Last Day of the Year Bobservations

Although 2020 certainly wasn't the year I was expecting, it was the year I got, and looking back on this last day of 2020, I can say it has been a tremendous year for reflection and growth and understanding. I have some Bobservations …

After lockdown, and being out of work for a few months, I learned just how I much I love and adore, and sometimes, quite honestly, loathe Carlos. We have spent more time together in the last nine months, just the two of us, than probably in all our twenty years, and I still want for nothing, and no one, else. He makes me laugh and smile and love and get angry, and there isn’t a place I’d rather be.

And, sure, Tuxedo is my boy because we bonded, just the two of us, in the first couple of weeks after we rescued him, so he’s got a very special place in my heart. But I do so love MaxGoldberg on my lap, Ozzo at my feet, Consuelo chasing me through the house at feeding time, Tuxedo staring at me while I sleep. It’s love, it’s real, and it’s unconditional.

After four years of a fake Christian in the White House, and the ones who crawled out of the slime to do his bidding, I have come to realize that Good Christians don’t tell you they’re good, they just are good. Anyone who feels the need to announce their deep faith is actually pretty shallow.

I love this blog, and all of your blogs, too, because we all have this chance to speak up. Speak all the way up. After four years of domestic terrorism, when someone says something crazy, or outright lies … COVID is just like the flu … read them for filth. Don’t let the lies stand or the liars win. If someone says, or worse does, something racist, call it out. Make sure they know you know.

In 2020, I saw a gay man run for president and win a primary, and I saw him kiss his husband on the campaign trail. Even better, I voted for a gay man for president, and hope to do it again.

SIDENOTE: this also gives me another reason to post Hot Pete Pic.

And this time we did it; we got up, got out, and voted. More of us than at any other time in history. And in doing so, we have rid this country of him. Sure, he fussed, fought, lied, sued, whined, and bitched, but we are a few weeks away from getting sanity in charge again. I know Joe Biden wasn’t everyone’s choice, he is the choice we made, and we will, stand behind him as America goes back to being a leader, to rejoining the Paris Accord, to being about all of us, and not just the 1%. And it doesn't hurt that we have our first ever female person of color as Vice President in Kamala Harris!

And while I have more opinions than hairs on my head—and to be clear, I have a ridiculously full head of hair—I listen to others; sometimes just listening can lead to understanding; sometimes the understanding is that the other person is a complete lunatic but listening confirms that. And while I may not have come for the lunacy, I have learned sometimes to forgive it; when it’s not hate-filled crazy. Forgiveness isn’t a sign of weakness and does not mean forgetting. I can forgive but I cannot forget, and I will come for you if the madness steps out again.

It has been a year but, while we may have bent a little under the stress of a pandemic, the horrors of a racist, incompetent leader, the stupidity of those who follow mad men, we did not break. Being out of work did not cost us much; we have a home, a car, our bills paid, our health, our pets, our family—those we come from and those we chose—and a circle of friends who are there for us, as we are for them. I’m ready for 2021, and hopefully the lessening of COVID, a leader who understands the pandemic and the country and our place in the world,  and how to work that. A president who has built a cabinet that represents us all, not just the rich, the white, the male.

And so, speaking of male … here are the Bobservations Hot Men of 2020

Matt Smith, Luke Evans, Sh’Rae Marshall, Mena Massoud

Taylor Phillips, Dan Zsolt, Alberto Garcia Cabrero, Eoin Macken

Andrea Casalino, Chino Darin, Joshua Lee Cummings, Emmanuel Macron

Denis Suraev, David Taylor, Ryan Barrett, Dustin Milligan

Gil Soares, Nicholas Pinnock, Mauro Lopes, Ben Miles

Henrique Hansmann, Charles Leclerc, Lakeith Stanfield, Karlwiz Gutierrez

Christian Cooke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Tone Bell, Valter Passos Silva

