So, now we've gone from tearing down monuments to the confederacy to all remnants of our country's foundations, apparently. I can't help but think back five years or so when ISIS was destroying centuries-old monuments and the world, at large, was outraged. What happened? It was ignorant when they did it; but enlightening now?
Don't get me wrong, as I've stated before, I completely understand the desire to remove monuments to the Confederacy, truly. Personally, I think their removal should be to a "museum" of some sort, rather than utter destruction and it should be by ********ic vote of people who actually live in the area where they are located; but.....I get it. They are reminders of a dark chapter in American history, glorifying the military leaders and participants of the Confederate States of America, a country which was formed when Southern States decided that the U.S. Government was no longer acting in their best interest and, therefore, seceded from the Union to make a go of it on their own, as a country which focused it's governance on the state level, rather than having a centralized government hoard all of the power.
Wait....man, that sounds familiar.
You see, this is the problem with ignorance and lack of education or poor education. You've heard the clich?, "Those who don't know their history are destined to repeat it." Well....what are we seeing right now, if not that axiom? Maybe it's our own government's fault for failing our education system. Maybe this is just "chickens coming home to roost," as the old southern expression goes. I'm not sure where to lay blame; but I have a very low tolerance for ******ity and ignorance and my psychological immune system, as well as my tolerance for the less intellectually inclined is being tested to the max, these days.
You see, you can go to college and simply emerge as an educated idiot. You can deal in all the theory you want and study all the mistakes which were made throughout history (and there were many); but if you don't have proper perspective in which those mistakes were made, you've got a cake recipe without baking instructions. In other words, all you've got is a mess.
The biggest problem I've noticed, not just with our government; but with most people, is lack of long-term planning. We focus on short-term solutions, without thinking about consequences to the actions taken. We do not consider the old mantra of "cause and effect." For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's not just true in physics, folks! I guess that takes too much thinking for our self-serving, instant=gratification culture which we have accumulated over the course of my lifetime. I suppose you can blame mas media advertising for that bastard child, which should have been aborted upon conception.
"I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW!!!"
I've seen three-year-olds with more patience.
In the end, I'm nearly 50 years old and I'm not gonna be around on this planet much longer, not in the long run; and, by the time the true harvest of the seeds being planted come to fruition I'll be long gone. To me, it is unfortunate that the perpetrators of this growing chaos will probably be gone as well, for their children and their children's children do not deserve the fruits of their dumbasstivity; but, that's life. All too often it is not the sowers but the reapers who suffer. The fools drinking the various flavors of Kool-aide currently in circulation are more than likely going to go to their graves, imagining themselves some sort of cultural heroes, rather than the brain-dead humanoids they are, without one iota of a thought about how completely naïve there were during the course of their lives.
And, just to be clear, I am not picking on the left or the right; but on both, for there are yes-men and yes-women and yes-gender-confused folks on both sides of that imaginary line which was drawn in the sand not even by them; but by those who actually are directing these winds of change. I could scream to the top of my lungs that this whole thing, this whole storm of chaos was planned and it would fall of deaf ears because that's "crazy talk", yet no one ever steps back to look at the big picture because they are too busy focusing on the droplets of paint in front of their noses they're being led around by.
But, maybe that's not our faults, right? No, I guess it can't be, for it's the same as it ever was. We want to be led, we want to be told what to do and what to think. The world and it's constructs are far too confusing to tackle on our own. It takes too much work and can make your brain hurt, if you do it for too long. All most of us want to do is to be left alone and lead our lives, love our families, hold our kids, and barbecue on the weekends and, man, I wish they'd just let us do that; but they won't. Where there's power to be had, there will always be those who seek it; and when the ones who seek it, who desire it, who crave it like a drug-addict craves another fix. are hopelessly outnumbered by the teeming, dreaming masses, the easiest way to get it, that power, is to find some way to motivate all that useless manpower to do it for them; and that's exactly what's going on, right now, right in front of our faces, so close that we can't see. We see the actions, the chaos, the arguments, the masks, the protests, the toppling architecture and monuments to times long past; but we don't see the strings. You never do at a good magic show.
Or, as the South Park Johnny Cochrane once said, "Here! Look at the monkey!!!"
You can call me crazy, deluded, ignorant, whatever. I've been called it all over the years; but I'm nothing, if not rational in my observations. I generally don't indulge in group-think because it's too close to mob-madness. I don't do small talk very well because I find it diverting, like talking around the elephant in the middle of the room.
"DO YOU NOT SEE THAT FREAKIN' ELEPHANT?! I want to scream; but then I get picked up and ushered out for disturbing the peace. So, I let the elephant be and nobody notices it until it's too late.......when someone steps in elephant poo. (You do know they poop, eventually, right?....and based on the size of the beast, it's bound to be a big, steaming pile.....really big.)
No, I'm not so arrogant as to think I know all the answers or even some to them. I don't know how we get the elephant out of the room before it poops; but I do know it's gonna take a lot of us, or maybe it'll just take one person who can see it, acknowledge it, and who has been trained to move elephants. Who knows....but, there's an elephant over there, folks. I swear it.
...and the poop's coming.
Don't get me wrong, as I've stated before, I completely understand the desire to remove monuments to the Confederacy, truly. Personally, I think their removal should be to a "museum" of some sort, rather than utter destruction and it should be by ********ic vote of people who actually live in the area where they are located; but.....I get it. They are reminders of a dark chapter in American history, glorifying the military leaders and participants of the Confederate States of America, a country which was formed when Southern States decided that the U.S. Government was no longer acting in their best interest and, therefore, seceded from the Union to make a go of it on their own, as a country which focused it's governance on the state level, rather than having a centralized government hoard all of the power.
Wait....man, that sounds familiar.
You see, this is the problem with ignorance and lack of education or poor education. You've heard the clich?, "Those who don't know their history are destined to repeat it." Well....what are we seeing right now, if not that axiom? Maybe it's our own government's fault for failing our education system. Maybe this is just "chickens coming home to roost," as the old southern expression goes. I'm not sure where to lay blame; but I have a very low tolerance for ******ity and ignorance and my psychological immune system, as well as my tolerance for the less intellectually inclined is being tested to the max, these days.
You see, you can go to college and simply emerge as an educated idiot. You can deal in all the theory you want and study all the mistakes which were made throughout history (and there were many); but if you don't have proper perspective in which those mistakes were made, you've got a cake recipe without baking instructions. In other words, all you've got is a mess.
The biggest problem I've noticed, not just with our government; but with most people, is lack of long-term planning. We focus on short-term solutions, without thinking about consequences to the actions taken. We do not consider the old mantra of "cause and effect." For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's not just true in physics, folks! I guess that takes too much thinking for our self-serving, instant=gratification culture which we have accumulated over the course of my lifetime. I suppose you can blame mas media advertising for that bastard child, which should have been aborted upon conception.
"I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW!!!"
I've seen three-year-olds with more patience.
In the end, I'm nearly 50 years old and I'm not gonna be around on this planet much longer, not in the long run; and, by the time the true harvest of the seeds being planted come to fruition I'll be long gone. To me, it is unfortunate that the perpetrators of this growing chaos will probably be gone as well, for their children and their children's children do not deserve the fruits of their dumbasstivity; but, that's life. All too often it is not the sowers but the reapers who suffer. The fools drinking the various flavors of Kool-aide currently in circulation are more than likely going to go to their graves, imagining themselves some sort of cultural heroes, rather than the brain-dead humanoids they are, without one iota of a thought about how completely naïve there were during the course of their lives.
And, just to be clear, I am not picking on the left or the right; but on both, for there are yes-men and yes-women and yes-gender-confused folks on both sides of that imaginary line which was drawn in the sand not even by them; but by those who actually are directing these winds of change. I could scream to the top of my lungs that this whole thing, this whole storm of chaos was planned and it would fall of deaf ears because that's "crazy talk", yet no one ever steps back to look at the big picture because they are too busy focusing on the droplets of paint in front of their noses they're being led around by.
But, maybe that's not our faults, right? No, I guess it can't be, for it's the same as it ever was. We want to be led, we want to be told what to do and what to think. The world and it's constructs are far too confusing to tackle on our own. It takes too much work and can make your brain hurt, if you do it for too long. All most of us want to do is to be left alone and lead our lives, love our families, hold our kids, and barbecue on the weekends and, man, I wish they'd just let us do that; but they won't. Where there's power to be had, there will always be those who seek it; and when the ones who seek it, who desire it, who crave it like a drug-addict craves another fix. are hopelessly outnumbered by the teeming, dreaming masses, the easiest way to get it, that power, is to find some way to motivate all that useless manpower to do it for them; and that's exactly what's going on, right now, right in front of our faces, so close that we can't see. We see the actions, the chaos, the arguments, the masks, the protests, the toppling architecture and monuments to times long past; but we don't see the strings. You never do at a good magic show.
Or, as the South Park Johnny Cochrane once said, "Here! Look at the monkey!!!"
You can call me crazy, deluded, ignorant, whatever. I've been called it all over the years; but I'm nothing, if not rational in my observations. I generally don't indulge in group-think because it's too close to mob-madness. I don't do small talk very well because I find it diverting, like talking around the elephant in the middle of the room.
"DO YOU NOT SEE THAT FREAKIN' ELEPHANT?! I want to scream; but then I get picked up and ushered out for disturbing the peace. So, I let the elephant be and nobody notices it until it's too late.......when someone steps in elephant poo. (You do know they poop, eventually, right?....and based on the size of the beast, it's bound to be a big, steaming pile.....really big.)
No, I'm not so arrogant as to think I know all the answers or even some to them. I don't know how we get the elephant out of the room before it poops; but I do know it's gonna take a lot of us, or maybe it'll just take one person who can see it, acknowledge it, and who has been trained to move elephants. Who knows....but, there's an elephant over there, folks. I swear it.
...and the poop's coming.