There's a meme going around that says "My religion is kindness; I'm basically against anything that harms the planet or the people on it." Another one points out, "If your religion requires you to hate someone, you need a new religion." These are humanist truths.

If we as a species are to survive our own incredible capacity for polluting, creating weapons, and perpetrating violence, we must balance it out with intellect and sanity. To do so requires thinking outside our childish cultural labels and sponsored identity politics.

For example, the teachings of Christ are about humility, tolerance, loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek- pretty much the same as the teachings of Islam. Neither religion is the problem- the problem is from hateful extremists falsely claiming to represent each.

I'm an atheist, yet more of a Christian than the "religious right" who attempt to cloak their irrational, ignorant white supremacy under a superficial guise of religious 'rights' and 'values'. Actual equality is not a selective benefit based on personal beliefs or appearances.

It's become unfortunately common for destructive demagogues to gain power by adopting handy labels which don't accurately represent them. Thus any gullible support bases- the ignorant, apathetic and similarly superficial- end up promoting values directly contrary to their own.

The exact same principles of "evidentiary substance over empty rhetoric" can be applied to different forms of religions, such as politics. If one rejects typically indoctrinated, heavily funded, non-thinking team-sport herd mentality, critical thinking reveals greater wisdom.

Any politician, whether Democrat or Republican, is legitimate only if their proven first priority is always representation. Neither label is the problem nor solution- the problem is prioritizing their own ideals and agendas over the people they claim to serve or protect.

I'm an Independent (as is the majority of the country) because my country's political ideals and concept of justice are being actively undermined via an oligarchic duopoly. Blind, cultist followers of both branches dis-empower us all with conveniently permanent division.

The real enemies of humanity and equality are those who deny facts, normalize corruption and injustice, ignore the consequences for short-term profits, defend and promote racism, and show zero integrity or ethics while insisting they still represent the side of "right".

Those who point to any group of people or generalized label with blame and bias are our true enemies. Their tool is scapegoating, be it on Muslims, the LGTBQ community, people of color and Latinx, or any other personal social distortions of reality they can leverage or appeal to.

Nobody "hates us for our freedoms". Nobody is jealous of our false democracy. The enemies of this nation did not spring up out of nowhere. They were all bombed, oppressed, or subjected to U.S. capitalist imperialism; yet we call their self-defense 'terrorism'.

Science isn't a liberal conspiracy theory. Our constant profit-wars, climate change, and lack of all legitimate populace representation aren't debatable or partisan issues. Framing petty fear-mongering as valid justification for committing atrocities isn't sustainable policy.

The time of simplistic "good guy" and "bad guy" category-thinking must come to an end. Our government's inhumane oil-greed and warmongering is facilitated by criminals successfully orchestrating perceived "lesser evil" statuses, in turns, at the expense of us all.

In religion as in politics, wisdom comes from judging individuals on the works they provably, consistently do. Evaluations based only on labels or confirmation bias is actively letting assumptions have more weight than fact, while usually being ignorantly misled.

If the basis for any law or belief system is rooted in prioritizing one group over another, it is simply using the existing power structure to justify and enforce bigotry. There is no place for such a hateful, irrationally inflated cult of ego in any society or government of "justice for all".