Sweden, Switzerland...it's all the same phuquen thing, man....

I wish I had a nickel for every time my Tea Party Christian friend confuses Sweden with Switzerland.

He doesn't know the difference between Stockholm or Bern, either.

He has claimed more than once that Sweden has a Texas-style gun culture. He meant Switzerland, but he's still wrong. They don't.

In fact, the Swiss bristle when Americans assume Switzerland has been annexed to Texas.

He claims that Bern, Switzerland, is the rape capital of the world. He meant Sweden. Turns out, that's not exactly true, either.

Sweden, Switzerland...
Stockholm, Bern...
Rape capital of the world, rape capital of Europe, maybe not rape capital of Europe, who knows...
ToMAYto, toMAHto...

Perhaps the education-eschewing Tea Partier thinks that all of Europe--or perhaps everything outside of the good ol' U.S. of A (Israel being an annex to the USA, of course)--is interchangeable. Perhaps he lumps the great unwashed, unchurched masses of Europe together into one godless, hell-bound heap--and good riddance. Perhaps he wishes to mark his disdain of All Things European. Then again, perhaps he'd be completely unperturbed if someone said of him that he loves living in tolerant, hippie California when he's really a liberal-hater from God-lovin', gun-totin' Texas. Perhaps a little thing like national identity means nothing to him except when it's his own national identity under discussion.

As Dot Calm, quoting Janis Joplin, would say, "It's all the same phuquen thing, man."

That said, here are my two cents...

It really is virtually impossible to compare rape statistics because it is virtually impossible to collect rape statistics. How would you know that any two entities--be they institutes of higher learning, towns, cities, nations, continents--collect and/or report statistics identically to one another? In other words, how do you know you're comparing apples to apples?

Even if it's true--as the right wingers claim--that Muslim men immigrate to Europe so they can rape European women, then the Muslims sure as hell aren't helping their own cause by attacking Sweden. Sure, they can cause a shit-ton of anguish, grief, trauma, and pain. Sure, they can ruin the lives of Swedish women and those who love them. But forcibly spreading their own seed to Muslimize Sweden as a target nation? Swedish women can get abortions on demand, as can most other European women (Ireland being a notable exception). So, if Muslimizing Sweden by rape is their goal, then they are wasting their time while really pissing the rest of us the hell off. They'd have a better time here in the good ol' U.S. of A., where the conservative Christians are working round the clock to deprive women of access not only to abortion but to birth control. I'm sure that all the forced-birthers in the Republican party would welcome all the new Muslim rape babies onto American soil with open arms.

And, if it is true that Muslims are trying to spread Islam by rape, then ponder this: these fundamentalists are willfully inflicting gross trauma and harm on innocent people all in the name of religion.

Dumbasses.

How many men would go through with rape if the punishment were to be handed over to Joni Ernst without anesthesia?