by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: September 09, 2010

At the end of one of the most overall socially, religiously and politically tolerant periods in world history, we find our nations and communities at a crossroads. For some reason, those who thrive on spreading hate, oppressing others and elevating themselves to undeserved positions of power, wealth and control are getting more of the media's attention than they ever deserved.

Some of the intolerant and noisy ARE the media. Radio talk show hosts, network moguls and celebrity commentators are becoming more outrageous in their ideas and more outrageous and offensive in their speech. They are bullies with money, power and ways to rope hundreds of millions into becoming as hatefully hopped up as they are.

Who is not tolerated? Anyone who is too dark skinned, an immigrant from Mexico, an overweight or obese person, a handicapped person and anyone who does not have the right religion, social standing, mode of dress,age, education level, home of origin, accent, political viewpoint, sexual orientation, income, military status, nationality or is far too extremist to the political right, middle or left than people can stand, that is who.

Yes, the extremist right is about to suffer a backlash, after almost two years of the Obama presidency, for their media supported, out of line and out of hand behavior and conduct. This is about to culminate in the horrible travesty of Terry Jones and his Koran burning gambit. There is increasingly low tolerance for this group of people.

 Intolerance breeds even more intolerance.

The problems is this: when people are insecure in their jobs, their lifestyles, their homes, their incomes, and their lasting standing in life; when people have no clear idea about the future; and when a nation has been led  into economic and social disaster, the tendency is to not view ones own mistakes, but to find someone or something external to blame.

American and worldwide middle classes failed to save for a rainy day, incurred far too much debt, allowed their leaders to hand over practially unregulated freedom to the corporations and allowed disastrous wars combined with investiments that were no better in quality than gambling against state lottery odds.

Yet immigrants are being blamed. A tiny and increasingly jittery minority want to repeal or undo, civil rights, labor, consumer , environmental and constitutional protections that are in place to benefit all citizens. Why? Because

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