Brian Loud, Eyal Berkover, Alexandros Kaltsidis, Michael Ferraro

Jay Gould, Jordan Calloway, Isaac Moreno, Will Higginson

Chris Folz, Justin Marcel McManus, Alexander Breck, Lovell Adams-Gray

Marc Buckner, Piotr Gruszewski, Tom Berklund, Gregg Avedon

Tom Zalac, Graysen Quinn, Giuseppe Giofrè, Gerardo Celasco

Eric Rutherford, Levi Bradley, Jules Horn

Muslims Could Teach Some Of Us A Thing Or Two ... If We'd Only Listen

This week I told you about the Muslim family kicked off a flight for unexplained reasons — HERE — and I told you about the twelve-year-old Muslim boy called a terrorist by his teacher — HERE — but now let’s talk, not about some folks doing wrong by Muslims, but about a group of Muslims doing something we should all be doing:

Forgiving.

Hours after those terrorist attacks in Paris last fall, Ted Hakey Jr. was getting drunk; he was positive that Muslims were out to kill “us” all and so Hakey — a retired Marine — went off.

Early that morning he grabbed one of his high-powered rifles, pointed it out the window at the Baitul Aman “House of Peace” mosque and fired at the building leaving holes in the walls where, a few hours earlier, worshippers sat reading the Quran in peace.

Hakey was quickly arrested and charged with intentional destruction of religious property — a federal Hate Crime — but officials at the Baitul Aman instead asked that Hakey be forgiven; Baitul Aman outreach director Zahir Muhammad Mannan was stunned to learn the shooter was a neighbor, but rather than see him jailed they decided to see what they could do to be closer to their neighbors in the future.

“When we heard that it was our neighbor, we said, ‘Where did we go wrong, not reaching out to our neighbors properly?’” — Zahir Muhammad Mannan

And though hate crime victims are usually kept separated from the perpetrator, a few months later Mannan and others got a chance to ask Hakey themselves after the judge in the case granted him the unusual concession of allowing him to visit with mosque officials to apologize. Baitul Aman outreach director Zahir Muhammad Mannan:

“[Hakey] was tearing up. He actually cried and said ‘I hope you can forgive me I hope God can forgive me.’ It was a very emotional meeting. It brought us to tears.”

Mannan and other representatives responded to Hakey’s apology with offers of forgiveness, explaining that their focus on absolution — not retribution or resentment — comes from their Muslim faith. And although some Quranic verses emphasize something quite like the Christian Bible idea of an ‘eye for an eye,’ forgiveness is always the superior option in Islam.

“[The Quran] says that if your forgiveness brings about reformation in the person, then forgiveness is better. Reconciliation is better.”

And so Mannan asked Ted Hakey, left, to deliver his apology at the mosque during a scheduled event called “True Islam,” part of a nationwide campaign launched by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. True Islam seeks to combat both rising Islamophobia and rising extremism by forging interfaith dialogue.

Hakey accepted and met with Mannan and 50 other mosque members over the weekend to apologize:

“I was drinking that night more than I probably should have been. As a neighbor, I did have fears, but fear is always when you don't know something. The unknown is what you are always afraid of. I wish I had come knocked on your door, and if I spent five minutes with you, it would have made all the difference in the world. And I didn't do that.”

And when Hakey finished speaking both he and his wife were embraced by several in attendance; and when the group gathered to pray at the close of the event, they offered to let Hakey step outside, but he declined, and instead stood alongside the very Muslims in the very mosque he’d fired on months prior.

All that has been done to Muslims in this country, going as far back as the days after 9/11; all the shame and hatred and vitriol we, and those people seeking to govern this country, have inflicted on these people of faith, and when the show is on the other foot, they forgive.

They forgive.

Of course, while the forgiveness is a beautiful thing, Ted Hakey still faces over a year in jail; he pleaded guilty to firing on the mosque in February. But when he comes out he’ll have a whole new community there t support him, not fear him; Mannan says the mosque would offer Hakey whatever support they could, guided by their faith and their motto — “love for all and hatred for none.”

Words to live by, for all of us. 

Think Progress