Je suis… Charlie?
It was never a magazine I read. The humor was too arch for me. Ridiculing others is easy. I prefer irony. Laughing at ourselves. We point inward and can call ourselves idiots… and that allows the hairline crack of change to open. I like that, laughing at our own foibles. It's healthy.
Let's be honest, the Muslim population in France is predominantly from former North African colonies which means they are the same social underclass as African Americans in the USA. The difference being that by French law you are guilty until proven innocent.
Mocking the powerless is easy. It's also wrong. Let's get that straight from the start… kicking people when they are down is wrong.
Mocking the powerful.. now that's different…
à la Ralph Steadman
that's an obligation.
as Voltaire would tell you,
that is the heart of free speech.
That would be mocking, not killing….ridicule not destruction.
Unlike the Taliban
As I've said in a previous post "The greatest responsibility always rests with the most powerful."
In my mind the Paris shootings at Charlie Hebdo and the recent protests against US police killings are opposite sides of the same coin.
The protestors carry signs which say "Black lives matter"
and "Police lives matter".
These could be followed by "Nigerian lives matter",
"Muslim lives matter", "Christian lives matter" "Afghani lives matter" "Iraqi lives matter" "Syrian lives matter" Atheist lives matter….. polar bear lives matter…. penguin lives matter…. live trees matter….
Let's keep it simple.
Until we stop this endless division and divisiveness we will continue to be brutes bent on destroying ourselves and everything around us. It is not "je suis"; it is not "I am". It is "nous sommes"; it is "we are".
Imagine…..
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