peace initiatives between Israel and Palestine and regional neighbors, a rush to crush/occupy/proselytize (in that order) Iraq on WMD pretense, 2006 rape of Lebanon, 2007 rape of Nahr al-Bared refugee camp• Dismay at Americans’ eagerness to torture (we want to believe in the efficacy of fictional Jack Bauer’s outrageous brutality), dismay at finding out we’ve been behaving this way against Muslims for more than a century (see Twain’s account of soldiers slaughtering in the Philippines).
• Learning about 1950s CIA involvement in Iran (from retired agent Ray Close, no less), etc.
• Rise of the Tea Party movement, birthed to oppose/impeach the black president in White House, accuse him of being African, Muslim, Communist, etc.
• Local (state, community) efforts to embrace revised secular history and establish Christian (Judeo-Christian) fundamentalism as basis for governance (David Barton comes to Hot Springs to tutor new tea party government).
• USA’s tepid/hypocritical/confused response to “Arab Spring” (Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria) and continued overt favoritism towards Israel.
John Ragland: a short biography
John Ragland is a working curmudgeon with a cat-killing curiosity in politics, religion, history and other manifestations of irrational human behavior. He resides in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a semi-autonomous region of the United States (a waning political experiment on the third planet of a minor solar system in a remote corner of the Milky Way galaxy) with his wife, a mutt named Bernie, and other assorted wildlife.
Ragland is a son and grandson of Baptist missionaries and educators. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, where his father was a school headmaster for more than 30 years (and before that, a B-17 navigator during the last months of WW2). He grew up in the Middle East during the turbulent 50s, 60s, and 70s, but left just before Lebanon’s nightmare 15-year civil war began in earnest. Most reputable historians do not associate the onset of that tragic conflict with his departure.
After attending college in Oklahoma and working for a large energy company now forever identified with the dark lord Dick Cheney, he moved his family to Hot Springs in 1994 (hard to believe it’s been more than 20 years). While not laboring to keep his family fed and out of the rain, Ragland spends most of his time reading, following world affairs, blogging (at levantium.com) under a barely-disguised snotty French pseudonym, and staring at the sun. He works tirelessly for the OAFS (Obsessive Alliteration-Fondness Syndrome) Foundation, as both its only benefactor and sole beneficiary.
Ragland’s political pilgrimage has meandered across much of the left-right continuum. Once a staunch conservative (by all the standard litmus tests), he found himself suddenly adrift when the rest of the country lurched hard-right after 9-11. He is a frequent critic of our national love affair with wars, rampant nationalism in general, and the resurgent, xenophobic frenzy that masquerades as patriotism.
He once defined his religious confession as Zen Baptist, a burgeoning movement (of one) that is seeking to reclaim the mantle of Christian orthodoxy from fevered fundamentalists just itching for Armageddon. He is now an Episcopalian. Ragland may be reached by sending him questions telepathically, or by sending him money. He prefers the latter.
