Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Jimmy the Greek from Lebanon...

Today I had a few minutes of time during my normal lunch period and decided to get a haircut. My hairdresser was a roughly 30 year old bearded individual who asked me quietly in broken swedish if it would be ok for us to speak english. And off we were talking about the world.

"Hi, I'm Jimmy. My father was too big a fan of Jimmy Carter and he named me Jimmy. Personally I am a big fan of George Bush."

Jimmy is from Lebanon but is of half greek heritage and recently left his homeland and has moved to Sweden to escape the terrors of running a hair salon just outside of Beirut. A christian, his native language is French and though he spoke a little arabic he claimed to not speak it as fluently. Now, i'm stunned to meet someone from this part of the world who claims to love George Bush, but I suppose I shouldn't be. I explained to him my own feelings (hate is a strong word, but I am not stretching if I say that I think George Bush was the worst president in my lifetime).

"George Bush makes war, because he says god told him to. He seems to me to be a righteous man" or something to that effect.

ehh WHAT?

I went on to explain that it's precisely this sort of piety that emboldens me to question religion. How can weigh in on your thoughts with  my silly reason when you're having a personal, and hidden conversation with God about what to do. This is precisely why I am not just an atheist, but a new atheist.

And why does he like George Bush? He's a christian of course. Not one of those pesky, arabic speaking muslims who are destroying his homeland. Now he's abandoned it and fled to Sweden where he can be surrounded by people who don't care about religion at all. Now he's safe to be a christian.

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Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed having my hair cut by Jimmy and i'll be going back in about 6 weeks for my next cut...

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