[Bungleau]

It's easier to hate than to love. So it's easier for him to categorize all "those people" as being bad and rotten, and to whitewash the exceptions that he knows as being different -- over here instead of over there.

Unfortunately, you can't win an argument or discussion with someone like that. Point out to him that strapping a bomb on and blowing yourself up is not limited to the middle east, and he'll argue you're wrong, or, if you prove it to him, simply say, "that's different" and put it out of his mind.

Now, this next comment feels funny as I write it, and it's not meant to be elitist or anything like that. Which means, of course, it stands a good chance of being taken that way.

At a young age, it's very easy to follow the crowd and much more difficult to make your own path. It's much easier to jump on the bandwagon bashing middle easterners as homicidal maniacs, and very difficult to interrupt someone who's claiming they are to try to sway their opinion. For an un-tested debater, ignorant bluster can go a long way toward giving up an argument.

As one grows more experienced, one can stand toe-to-toe and point out the problems and fallacies with such a position. Unfortunately, someone who has already decided that all middle easterners are bad will generally be unwilling to take that decision back, so they will cling to it, no matter what sound information is presented back to them, no matter how much proof you have that they're wrong.

For someone like that, they have to come up with enough information on their own to form a new opinion about the topic. They won't change their old one; they'll form a new one. If you try to force them to change, they'll just work harder at keeping the old opinion in place.

For a lyrical thought on the topic, go back a few years to Sting's song "The Russians". Written during the tail end of the cold war, it asks the simple question: do the Russians love their children too?

So, have I seen it? Yep. Is it curable? Yep. One person at a time, one false belief at a time.

Is it easy? Nope. Hopefully, it will get easier as time goes on, but from my experience, meager though it is, the change in thought will start in the cities and move out to the rural areas.

Assuming, that is, that someone with an agenda like certain wannabe political religious figures doesn't jump into the whole mess by training a new flock of sheep.

That's what it actually comes down to, as I think of it -- being a sheep versus being a shepherd. I'd rather be a shepherd, even though every so often I fall into the sheep trap.