How not to institute peace and understanding; The Terry Jones Saga.

Little known fact; upon drafting The Constitution some 220 years ago, the signees of said document had meant for it to be ratified every 20 years.  Really.  Before autographing the original Bill of Rights, they stopped briefly and said to one-another “Say, let’s suggest they update this thing every so often, or these idiots might follow the same old, irrelevant laws forever and ever, yeah?”  A little wordy, I know, but I make no apologies for proper 18^th century dialect.

Anyhow, we never did that.  Amendments protecting us from the de rigeur tyranny of England still stand today, even though we’re pretty good pals now.  However, some of those idiots our forefathers expressed concerns about in my brain began to surface.  But nowadays they’re just coming out of the friggin’ woodwork.  And sure, it’s nice to still be protected from treason for calling your president some pretty crazy stuff, or to tell a union soldier to piss off if you don’t want to give up your futon for the night.  But there’s always going to be a fly in the ointment.  Some jerk will always force you to question the validity of your rights.  Terry Jones is that Jerk….butthead.  Sonofabitch. 

Some quick facts about Terry Jones, Pastor of the Dove World Outreach Cult…I mean, Center.  Mmmm, no, I did mean cult.

• Charged and fined by a German administrative court for falsely representing himself as a doctor.
• Banned from the church he formed in Cologne for reported fear mongering, brainwashing, and beating children with rods-ing.
• Banned from the UK forever and ever and ever.
• Videotaped himself burning a copy of the Quran, an article of faith that nearly two billion people worldwide really, really like.
• Remarkably poor strategist.

Unsavory qualities, each and every one of them, but it’s the last one that has led to this point.  An effervescent zealot, Jones introduced his plan to toast the Muslim holy book in the name of Christians….Americ…insane people everywhere on 9/11, 2010, under the ill-advice that the cliché would help fuel the fire.  As if the mustache wasn’t enough.

The problem was, not a single other person on earth wanted to bolster his assertion, so he conceded his batshit ploy and shelved that Quran he paid at least $15 for (I Amazon’d it).  Things quieted down for a while, most of us forgot about him entirely. 

But it sat there, mocking him.  Mocking him and his God, and his country, and baseball cards and bad mortgages.  Damned if he was going to let that book abrogate everything he believed in.  No longer would he object quietly while a brackish America let these savages run wild.  So he hollered at Sylvia to grab the camera and his good smotin’ boots, and the rest is shameful, shameful history.

But the genius behind Jones’ scheme was that there was neither genius nor scheme.  In fact, he didn’t seem to plan any action further than making sure to have the fire extinguisher nearby.  The man sat back and waited for the truckloads of accolades to pull into his driveway.  Which is odd, considering that in one fell swoop he set off uncontrollable riots, endangered the lives of embedded contractors, diplomats, and tourists, and supplied great recruiting fodder for jihadists, not one single person has yet to send a thank-you card.   Why exactly.  For every uneducated loon, there are at least five crazier personalities willing to find an outlet and congratulate the hell out them.  Terry Jones was really counting on that, seeing as how his congregation consisted of about 50 swamp-people before this fiasco and has likely plummeted since.

When you add it all up, it doesn’t make sense that such an agoraphobic numbskull could wind up being such a consequential force.  But modern existence tends to lack sense, and instead gives way to sensationalism and gestures of egomania, two qualities that can launch any neophyte to unexpected levels of success, because we love that in our freaks.  We love them to drag their brand of absurdity to the brink, to tease our imaginations with just how insane people can be, especially if that insanity can be easily transmitted from one to 2 billion people that exist to us only in our TV’s.  That’s how things managed to get this far.  All that chaos and bloodshed and instability, it wouldn’t hit any closer (for most of us) than the CNN desk.  Most Americans don’t know Islam, they don’t see it at bus stops or schools, and it manages to abide mainly as fleeting notion.  If Terry Jones was some radical fundamentalist who wanted to burn a bible, bill of rights, or even Mickey Mouse, you’d never have heard of him.  There would be no cameras, no Fox News appearances, no coverage whatsoever.  There’s no commercial appeal in attacking something even vaguely American.