Misreading History with Richard Bulliet

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Event Name: Misreading History with Richard Bulliet
Transcription Date:Transcription Modified Date: 5/24/2019
Transcript Version: 1


Transcript Text

and therefore it becomes if you

understand that in any true sense of

that word it becomes very difficult to

objectify evil in the world unless you

take that manikyam approach to religion

which religions are very susceptible to

that at a simplistic reading of religion

though the Quran divides the world if

you read it in that gross literal

reading in the demote me known and the

kaffir own but the deeper you go into

the Quran the Quran saying you'll

Tunisian Haman and mate you know he

takes the living out of the Dead and the

dead out of the living that night is

turning into day and day is turning in

tonight and be careful these things

aren't as fixed as they appear there but

you take you take the simple-minded

reading and you get these distortions

that are very violent in some cases but

then you can do that exactly the same

thing of the Bible so that you can say

well nobody would take seriously a verse

of the Bible that says thou shalt not

suffer a witch to live and yet you had

tens of thousands of women burned at the

stake by Christians are drowned because

they weren't because lepers because

there is a belief that witches were

irredeemably evil they were the agents

of Satan and saw so you know you you

always have to to stand up against the

simple-minded black and white

interpretation of things that are

properly in

preface tradition more subtly though

it's increasingly hard to do in our

society where there's more in black and

white available to us both on in

newspapers on the internet and in a sort

of intellectual black-and-white on in

the television news

how do what do we do you know when

you're demonizing the other and dr.

Bhatt was talking earlier about the slew

of zombie films that emerged after 9/11

and you know the the the in those films

invariably the zombies are slaughtered

with impunity by the good guys and that

you know that he was suggesting that

that unfortunately there are people in

this country that look at Muslims as

zombies mindless and malevolent and so

it becomes very easy to I mean I'm

always amazed that they talk about 4,000

American soldiers have died in Iraq and

never when that is mentioned is the the

I mean let's just have the Lancet report

which is a pretty reputable I'm not

pretty it is a reputed reputable journal

in England using the same criteria that

they use for Rwanda and they came up

with almost a million civilians have

been killed in Iraq but let's just have

that you know to be on the conservative

side and say it was 500,000 that's a lot

of human beings that are just gone from

the earth because of a misadventure that

was entirely predicated on lies and

deception and and people suffer from it

but when you demonize people it becomes

easy for people to read the newspaper

about that and eat their breakfast well

one of the things that that we often

talk about in the war on terror and so

it's called asymmetrical warfare in

which we have a lot of weapons and they

don't but they're winning the waves

constructors but the fact the matter is

that asymmetrical warfare would also

apply to something like the Iraq war

where Americans were never threatened by

Iraq still to this day Iraq has never

heard anybody who was not in the

American armed services or working for

an employer employed by the US

government

whereas bombings and attacks of all

sorts of affected the Iraqi civilians we

are carrying out what labeled a poem

called total war against Iraq but we're

not having total war as something that

we are suffering on our side that that

disequilibrium and this is the reason we

don't have an anti-war movement in this

country is that we don't sense that

we're at war but the Iraqis know damn

well we're a part and that that

asymmetry is is very disturbing to the

soul of the country I think but there

was that thing asymmetry with regard to

Vietnam we were not under attack her

when we threatened by Vietnam we heard

we've heard a lot about the 50,000

Americans who died and not about the

millions of Vietnamese there with the

content you have a country Walter

Cronkite you know nightly news showing

some pretty horrific images coming in -

that was the first time people had more

images you can see stuff on YouTube but

there's been almost total I mean wearing

almost like a Pravda type of situation

here I think in some ways our news is

becoming more and more like Russian news

and we're even seeing that the

scientists have been censored about

global warming nasa scientists and other

scientists were actually censored and

told what they could you couldn't say I

mean thank God some of that stuff is

coming out but there has been a lot of

censorship there have been no pictures

and I'll allow take those pictures of

the funeral the people come

Oh in in the in the body bags and things

like that

so that that's part of problem and then

another aspect of it is and let's face

it it's it's it's it's the it's the the

poor people that are dying over there

are large then if you look at even a lot

of the names it's Sanchez and it's you

know it's you know African American

Mexican American and then for white

communities that are suffering if you go

into the heartland of America in these

small towns those are the people that

are losing the people and and they don't

have that the type of cloud that you

know but there's an irony is that the

American soldier is recently well paid

now he comes from a or she comes from a

lower social stratum usually but it's a

good job until your killer but but one

of the things that we don't seem to

realize is that you know if we ever got

into a big war and we had a draft

together we can't afford to pay a good

salary because well let me say on behalf

of the sons and daughters of Adam here

today thank you dr. bullet anything come

to you so

you

you