Bigotry in Gettysburg

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Right now in Gettysburg, a new battle is being waged - to stop a casino from being built near the historic battlefield.

Supporters say the casino plan doesn't tread on hallowed ground and will bring jobs, more tourists and tax relief to the area. But the potential that a casino will cheapen the wholesome reputation that draws tourists to Gettysburg, where 160,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought a three-day battle in the summer of 1863, is what worries many.

C'mon, let's hear the rally cry - the people of Gettysburg are BIGOTS for not allowing a casino to be built near the battlefield. They're stomping on progress in favor of history!

In April, Ronald Maxwell, who made the epic 1993 movie "Gettysburg," came to town to deliver an impassioned speech to casino opponents.

The French would not allow a casino to be built on famous battlefields along the Somme River or in the Ardennes, and the Polish would not allow a casino a half-mile of the site of the Katyn massacre or the Auschwitz concentration camp, he said.

"Why stop at Gettysburg? Maybe we should build some casinos at the site of the World Trade Center," he said. "That would create some jobs right? Heck, that would help the tax base, right?"

Oh come on, all they want to do is set up 600 slot machines and 50 gaming tables.

The nearly 6,000-acre park is bordered by the town, as well as areas already saturated with hotels and fast-food restaurants.

Oh my God, they built HOTELS near the battlefield? Well that ends the argument right there. Since they built hotels near the battlefield, they can build a casino. Afterall, who knows what kind of things are going on in those hotel rooms that would cheapen the memory of 7,863 people who died there!

[Source]

The truth is, I'm against building a casino in Gettysburg. I'm against the "community center" in NYC being built solely because of the site they're building on (not because of it's proximity to Ground Zero). Building a casino called the Mason Dixon would cheapen the fact that thousands of people died there, not because of terrorism, but fighting for their country and their livelihood. I hope that looking at this argument, people can understand a little better why people may not want an Islamic community center near Ground Zero, where many of their friends and loved ones died, maybe fewer in number but much more recently than those at Gettysburg. Please keep that in mind before going off half-cocked and calling someone a bigot. Know their argument.

Comments

[op-tech-glitch.livejournal.com]

Dear mod: thank you for plopping the "satire" tag in there.

Unfortunately, behind the sarcasm the OP appears to be quite serious when she posts this kind of stuff.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

The mod didn't put it there. I did.

Sigh.....

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I don't know how many time I should repeat this.

One. Any one member could add any tag to any post.

Two. Only mods could edit or remove tags which have already been added.

Three. Only mods could create new tags.

Conclusion: It could've been any of the 850 members who put that tag there. Here, I've edited it.

[rogerdr.livejournal.com]

This 'sacred ground' stuff is pretty silly. I can imagine all kinds of shit happening in the Freedom Tower. It'll be mostly a business building with graft and corruption up the ass all through it. A casino in Gettysburg? The dead won't care.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

it's not about the dead, it's about the living who think they have a right to tell others that they cannot do shit at location X because they have a painful memory that's vaguely connected to what they are doing at that location

it's a load of horse-shit if ever i've heard one

and i for one, have had it up to here and then some with this stupid shit

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

UGH!

I don't get to own the space at/near/two blocks from where my parents died.
Neither does anyone else.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Are the people demonstrating against this waving signs equating the religion and/or ethnic background of the casino owners with terrorism? Are they saying it would be okay for one kind of casino to be built nearby, but not another?

Otherwise, the cases aren't comparable.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Their argument - that there's fast food places and hotels nearby, so it should be okay to build a casino - is similar to an argument someone else presented here that there's a BK and a strip club near Ground Zero, so a mosque/"community center" should be okay, too.

Like I said, I'm not against the mosque being built because of the Islamic religion. I'm against it because the building being torn down and replaced by the "community center" was part of 9/11.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

The "arguments" against the community center (no italics needed) are almost entirely counter-factual.

When I stop hearing people spouting crap like calling it a "Victory Mosque" and acting like a Sufi Muslim organization has any ties whatsoever to Osama Bin Laden's fanaticism, I might be inclined to take the arguments seriously. But I think that if the arguments lose their inaccurate assertions, then most of them will fall completely apart.

There are already Muslims praying in the building that would changed from a defunct store front into a community center that will be an asset for lower Manhattan -- so demanding that the plans be moved to some enirely undefined "respectful" distance would have a net effect of REMOVING American Muslims from a street address where they have been for several years now.

