When I was a little girl, growing up in france, my mother worked sewing tapestries. Some of the tapestries were exported to America. The only problem was that many of the images on the tapestries were of naked people. My mother’s job was to cut out—the genitals of men and women and replace these parts with flowers so they could be sold to americans. My mother saved all the pictures of the genitials over the years, and one day she sewed them together as a quilt and then she gave the quilt to me. That’s the difference between French and American aesthetics.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

When Roosevelt said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, this is the America he was talking about: A nation so consumed by irrational hatred and fear that it has allowed itself to become an unwelcoming place for people who worship differently from the majority. In reality, Obama isn’t a Muslim, and the US is not at risk of falling under Muslim control. The people who should be scared, on the other hand, are American Muslims, who are forced to suffer the effects of so much absurd hatred day after day.

Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever?