What percentage of vets would you estimate are persuadable?
That’s what I see as the central question here: if a group of people can be convinced to become leftists, we should be working with them regardless of whether it’s difficult. We’re not going anywhere unless we get literally tens of millions of more people on our side, and not all of those people are going to be perfect.
This might upset all you libs in here, but when bad things happen to bad people, some might call that justice.
There’s a chance it’s for the better.
In the book, Paul does everything he can to avoid the jihad he sees coming, because jihad = religious fanaticism = bad. A crusade is also religious fanaticism and is also bad, but portraying the term “crusade” as an evil to be avoided could be a good thing for an American audience. Crusades are a part of Christian culture, and if you’re going to write religious criticism there’s less of a risk of it being misinterpreted if you use the audience’s dominant religion as an example. If you criticize religious fanaticism using the religion of the Other, it’s easy to interpret that as nothing more than “Other bad.”
Plus, we’re almost guaranteed to get some Christian chuds throwing a fit over it, especially with the rise of right-wing “crusade” imagery. That’s always good for a laugh.
Spoilers for a book that came out half a century ago, I guess.
The American South is a region filled with religious extremists, some of whom have already radicalized to the point of committing acts of terrorism. Should we make it its own country and fund their schools to boot? Is that likely to improve the situation or make it worse?
Could China’s approach be done better? Almost certainly. Is it the most humane response to extremism we’ve seen so far? That’s for you to decide.
Dope ass posts by @TransComrade69 that everyone should read:
Sorry to lose your efforts. This place has a lot of promise, but we have to do better by our trans comrades.
:cat-trans: