Tuesday, February 20, 2018 11:55 AM
Rock in the River (2018Feb21)
Well, I don’t know. I mean, sure, it’s a serious concern—we Americans must take more care in discerning truth from agit-prop. But, overall, I’d still rather live in a democracy, which can be disrupted by lies, than an autocracy like Putin’s, which could be destroyed overnight by the truth. It’s funny—both Putin and Trump consider lying to be an important tool in their ‘work’.
I’ve always been an honest man—not due to any excess of virtue, but simply because lying well is not easy and I am terrible at it. Also, I don’t see much sense in it—lies are so temporary—they are self-inflicted land-mines that we give to the future. Every lie sets a clock ticking, a mystery-clock that decides when the truth will come back to bite us.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018 7:52 PM
Some complain that the Parkland student survivors aren’t gun experts. O yes they are—the only ones who know more are their fallen classmates. I’m glad I’ve never been in a crowded classroom, hearing gunfire and screaming, seeing the blood and the panic—and the bodies of my friends on the floor. And if those complainers were referring to experts on what happens, on the other side of the barrel—I mean, really—who gives a fat fuck? Are you serious?
I’m fed up with the contrived sanctity of the Second Amendment. The Constitution has been amended before. (Did you know that the original version prohibited any kind of income tax? Why is it okay to throw that one out, just for bookkeeping purposes—but we have to keep the 2nd, weekly massacres notwithstanding?)
Are we not in the twenty-first century? Is it just me, who blithely walks down the street, from country lane to midtown sidewalk, unarmed and unafraid? Who the hell in this country so desperately needs to be armed? And why aren’t we doing anything to protect these people from whatever it is they are afraid of?
Canadians own nearly as many guns as we do— Americans are simply violent. Americans are violent because there is a paucity of love in America. The frenetic grasping at dollars has made it impossible for Americans to be good people. Lobbyists have slowly but surely created a legal landscape that fines one person for feeding the homeless, and rewards another for using public-education funding to segregate rich kids into private schools.
Even American charities have a hard time letting any of the donations slip through their own hands to the actual charitable works. I think it is a slow rot that has been going on since the Cold War—America’s rich assholes have always outdone the sincere idealists in messaging.
Look at the stupid things Americans have ‘debated’ for decades—whether women and minorities deserve equal rights and opportunities—whether a decent man keeps his hands to himself, or not—whether one sect of a two-thousand-year-old religion takes precedence over scientific observation. It’s hard to imagine that people will still argue these self-evident choices, even today, and that the rest of us don’t break out laughing.
This is no coincidence. Rich people perpetuate this garbage ‘uncertainty’ over clear ethical choices—and not because they really care—no—they do it because they glory in the feel of authority, the sense that they influence the world. Of course, they have to overlook the way they fuck with everyone else—never accomplishing anything positive. It’s a problem—being compulsively drawn to exerting authority—it happens a lot, but it is not a healthy situation.
At rare, random times, a person with authority may have the patience and goodwill to use power to build something good, or to help ease people’s lives. Far more often, sadly, authority boils down to making someone else miserable to prove that one can. Even sadder, such people are often without close friends whom may point this out.
You guys—you gotta start voting.