Posts Tagged → peace
Playin’ the Quatar in the quicksand
Past few weeks I have been overwhelmed with the fast pace of everything, including my work, and just let the last blog post stand as the latest word on things: America is badly divided, really like two different countries at this point. President Trump is about to declare the Insurrection Act in effect, something this blog advocated back in 2020. Lawless judges continue to try to play policy pro with legal cases that require a simple Yes or No ruling. It has been amazing to watch the “Blue” states and jurisdictions demand that the Feds stay out of their crime waves. They like their crime, and by God, they are gonna keep it…forgetting tha we Americans have a right to go anywhere in America without fear of being beaten to death.
Then again, the 1940s-1950s Democrat-run South was like this: Lawless, violent, in open revolt against the federal government’s effort to integrate public schools.
But President Trump stole the show with his effort to bring peace of some sort to Gaza and Israel. This looks like languidly playing a Quatar-guitar while also sinking into the Middle East quicksand. Because the people supposedly facilitating this momentary conclusion of hostilities with Trump are the very same people who have been stoking the same conflict for the past seventy years, including on our own American college campuses: Qatar.
For decades, Qatar has dumped billions of dollars into American college campuses to buy entire programs filled with far-Left Marxist pseudo professors who preach hatred of America, Christianity, Capitalism, Israel, and Western Civilization. Qatar is a tiny postage stamp of a country with more oil money than it can use at home, so it is very effectively using it to eat into America’s foundation with jihadism and faux journalism.
Maybe Trump is playing Qatar here, but it sure openly looks like Qatar is playing Trump, luring him in with unrealistic promises meant to further weaken America and Israel, bog down America in the Middle East quicksand, and stop the anti-jihad momentum that Israel and America have been successfully implementing the past six months.
For example, now American troops are supposedly going to be stationed in Gaza to enforce the ceasefire….a stupider idea cannot be invented, but here it is. Our own troops will be at the mercy of Hamas, and will serve as a block on Israel being able to get Hamas back in the genie bottle. Anything that happens to our troops will be blamed on Israel. A wedge will be further inserted between these two great natural allies, America and Israel, and the only people benefiting are the jihadis of Qatar, Hamas, Turkey, and Iran.
Maybe it will hold, and it will all work out great. I am no pessimist, but I am a realist. I admire President Trump’s willingness to take big chances for the right reasons, but I also worry that he tends to see everything in the world narrowly through his own lens of golf courses, resorts, and money-solves-all-problems. Including the flea-infested quicksands of the Middle East, which have historically eaten up and spit out the bones of many different great civilizations. Sometimes reality just has to be accepted, no matter how frustrating or painful: appeasement is not peace, and appeasing the jihadis only encourages them to do more damage.
America is not too big to fail in Gaza, and a lot is riding on the line. Good luck to America and Israel and to our entire Western Civilization.
“Peace” protestors don’t want peace
All of the so-called “peace” protestor people don’t actually want peace, they want endless conflict that gives them something to live for. They thrive on conflict, and so they actually work to promote conflict, even while they say the opposite.
The so-called “peace” protestor people started out back in World War I, as a mix of anti-America communists and socialists trying to hurt America, along with well meaning Mennonite non-violent resistors who nonetheless did their duty as medics and orderlies when called upon. But by World War II, the so-called “peace movement” had swelled to include pacifist Quakers (who were being taken over by leftists by the 1950s and then fully by anti-America hippies in the 1970s), communists, socialists, and generally disaffected liberals who said nothing about communist Russia’s misdeeds, but rather heaped increasing scorn upon the capitalist United States. The so-called “peace” people are really just America haters, not lovers of peace.
Today’s so-called “peaceniks” argue for “conflict resolution” conditions that, contrary to stated aims, are guaranteed to cause conflicts to fester and continue, not end decisively. And that is because these people are not interested in actual peace, which means the absence of conflict.
Rather, they want outcomes that are consistently against the interests of democratically run countries and against people there living in peace. And that is a hard thing to sell, the national suicide-by-peace thing. They know it, but they absolutely live for it, because the adrenaline rush of living for something so impossibly majestic and messianic is positively hypnotic.
Despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which really started in 2014 when Ukraine declared full soverignty from Russia and claimed eastern regions that have overwhelming Russian citizenry, and which has resulted in catatstrophic environmental and human death and physical damage beyond belief, note that the so-called “peace” people are really nowhere to be seen. No campus riots, no shutting down bridges or highways. Pretty quiet. Same goes for China’s many brutal militaristic adventures, and Cuba+Venezuela+Nicaragua non-democratic authoritarianism.
Same goes for the UN and its anti democracy allies lowering flags to half-mast out of respect to Iran’s Butcher of Tehran, Ebrahim Raisi, who without due process or rule of law was personally responsible for thousands of political dissidents being tortured to death or executed by slow hanging for many years. Actual Iranians living in Iran have been partying since Raisi’s chopper went down and burst into flames.
But when it comes to ten million underdog Jews (worldwide) defending themselves against two BILLION bullying Muslims (worldwide) attacking them everywhere across the planet, why… stop the press, turn college campuses and streets and bridges upside down, and call out the law on those troublesome Jews.
So now, the so-called International Criminal Court and the so-called International Court of Justice are issuing their own anti peace demands and ridiculous arrest warrants for Israeli leaders who are in the middle of defending the sole democracy in the entire region from hordes of very non-democratic and very Medieval barbarians at every corner of the New Jersey-sized country.
Never mind that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Convention (neither is America), and thus not subject to these self-appointed kangaroo courts’ purported jurisdiction. What is important here is that the so-called “peace” people have been trying to dislodge Benjamin Netanyahu by any means possible for years, and thereby greatly diminish Israel’s ability to defend itself. Like him or not, Netanyahu has proven to be a very tough and reliable defender of Jewish survival in a hostile world, while most of his would-be opponents are desperate to be international media darlings and… people of “peace” at any cost.
The so-called “peace” people want to force on Israel, and on the world, a so-called “palestinian” country beyond the one that already exists in the nation called Jordan (80% of the original Palestine Mandate, 75% of the population identifies as “palestinian”), which they say will bring utopian peace and happiness and an absence of suffering and conflict to the region. It’s always for some mystical “peace” or “for the children” with these people.
By pushing this idea of another “palestinian” state, the peace people are incentivizing Hamas and the other Islamic terror groups to keep on committing attacks on Israeli civilians and holding out for everything, instead of accepting what is reasonable. The “peace” people’s intervention and resulting continuation of this conflict, and their constant encouragement of so-called palestinians to remain defiant and demand everything, as opposed to settling for something, has left the Abraham Accords in tatters. So much for peace from the peaceniks!
If there is one thing we have all learned since October 7th, 2023, it is that the decades of genocidal indoctrination have turned the Muslims living in Gaza and nearby areas into gleeful bloodthirsty murderers. So if Hamas’ October 7th child raping and baby burning massacre were indeed bizarrely rewarded with a formal state from which Hamas could continue to launch more massacres and random rocket attacks, they would do so.
In other words, the so-called “peace” people will get their desired conflict continuation, so that they can continue to wring their hands and write sanctimonious op-eds and pass endless judgment upon people and situations they themselves would never find themselves in (because brave men guard them day and night), and basically feel all mission-driven and holier-than-thou.
And we know that all of the Islamic actors in control of the ICJ, ICC and UN are using these institutions to try to damage Israel. After all, there is no actual Muslim pro-Israel/ pro Jewish/ pro peace peace movement; because that would be actual peace, which we know the self proclaimed peace people both Muslim and non do not really want.
The adrenaline rush and personal meaning high that “peace loving” enabling white liberals get from conflict continuation must be a lot stronger than heroin. Heroin users are satisfied to shoot up and then fall down in a corner somewhere and sleep off their haze, whereas the so-called “peaceful” white liberals keep pouring gasoline on the conflict fire that threatens to consume the entire world.
