Yes, I am cheesily posting an “open letter” to a public official.

What of it?  My blog, my business.  Anyway, I know I haven’t posted anything political in a very long time (graduate school has monopolized my days) but this is something about which I feel rather strongly.  As anyone who has talked to me about the issue knows.  Oh hey — did you know that they’re building a mosque Islamic community/cultural center at somewhat close to Ground Zero?

Did you also hear that, evidently, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich and basically every single news outlet owned by Newscorp (which basically means all of them) has an opinion about it?  That opinion, by the way, basically boils down to “obviously I can’t actually do anything about it because the congregation has every right to build the community center where Muslims will go swimming and maybe play racquetball if they just remember not to leave their equipment in the damn trunk this time Evil Victory Mosque of Doommy Terror.  Should they though?  Really?  Because it’s a slap in the face to the victims of 9/11 to allow what basically amounts to an Islamic YMCA where people can learn how to ballroom dance and then maybe pray toward Mecca afterward terrorists to have a nonstop 9/11 rave.”

I’m going to get what should be patently obvious out of the way first.  Assuming there is some remote chance that Palin, Gingrich, et al are actually being sincere, this is plain wrong.  If our society were to universally finger-point evangelical Christians after an abortion doctor were gunned down can you imagine the outcry, indignation and umbrage from the same people condemning Park51?  Why are non-Muslims evidently exempt from being equated with their most extreme members, not to mention the onus of constantly proving that they are discrete entities?

I get that out of the way because I highly doubt Palin, Gingrich, Beck et al sincerely believe what they say.  In fact, I am beginning to doubt they’re even capable of sincerity.  I believe they merely intend to activate the fight-or-flight instinct/fear-of-the-other aversion in the frightened and the lonely.  So let’s move on to what I really have to say.

How dare you.  How dare you insert yourself into what amounts to a zoning issue in a state you don’t have anything to do with.  If memory serves, Ms. Palin, you don’t even like New York.  You and your ilk have made it abundantly clear that it is part of a swath of land that has nothing whatsoever to do with “real America.”  New York, that bastion of non-WASPitude and gayness, only becomes relevant and worthy when it gets attacked.  Even in the wake of 9/11 it became “Jew York” again when — September 30th, tops?

So just shut up.  Stop this craven and hateful posturing.  You are poisoning America.  You are toxins.

Not least of all, you are pissing on the graves of Muslim Americans who died on 9/11.  These people were just as American as anyone in the “pro-America parts of this great nation.”  They were certainly more American than you — I don’t seem to recall them using fear and divisiveness for political gain.

So just shut up.  Shut up until you stop being useless political has-beens.  Shut up until you actually do something instead of selling yourselves, your integrity and your souls.  Shut up until you deal in something more than bigotry and anti-intellectualism.

Speaking of anti-intellectualism, you have the unmitigated gall to smear an entire region of the USA as anti-American and its denizens as “elitists?”  A region that, on the whole, puts in more than it takes out in terms of federal aid?  Unlike a certain state from which one can evidently stare “into the eyes of Putin?”

On second thought, there’s something else you can do instead of — or in addition to — shutting up.  You see yourself as “real Americans?”  You don’t want to have to deal with non-Christians or non-white people?  You don’t want LGBT rights “rammed down your throats” (Freudian much?)  You want to talk a big game about seceding?

Then be my guest.  Try and secede.

See how long you last without federal subsidies courtesy of the un-American commie fag taxpayers in “fake America.”  See how long it takes before your newly autonomous confederation devolves into a collection of banana republic city-states.  See how long until your urban centers and university towns become East Berlins, Pragues and Krakows breeding Bible Belt Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels.

Then again, you happily turned around and lapped up the stimulus like a kitten with a saucer of warm milk.  So you obviously know how long you’d last on your own before the French (or at least the October) Revolution came on down to Georgia as people woke up to your lies, lies and more lies.

Hey — you dismiss my region as un-American and treacherous, I dismiss yours as an economic remora.  Quid pro quo.  But I get off topic.

Where was I?  Oh yes . . . the non-mosque.  To conclude, just shut up about the damn Cordoba center.  Plenty of New Yorkers who are in a much better position to weigh in seem to feel the same way.  The freaking mayor has said, twice, that it should be a non-issue.  Manhattan’s borough president certainly doesn’t think you’re helping.

The bottom line, however, isn’t public opinion or who agrees or doesn’t agree with a “cackle” of childish bullies and sore losers.  In the end it’s about simple religious freedom and the wonderful Orwellian “some animals are more equal than others” pirouette you are conducting over the rights of Muslims (and non-Muslims) to work out a few rooms away from a prayer room.  How can you not choke on your own hypocrisy?  How does your brain not explode from the titanic cognitive dissonance?  How do you look at yourself in the mirror without projectile vomiting?

Have I mentioned that I want you to shut up?