I first brought it up because of the insulting assumption that Christians could only object because they want to keep their foot on everyone else's neck. I suggested that it might seem a hostile act, and arouse opposition on those grounds. Using such imagery (foot on the neck) is a demonstration of hostility, in my opinion, and tended to confirm my impression that it was anti- Christian sentiment that motivated them.......
The imagery is hostile, I agree. When the point was first made, though, in the article about the Naked Square, the imagery was not hostile. The point was simply made that the dominant group gets accustomed to a position of privilege and quite naturally doesn't want to give it up. That seems a reasonable point to me and most likely a part of the equation. The majority doesn't want to give up its privilege, consciously or unconsciously. Well, duh. But you blew it off. And the response to that had hostile imagery. "Foot on neck" is definitely more inflamed than "reluctant to give up privilege." So, we have hostility.
But who is being hostile to whom over what? Perhaps that particular bit of hostility was directed at your act of disregarding what seems to me to be a debatable point and religious persuasions was not the issue. It's a big jump from reluctance to give up privilege to "only objecting" because of the satisfaction of feet on necks. There's some hostility in that, too.
There's a lot of hostility around this issue. I wonder how much of that has anything to do with religion. It seems to me to be the simple hostility of any warring parties where they've lost sight of the problem and are simply warring about warring and reacting with hostility to the hostility on the other side. Yeah there's a certain amount of bigotry and demonization going on, but I think most of it is more about what the alleged SOBs on the other side are doing now to take something away from us or to demonize or be dismissive of us. Both sides. This problem could be solved between reasonable people with no prior knowledge of the history of the war. But, like the ME, the history is always there. And the hyperbole. And the hostility. |