Self-anointed peaceniks and judgmental hypocrites, the AFSC never misses an opportunity to lie about Israel. What is the alternative to a ground invasion of Gaza by Israel? Should Israeli citizens shoot random bombs onto the heads of random Gazans in retaliation for the October 7th massacre? Note that AFSC makes zero mention of the massacre. Because the AFSC does not believe in peace, it hates Jews
Notice how AFSC fails to mention that Hamas is the sole cause of all of Gaza’s problems, including the theft of daily international aid deliveries. No mention of Israeli hostages, no mention of daily Israeli victims of Gaza rockets. AFSC is just “Israel is bad Israel is bad” all the time. The AFSC people do not want peace, they want dead Jews
A tale of two fallen icons
Two icons have fallen today, one human and one a statue of a human. One event is good, the other is bad, and both represent the radical and opposing political forces pulling America apart.
Let’s start with the human icon, that being Wayne LaPierre, the now former executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA). LaPierre became a human icon by his own hand, because for many years he placed pictures of himself everywhere he could in NRA literature, publications, TV programs etc. LaPierre did everything he could as the NRA’s senior executive to make his face and name synonymous with the NRA, and in many ways, superior to the NRA name and logo.
LaPierre did not rise to icon status by virtue of his own great skill and the resulting earned adulation by NRA membership and leaders. Rather, LaPierre artificially nurtured an almost Communist Party image of “Our Great Leader” by simply shoving his own face into everything he could that the NRA put out from 1991 until last month.
This high-visibility self-promotion activity picked up after LaPierre had ousted longtime NRA-ILA lobbyist Jim Baker in 1998, then brought him back in 2011, only to oust him again in 2012, and then it picked up more after LaPierre ousted longtime NRA-ILA lobbyist Chris Cox, and then the self promotion pretty much had maxed out when LaPierre ousted short-time NRA-ILA lobbyist Jason Ouimet, and installed a grandpa used car salesman-looking guy named Randy Kozuch in 2023. Kozuch looks like Father Time and has a fixed and perpetually unnerving entre nous wink. LaPierre’s truth is crazier than any fiction we could write; you can’t make this stuff up.
In other words, LaPierre has been in a constant power struggle and self-promotion mode since becoming executive vice president, with an iron fist that served his own personal power and not the NRA membership. Not only did LaPierre spend millions of NRA members dollars on himself, his family, his wardrobe, and other trappings of a self-indulgent communist party ranking official, he plastered his likeness everywhere he could to such laughably grotesque levels in recent years that no online hunting or gun-related chatboard was free of ridicule for LaPierre.
That emperor may have been dressed in the most expensive suits, but to NRA members he had no clothes. LaPierre may have long ruled the NRA headquarters like a cruel and petty tyrant, but a lot of his own members hated his guts. LaPierre represented everything wrong in Washington DC politics. So when LaPierre announced that he was stepping down yesterday in the face of a lawsuit over his illegally spendy habit, it came as a great sense of relief to those who have the most riding on the NRA – its members and donors.
The crashing of this (false) icon to the floor and shattering into pieces is a good thing.
Pivot to the City of Brotherly Love, the cradle of American freedom, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the National Park Service is removing the statue of William Penn from a riverfront park (ironically called Welcome Park) owned by the citizens of America and managed by the NPS. The removal of this iconic statue of the most tolerant and accepting man of the 1600s-1700s, William Penn, is destructive.
William Penn was not just some European guy, he penned the Penn Charter, which outlined many of the open minded individual rights and government duties that we find a hundred years later in America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. William Penn was a broad minded, open minded, tolerant, kind, generous person. He sought to financially compensate the native Indians who lived and hunted in Pennsylvania, rather than use violent force to oust them and outright take their lands.
The reason why Pennsylvania had only one Indian reservation (which was eventually violently stolen from the Cornplanter Senecas by the US Army Corps of Engineers so the agency could make a new recreational impoundment lake for happy white people to drive their motorboats in the 1960s), was that most of Pennsylvania’s Indians were bought out and firmly moved westward as the frontier moved westward. Pacifist Quaker William Penn wanted to live in harmony with the Indians in his new colony, as much as he could, and his actions showed a humane approach that was unique in that period.
So removing the iconic William Penn statue from its position at Penn’s own home is a rejection of a tangible and meaningful symbol of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. By people who claim to be all tolerant and peaceful. It is a bad thing.
(Thankfully, it was announced late today that the NPS had “prematurely” stated that it was going to remove the William Penn statue, which is going to stay in place for the foreseeable future. Apparently public resentment about this racist decision overwhelmed the NPS and the PA state government.)
