In the twisted and naïve world I live in I believe I can solve problems.
I am usually wrong.
I think in some way my words, thoughts, opinions or pointing out factoids will sway you to see the light.
I am more often than not still wrong.
I absolutely support this country, even when I don't agree with a lot of things going on. And trust me, there are a lot of things going on that are really stupid.
I categorically support the men and women in our military, yet I hope that they never see combat and I think the men who make wars never pay the true price of their decisions.
I absolutely support what the men and women in our police do and how they put their life on the line for us. I don't believe there is any conspiracy by the police to hold be down or oppress some other group. The media downplays what a shit job being a street cop really is and panders to the mob which perpetuates a few negative stereotypes.
I believe you should stand for the national anthem, not because you love every decision made or not made in the country, but because you have a voice in those decisions.
I believe burning the flag should be illegal. With the punishment being to help veterans at the VA for a few hundred hours of community service.
I believe people with money and means that complain with their mouth and not their check book are whiners because those with no money and no means can do little else but whisper into the din of the famous that pretend to care for the unwashed masses; all the while living a pampered life.
The rich and famous have a platform and the ability to make things change with their fame and with their money. But most of them don't. Which makes them hypocrites at a minimum.
I can look past a lot of stupidity and even ignorance. What I tend to not be able to look the other way on is Hypocrisy. It’s the drink of frauds, charlatans, cheats, liars, entitled-victims, whiners and politicians.
I think my occasional post on social media will shine the light on that one topic that bothers me the most and that people will see a larger truth and a deeper problem in our society.
I go to sleep hoping for that on many nights.
Again, I am usually not only wrong, but completely misguided in that particular belief.
I guess that is the idealist that remains in our cynical world.
So, I post a thing, it flames up and out and it makes me uncomfortable watching the back and forth of accusatory arguments. I assume people will put down their bias and believe there is a light to see or find a true middle ground.
Nope. We have become too polarized. And I am yet again wrong and disappointed.
This isn't a trump thing. It isn't an obama thing. Its an ‘Us’ thing. We refuse to give up our position even when we know it is wrong because we believe people on the opposite side of an issue will use that against us.
Which they might. So what, I say.
We don't bend so they don't bend. And eventually we will all break. I think Ghandi has a quote on that somewhere.
And at the end of the day this of course simply means we live with our own personal demon of hypocrisy and we perpetuate a ‘two wrongs make it right’ mindset.
We don’t reflect on our actions. We join the mob and convince ourselves that we hold the chalice of righteousness all the while drinking the koolaid of ignorance with an open mouth and closed mind.
Which is sad and stupid, and it’s been building for years in our culture.
Some politician said a while back that they wanted to fundamentally change America. They did, they convinced half of us that we were owed and that we were special and if we didn’t get what we wanted someone was holding us down, and a bunch of other stupid things. And the masses bought it and are angry that it stopped being fed to them.
The truth set them free and they preferred enslavement.
So now we throw around these extreme terms like dust in the wind now.
Everyone we don't like is hitler. If this person or that person is elected we will all die, there will be a nazi take over, nuclear war, all rights for a given group will be taken away, and then of course it starts to get strange and perpetually escalated into more absurdity.
We cry wolf constantly now. Every news event is historic. If we stop watching the news horrible things will happen. We find a new devil to blame every day.
We claim we are being oppressed constantly. And then we say more will be taken away if we all don’t agree to some one obscure thing because we were told how dire life will be without it. The world is literally ending with every new tweet.
We are offended by everything, even when we aren’t. If you aren’t offended there is something wrong, or maybe you’re the reason I’m offended. Either way we must enact legislation to prevent anyone’s feelings from being hurt, or we will all die.
Because if we have learned one really bad habit in the past few years it is that whomever screams the loudest must be right. So we scream. We yell. We demand action now. Anyone we don’t like should be fired, or jailed or killed.
It’s scary and it is getting worse.
Yet we still do this; each and every day we do this.
We allow our friends to do this without a whimper or sigh back to them.
We allow the media to do this and we still tune in.
We allow politicians to do this and elect them over and over again.
Some idiot in the middle of nowhere wont bake a cake for two guys that want to get married and this becomes the most talked about item on the news for weeks if not longer.
Two women in some random country and publicly caned for kissing and you wouldn’t hear about it over the cake story.
God forbid we offend some other culture when they throw some guy off a roof because he was accused of being gay and we tell them that wasn’t nice. Hell no, we wouldn’t dare take an actual stand on something real if it means someone doesn’t like being reported on.
We don't want to offend that country. So back to our news story about cake…
Why is that you ask?
Simple, we only care about the social issues that affect us directly.
Maybe we care a little about a tight group of friends and their issues. But we don't really care much about anything else. And never outside of the small hex we live on.
Its like spoiled children. As long as I get a cookie, I don't care that the neighbor’s house is burning down.
The state of California doesn’t allow travel to some other state because that state wont pass some law on gender neutral bathrooms. So California bans travel and throws a fit taking some artificial moral high ground.
California however wont ban travel or business dealings with countries that oppress women, enslave workers, routinely kill anyone suspected of being gay, allow the marriage of old men to pre-pubescent girls, murders the masses and no one says a thing in California’s legislature.
You get the idea.
God I hope someone else sees a problem with this.
Or maybe there is something wrong with me.
And no, I don't want sympathy, nor support for my own level of insanity as it appears. I’m not going to protest. I am not going to start a manifesto or begin the insurgency. I’m going to sit back and wonder why.
I guess I just want to understand what have we become that we cant see these things anymore.
This is more of a rhetorical thing with me.
