Baptists, "Falling Down", and the Islamic State

I have been visiting events at local Christian churches in a futile attempt to find people who don't deserve to be shot.  Today I attended a Middle Eastern Studies meeting at a Baptist church.  I had been to another event at this church and was invited to the Middle Eastern Studies meeting because I am Jewish.  I think they are very much into the idea of the unity of religions, unified by their dedication to Liberalism.  There was also a moderate Muslim there.  The initial topic was headscarves for women, and how horrible this is.  But the discussion soon turned to the horrors of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) and how backward much of Islam is.  The moderate Muslim pointed out (correctly) that the Islamic State is not actually following the Quran, particularly in its massacres of other religions.  The question was discussed how can these extremists be made more progressive.  I tried to volunteer an opinion.  I said that extremism is a reaction to corruption and decadence, and that if the rest of the world was less corrupt and decadent then there would be less extremism.  Of course my comment was ignored.  The meeting, with about 30 people, just continued about how barbaric and backwards some Muslims are.  I kept quiet, realizing that these people are hopeless and that the last thing these Christians would ever do is to follow Jesus's advice about dealing with the logs in their eyes before the specks in the eyes of others (Matthew 7).  At the end of the meeting, polygamy was discussed as another backward aspect of Islam.  The speaker said that Jesus had saved the Christians from this by condemning polygamy.  At the very end when they took final questions, I asked where in the Bible Jesus had said this, because I knew very well that he hadn't.  The preacher stepped in to save the speaker from embarrassment and gave a long explanation that pretty much said nothing.  In attending various Christian meetings, I am constantly amazed at the complete ignorance Christians have of the Bible.

Leaving that meeting, I felt real sympathy and understanding for the Islamic State for the first time.  The Islamic State is hardly an ideal, but the contrast with American Baptists is enough for me to feel some sympathy for them.

After the meeting, shabbat began.  So I watched the movie Falling Down again because I felt an urge to watch it after dealing with the Baptists.  I see a connection between this movie and the Islamic State.  Just take the main character of the movie, lower his IQ by about 30 points, and then multiply him by a few thousand and you have the Islamic State.  The Islamic State is a reaction to a depraved world.  Low IQ people who are sick of modern depravity would naturally be attracted to something like the Islamic State.  The Islamic State solves the problems that the main character in "Falling Down" faced.  It does enforce some kind of morality on its own members.  I think the world will see many more movements like the Islamic State until one comes along that is intelligent enough to dominate the world and put an end to depraved Western culture.  The Vice News documentary about the Islamic State is worth watching.

https://news.vice.com/video/the-islamic-state-full-length

Thanks for raising that question in the Church meeting.

Well done.

I watched Falling Down recently after many years (I last watched it as a kid).

The people they present are all disgusting Americans but I think I would have liked it more if they done some things differently. At the same time not enough attention was made to guy's history and people he attacks seemed not that obnoxious and relatively reasonable. Korean guy, gang guys, old men playing golf, all of them acted as I'd normally expect them to and wouldn't deem too obnoxious. So the M. Douglas character comes of as somewhat unsympathetic and the reasons behind him snapping kinda vague and more like they're looming in the background.

Then again, maybe all of this was what the producers wanted.

Perhaps you don't understand the history of the situation. The West used to be a reasonably egalitarian place in terms of classes, but centered on industrious, educated white men like the main character. The movie depicted all the degenerate scum that have subsequently taken over. Rich tossers lording it over everyone else, immigrants who think they own the place, minority criminals, feminist bitches etc. Meanwhile, the people who creating the wealth that allowed all this to happen in the first place are disenfranchised, treated like crap and blamed for their own mistreatment. It is the contrast of the civilized society the main character would have been grown up in with the degenerate, collapsing society that existed in the 90s that is the theme of the movie.

Yeah, I can understand that. It's just that something like this isn't immediately obvious to somebody living where I do so the film seemed the way I initially described it. If I was to watch it now I'd probably see it differently thanks to you.