As we can see, icons come in all shapes and sizes. Some are good, some are bad, some deserve a wrecking ball and others deserve flower garlands. One thing is certain about icons, as these two icons discussed here show, they bring out tremendous political and cultural passions because of what they represent. This is why they become such useful political tools, to the detriment of The People.
Josh and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA in 2016 at the Great American Outdoor Show. See? Wayne even showed up to argue about his tenure with me eight years ago.
Merry Christmas, America
Christmas is America’s national holiday. Regardless of your religion or level of religiosity, wishing your fellow Americans “Merry Christmas” is a big statement of unity and shared vision for our shared future together. It’s not a statement of theology. Rather it is a statement that we belong to and are committed to this Western nation with its own history, laws, freedoms, culture, and commonly held ideals. One of the ideals of this season, this time of year, is a universal peace, a sense of personal peacefulness. A communal peacefulness. Peace through kindness, charity, less judgmentalism and more forgiveness. Peace through a sense of satisfaction for having the simple things, for enjoying the simple things. For sharing in the simple things.
People who are shouting at children singing holiday songs, shouting at people who are putting up communal holiday trees, shouting at people who are attempting to enjoy this brief period of communal peacefulness, do not belong here. They have no inherent right to be here. The people who are disrupting holiday celebrations with demands of “look at me, me me” need to leave this place. They don’t fit here, America is not a good fit for them. There is no good reason why we should give up our little moment of annual peaceful respite out of the entire year for these selfish grinches. Who do they think they are? Who and what do they think we are?
I’ll be charitable and say that these people are frustrating.
It is best that we be honest with them and tell them “This American culture here is not your culture, we see it and that is OK, and so we understand that you need to go back to the place where your shouting and violence and mean spirited behavior is a good fit. We don’t want it here. We are happy with what we have here. We will be happier when you leave America and don’t come back.”
Whoever’s path you happen to cross, wish them Merry Christmas.
And that is my honest Merry Christmas message. I wish you and all of us peace and peacefulness. Hopefully we get snow, too, which really enhances the sense of being settled cozy inside, together.
Merry Christmas, America.
Russia & Ukraine & the West a year later
A year later after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a few realties emerge.
1) Massive scale wars with massive landscape-scale complete smoking rubble destruction and muddy trenches did not end after World War One (“The War to End All Wars“), or World War Two. Now, our entire beautiful blue and green planet appears to be on the edge of World War Three, and the carnage in Ukraine that right now seems so unimaginable is just the beginning.
2) Russia may harbor grievances against Germany for two back-to-back invasions in the past hundred years, but there is no avoiding the fact now that Russia is the aggressor here with Ukraine. No one likes a bully, and Russia cannot reasonably claim to be any sort of a victim while behaving this badly. No, sorry, few people in Europe or America accept the silly notion that Russia is entitled to invade and subdue and rule with an iron fist every nation near it. It is not right and it should not continue.
3) As rotten as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may be, there is no denying that he loves Russia and he believes in basic European/ Western values. Yes, it is easy to lose sight of the value of these facts in the face of so much Putin-led barbarism and destruction. But very few European/ Western leaders love their own countries; in fact most of them seem to be at war with their own countries and with their own countrymen, and the West is collapsing as a result. Isn’t it an oddity that of all places on Earth, Russia actually looks like one of the more stable places to live and raise a family?
4) Ukraine became America’s corrupt whore during the Obama administration, and Ukraine was being run by the Biden family when someone named Donald Trump came along in 2017 and shined a bright light on the disgusting mess. Hence all of the stops being pulled out by the corporate media and their Democrat Party masters to stop Trump at any cost, even the price of stealing the 2020 election and turning the American federal government against the American people. All of the fake Russiagate hoax, the Ukraine phone call hoax, the two fake impeachments, were to keep President Trump from digging into the really bad and illegal American corruption farming operation in Ukraine. And now, corrupt Joe Biden is dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine to prop it up to keep his corrupt operation from being fully exposed.
5) Ukraine isn’t really about defending a small, innocent country from a big bully neighbor. It is mostly about American politicians hiding and protecting their political and financial equivalent of a “black ops” country from further scrutiny. At least this war did not start out this way. Like all wars, this war is becoming about other things now.
