Irreverently Relevant

Africans were minding their own business, well, mostly minding their own business when the European powers of the day met in Berlin to dice and slice the continent into spheres of influence. To them, Africa, then and even today is the "dark continent:" incomprehensible, mysterious, and about as disposable as an anal wart. Still, the European industrial age needed to be sustained by the mindless exploitation of the African continents' resources, and, infamously in the case of Leopold II of Belgium, the people.  An image depicting the mutilation of the natives of the Congo Free State by Leopold II Indeed, Leopold's regime is documented to have so brutal that it is estimated that about half (8 million out of 16 million inhabitants) of the the native population died between 1885 and 1908. This was a level of carnage which unfortunately cannot be accurately documented because much of the Congo was still quite impenetrable, but the level of carnage wrought by th...

Brexit: the sound a racist hemmorhoid makes. Maybe, maybe not, but surely a rabid sense if nationalism did play an outsized role in Brexit, the 2016 US elections, the growth of the neo-nazi NDP in Germany, the explosion of religions nationalism in Poland, the rise of Fidesz and Orban in Hungary, among other oddly comical social expressions of nationalism. Are they racist? Mostly, and they tend to align closely with a loose christian association. Yeah, the KKK as an example espouses "Judeo-Christian values" while being pretty much anti anything "Judeo." Why do these fools hate Jews so much anyway? Wouldn't that negate their so-called christian lifestyle?  Wasn't the Jesus they so warmly speak of not a Jew? The only thing more two-faced than overt nationalism and fascism is, if course, racism. It simply doesn't make much sense, and is by default, absolutely senseless. As is tribalism of every creed. Tribalism was especially deviously applied in principle b...