A little smoke and mirrors, please

All of the outrage in the Muslim world over an internet movie has nothing at all to do with folks being pissed off about someone taking potshots at Mohammed. It's a nice pretext and it's a good way to get the people fired up. But that's just the sideshow.

What better way to distract the common folk from their everyday misery and deprivation than to set a few fires and chant "Death to America!"

The last time I checked, a movie never killed anyone but, over in Syria, Bashir al-Assad has been killing his fellow Muslims like it was going out of style. Where are the protests across the Middle East about the killing machine in Damascus?

If the punishment for theft is having your hand cut off - what's the punishment for ordering the murder of thousands of fellow Muslims? Um, wait a second, we can't have folks thinking about that. What can we do to distract them?

Oh, the power of religion. That opiate of the masses.

Running a candidate who was in the business of exporting American jobs and stripping down companies to fill his bank account?

Running a candidate who's looking for ways to lower the tax burden on the wealthiest Americans while forcing lower income folks to shoulder more of the burden?

Running a candidate who thinks health care is a business, not a right?

Just wave that Bible around and tell everyone who'll listen that your opponent's not a god-fearing Christian and you just might be able to distract folks from what you're really about.

Religion is just a sideshow. Get people to accept it on faith without asking questions and you've got yourself a compliant army willing to put blinders on and march in formation at your beck and call. Tell them their reward for suffering is a(n) (after)life in paradise and watch them ignore the class distinctions and social stratification around them. Tell them that to kill is a sin - but only if the one of the other end is also a believer - and they'll be lining up to go to war.

But I digress. Now what was I writing about?