6) The other thing that the Ukraine war is becoming is a firmer and much more organized alliance between Russia, China, and Iran as they seek to destroy the West. For those of us who love America, freedom, lots of delicious food and beer and easy weekends and endless entertainment and fun fun fun after a hard work week, this emerging alliance aimed at our throat is a really big problem. But as much as the Russia-China-Iran challenge to the West is more visible and threatening, a huge proportion of Americans ignore it and still take America and their safety for granted, still have their heads in the sand, and still want to keep voting for people who are aggressively undermining America from within. A weak America is how Americans will suddenly lose everything they enjoy and take for granted right now.
This war in Ukraine and how Americans understand it is how empires and cultures end. No, America is not too big to fail. But our own nation’s failure is beginning to happen right in Ukraine.
And isn’t it strange that the American Left, which spent 100 years undermining the American military and our national security in the name of “peace” is now hell bent on starting World War Three?
Another past war in an obscure European nation, and more dead beautiful young men with grieving parents. The yellow caption on this is incorrect. See the more accurate description below. It is heart breaking.
I dug around the Internet to find this bit of obscure history to help our own generation understand what is happening now in Ukraine. The parallels between 1912 Serbia (which became Yugoslavia) (does anyone today even remember that country?), the resulting World War I, and the current war in Ukraine are eerie as hell. History often repeats itself, but it doesn’t have to…
Veteran’s Day speech 2050
“Today is Veteran’s Day, in the year 2050, and I would like to acknowledge and thank our armed services veterans for their dedication and selfless loyalty.
This year of 2050 marks the thirtieth anniversary of our party’s glorious revolution against the old racist and capitalist United States of America. Our beautiful revolution that began with the party’s righteous overthrow of the corrupt old election system in 2020 could only have been made sure by the joining of the American military with the party. As I said, it is the military veterans of our many difficult but ultimately successful campaigns against domestic terrorists to rid America of racist capitalist oppression who made the party dominant and who brought peace and equity to our shores.
Without our glorious veterans today, we could never have re-made America into what it was meant to be: A unified, centralized, single party nation that serves all people equally. The antiquated and racist so-called Constitution of the old republic was made irrelevant by the dominant forcefulness and sacrifice of our party’s military forces and the many veterans of the several branches who gave their all to ensure that the party became the supreme source of all that is good in America today.
So I want to acknowledge and thank from the bottom of my heart on this Veteran’s Day all of you who have served the party and America so well.
Hakeem Jeffries, Secretary of Peace, Socialist Nation of America”
If we want to avoid some semblance of this speech from becoming actuality, then we Americans ALL must join together as the founders of America joined together in 1776 to fight the tyranny that daily threatens to dismantle America’s foundation. Witness the Biden DOJ and FBI committing an unconstitutional pre-dawn raid this week against journalist James O’Keefe’s home, where his personal computers and phones were stolen and whose contents were illegally downloaded. Nothing in them had anything to do with any crimes. In fact, just like the January 6th political prisoners rotting in DC jails solitary confinement who have not been officially charged, O’Keefe has not been charged with anything. This is just a political fishing expedition to uncover what O’Keefe knows about powerful people.
Apparently O’Keefe’s Project Veritas is so successful at outing Marxist hypocrisy and domestic threats to America that the full coercive weight of the federal government had to be brought down on him, illegally.
The DOJ and the FBI are now so crystal clearly just arms of the Democrat Party. A political party that is seeking sole dominance by any means necessary. By crushing all dissent that has always been constitutionally protected. But the Constitution is only a piece of paper, and if one party no longer respects it or agrees to abide by it….then it becomes meaningless.
America is in for a real fight to stay as a free nation. A fight against the Biden federal government. Thank you to all the real military veterans who have served, fought, been wounded, or died over the last 240 years, while in the pursuit of keeping the Constitution alive and our freedoms real.
My childhood friend John S. broke out and dusted off his service medals today. It is people like John who created the military deterrent to invasion of America. And it is veterans like John who Americans will probably need to call upon again to create a deterrent to the domestic terrorists and enemies now in control of the federal government. Thank you for your service, Johnny. You make us proud.
America is beautiful, Vote for Trump
America is beautiful. It is a Garden of Eden.
