| | Adam, I'm not sure I get your narrative straight.
In Post 9, you characterize the event as your being "very nearly lynched in Utah." Then in Post 13, here are the further details you provide about this alleged near-lynching:
My trouble in Utah started after my girlfriend produced her ID for the police, and they in turn called the police in her home state to verify her age. I was moving cross-country when the U-Haul truck broke down on a highway in Utah. The local U-Haul franchise owner came with a tow truck after the police called him, and then decided to leave me with the broken truck where I was, since any man whose companion looked as young as my girlfriend did, must be a child molester, regardless of the woman's actual age. So he drove away, with the obvious intention of getting some more rednecks together and coming back to deal with that "peedophile foreigner." The policemen appeared to be in league with the man, and decided to leave me behind for his gang to deal with. They did agree to give my companion a ride into town, where there was a pay phone (this was some decades before the age of cellular telephones.) She called the U-Haul help line and related the events. U-Haul called the franchise owner and told him they would withdraw his franchise if he went ahead with his plans, or if he failed to fix the truck properly. Now let me see. Cops who happen to live in Utah stop to see what happened with a broken-down U-Haul, and find an adult male in the company of what appears to be an unrelated but very young looking female whom you describe (and perhaps described to them) as your "girlfriend." Moreover, you are transporting this very young-looking female across state lines.
If I'm a cop, my alarm bells are going off.
The girl shows ID, but as we all know, IDs can easily be faked. So they call her home state for verification, which they finally get. Satisfied, these alleged Bible-thumping redneck cops don't beat you. They don't arrest you on trumped up charges. No, they call you a tow truck, and offer your girlfriend a ride into town to use the phone. For them, case closed.
Now the tow truck guy arrives in the midst of the confused mess, apparently during which time you are being questioned by cops about your relationship with what may be some underage girl. This guy understandably is wary about getting involved in the mess, so he takes off.
In short, the actual details you provide to support your original claim of a near-lynching sound entirely innocuous.
Yet you interpret all this as: "...he drove away, with the obvious intention of getting some more rednecks together and coming back to deal with that "peedophile foreigner." The policemen appeared to be in league with the man, and decided to leave me behind for his gang to deal with."
Okay, a few questions, since I'm confused:
"Peedophile foreigner" -- he actually used that term? Or is this just your characterization of what you presume to be a "Christianist" mindset?
How, exactly, was his "intention" of organizing a lynch mob (your claim in Post 9) "obvious"?
Are we to believe that he actually conveyed this alleged homicidal intention to the cops? If not, how could the cops know what he was allegedly planning?
And if not, how is it that they could have "appeared to be in league with the man, and decided to leave me behind for his gang to deal with"?
Moreover, in this "Christianist" nation, why is it that the U-Haul company -- presumably equally unsympathetic to Atheistic Peedophile Foreigners -- would side with you against their Bible-thumping redneck franchise owner?
Finally, how exactly is it that from the details you've provided you managed to deduce that the cops and the tow truck driver were "God-worshippers" with "absolute faith in their own bigoted opinions"? Why is anyone not simply to conclude that these were ordinary folks concerned about the possibility of an interstate kidnapping and/or child molestation in progress? And that they took no further actions against you once the facts were clear?
A case urgently needs to be made against the dangers of mysticism and blind faith. However, that case is not the one you make. The proper case against mysticism is not advanced when you caricature all religious people as conforming to the mindless, fanatical fundamentalist type, when you interpret all statements made by religious people in only the worst possible lights and assume that every action they take is in gleeful service of some jihad against rational individualists.
I have met many, many religious people during my life. Only a minority remotely conform to the fanatically malicious sort that you would have us believe is typical, if not universal.
One of the first lessons any true individualist should learn is that people should be judged as individuals. We lose all claim to credibility if we attack all individuals holding religious convictions as if they were part of an undifferentiated mob of fanatics -- using your own words -- "without regard for mere facts."
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Every place outside of the USA is an absolute hellhole. As much as we can complain about the US's lack of freedom, I just can't stand when they force women to dress like BATMAN, when they leave little girls out to die. I mean, at least we address the issues of equality and freedom, which are not even addressed in a place like Egypt or China or India.Other countries are pieces of s**t, so they have a holier-than-thou attitude. I think the most insulting thing you can say about anybody is that they're more popular in another country.