The America I believe in and that I cherish does not make such demands upon it's law abiding citizens and certainly does not do so via lies and defamation.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

I'm still interested in a little transparency on their end as to who's funding the project. If they're getting money from people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Muammar al-Gaddafi (who recently said all of Europe should practice Islam), would you STILL support it? I'm sure that, even if those men did donate money, it would be under assumed names or filtered through various people, making it hard to trace to them. Still, some transparency would be the least that could be done.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They were actually there before the Twin Towers were built. But them Islams just cain't be 'Murkun like the rest of us, evidently. >.<

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure games of chance were a welcome relief and highly desired by the soldiers.

I'm always amused at how Americans treat their veterans; as if they were some kind of moral paragons of virtue and teetotaling abstinence dedicated to the principles of White Knights.

No. We sleep with whores, drink till 4am, and punch people because it feels good. Sheesh.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

"We sleep with whores, drink till 4am, and punch people because it feels good"

And those are the friendly ones.
Y'all also put Iraqis in naked human pyramids.

[drcruel.livejournal.com]

You could actually use your argument to make a pretty good case for making it illegal to display the Confederate flag anywhere in America. And to prevent building churches in Northern Ireland. We should also remove the mosque from the Pentagon and remove the mosque that's already at Ground Zero, I imagine.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

There's no mosque in the Pentagon. They set up an area for them to pray. That's it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This. Not to mention banning any and all speaking of the German language from the German border eastward.

[majortom-thecat.livejournal.com]

I can't get excited about casinos in Gettysburg, but I do care about the community center controversy because lots of innocent Muslims throughout the country are being harassed and intimidated over this insanity.

I used to agree with Janis that "freedom's just another word..." but now it's very worrying to see so many people attacking freedom of religion. I know the government has been taking away freedoms since Bush, but it's so much more sinister to see the threat coming from within.

[chemchick.livejournal.com]

I'm so sick of these arguments about "cheapening" death. Build the casino. Build the Islamic center. Neither are being built on the ACTUAL PROPERTY.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Where it gets really rich is that all these people so concerned about the Holy Coat Factory happen to be mostly States' Rights activists. /snerk.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Yeah isn't that in the first amendment somewhere? Make no law restricting the freedom of gambling?

Also, gambling is just like Islam?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

and lastly:

Who is being bigoted against? Casino builders? They smell like cabbage! Small hands! Damn casino builders runing are 'murrika.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

/laughs at the idea that a former Burlington Coat Factory should be considered Holy Ground

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

/laughs at you thinking someone is thinking it should be considered Holy Ground.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

"One cannot serve both God and Mammon."-Yehoshua bar Yosef, Roman Judaea, 1st Century.

For that matter I may ask that if a battlefield of the Brother's War is sacred ground, which deity is it sacred to? Because I'm fairly sure that the battlefields of the Civil War would be more properly honored with temples to Mars Ultor than any Christian site. To make war zones sacred is to forget that war means fighting and fighting means killing. To take something that is cruelty and cannot be refined and turn it into some glorious sacred site is an attitude befitting Caesar Augustus, not what we should be following 20 centuries after him.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying it's sacred ground. It's in poor taste to build a casino near the battlefield in Gettysburg just as some people feel it's in poor taste to build an Islamic "community center" near Ground Zero.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

They're doing politics just next to the Lincoln Memorial in DC, OMG can you imagine? Politics!!! That dirty thing where some guys cheat and lie and shake hands behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms!

(runs away, screaming)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I vote for a third option-let's boot out all those damned furriners that moved into the Leni Lenape territories and give the Five Boroughs to their rightful owners, who can resume the proper rituals to appease the genii locii. I mean surely if we're concerned for the region of NYC we should ensure the original people there get their land back, right?

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Sigh.......

Let's get this clear once and for all.

Proposed building with the Muslim community center:



Typical Muslim mosque:




9-11 terrorists: Wahhabist sect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi) of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Islam (http://).

Proposed Manhattan Muslim community center: Sufi Islam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism).


Mosque: much akin to a Catholic cathedral.

Catholic cathedral:

Sufi community center: much akin to a Gnostic club.

Gnostic club:


Clearer?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Oh....you and your comparisons.

[Pouts and starts sniffling.]

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

By the way, I'm also opposed to this (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/08/30/bigot_establishes_ground_zero_church/index.html) because it IS being set-up strictly out of bigotry and hate. I'm surprised no one else here has commented on this issue, too.

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

The fact that it's not being protested is just further proof that this whole thing is about Islamophobia.