"Some 2,000 years after the birth of the Lord, what does the Savior see when he regards the world from deep within it (ÒThe Kingdom of God is within youÓ)? The population of Europe, once the cradle of the faith, is shrinking, and of those who remain an ever-growing percentage are now Muslim, and in France perhaps more Muslims than Christians actually attend services on a weekly basis." (Excerpt from a local news-sheet.

This is the kind of cognitive madness that just makes me want to spit. Parsing the paragraph above, it is a rich confection of innuendo, myth, false data, fear-mongering and thinly-disguised group hatism. Yet it is garbed in this thin veneer of sincerity and metaphysics and thoughtfulness , like a rotten apple painted red, as though it were to be taken on board by someone too stupid to notice the difference.   It is not genuinely thoughtful; it is spiteful.

This sort of manipulative rhetoric ticks me off, and makes me irritable, and wanting to throw my hands up in disgust.

Amos