America remains the best nation in the entire world by every single measure, as its immigration pattern shows: The entire world wants to move here, to live in this peaceful Garden of Eden, and no one leaves. Whatever your skin color, religion, language, clothing, you can move here, become part of our peaceful culture, work hard, and live many times better than you were living in your nation of birth.
America is not “systemically racist” or any of the other ridiculous accusations its enemies and native spoiled children say. America is the opposite of racist. America presents more opportunity to more people than any other place on the planet.
Only Donald J. Trump is able to preserve the American union that is the Eden so many people aspire to move to from around the globe. The man is a font of positivity, happiness, and old fashioned American humor and vigor.
I understand that some people do not agree with Trump’s policy preferences, and that could be the only reason to vote against him. Because no intelligent person believes the dishonest caricatures of Trump portrayed by CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Reuters, Associated Press, the Washington Post, New York Times and a bunch of other partisan political “news” outlets. And even if you disagree with Trump on some policies, think about what is most important to you: A few policies, balanced against a lifetime of stable, successful America. That is what the choice is tomorrow.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris represent only negativity, unhappiness, conflict, catastrophe, lies, and failure for all Americans, especially Blacks.
If you love America, if you love her peacefulness, her beauty, liberty and harmony, and her long time equal application of the rule of law to everyone who preserves that peace, then you can only vote for Donald J. Trump. He is who I am voting for tomorrow, and you should, too. Help God bless America by keeping America peaceful.
Because America is still beautiful and worth keeping beautiful.
President Trump Earns the Nobel Peace Prize
Right now I am watching the peace agreement signing event between Israel, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates, put together by President Donald Trump.
This is a majorly historic moment on Planet Earth. Because for seventy years at least, the simple ability to sit down and talk things out eluded the Muslim Arab population, regardless of country, regardless of age, regardless of religious observance, regardless of educational level or political office. The simple fact is that Muslim Arab culture simply had no room for free Jews. No room in their hearts, no room in their ears, no room in their heads.
Even in Egypt, which signed an agreement with Israel during the President Carter administration, the notion that peace had been achieved was never taken seriously. Egypt was worn down from repeatedly losing huge military campaigns to tiny Israel, and America offered enough financial incentive for Egypt to move into a different approach to existence. It wasn’t love for Egyptians or Israelis that led Sadat to sign the treaty with Israel. It was his yearning for political stability.
After seventy years of one-sided conflict brought on Israel by the Muslim Arab inability to think broadly or modernly, only President Donald Trump was able to step outside the standard lines that had been drawn up among the combatants. Just as only President Trump has been able to step outside the artificial lines drawn up by Washington DC elites, to finally and uniquely advance the material interests of all Americans.
So if President Barack Hussein Obama was entitled to get the Nobel Peace Prize for merely getting elected, and for having achieved nothing that promoted peace, then how much more does today’s true peace agreement entitle President Trump to also receive the Nobel Peace Prize!
And while we are on the subject, how could Israel’s prime minister Bibi Netanyahu also not deserve the same award?
Signing ceremony broadcast live just moments ago, posted as a screen shot from my computer, complete with a dummy “Press ESC to exit” for those Jews who love a seditious political party more than they love peace
Peace
Peace Peace Peace Peace Peace Peace Peace
Peace
On Earth
I am crying over spilt milk
Whether FakeBook causes, accelerates, or encourages the split-up of long standing friendships and friendly acquaintance-type relationships is a subject of endless discussion.
People who for many years, even decades, shared affection for and cheerful enjoyment of one another’s company and personality are now not talking, communicating, or sharing. Instead, one party has abruptly broken off entirely, leaving the other party bemused, hurt, and or frustrated. The drama can be plain silly, because we are talking about adults here who post histrionic things like “If you voted for ________, then just un-friend me, now, please, I beg of you.”
Or it can be more subtle, with people hitting the “ignore” button on a relationship, pretty much tossing the friendship away without the pain of actually breaking off.
This one-sided dynamic plays out most visibly on FakeBook because “likes,” comments, and the number of “friends” are actual numeric measures of a relationship’s quality. And when you start seeing a numeric down-trend in one area, you often see the actual end coming quicker and quicker.
And what is the primary cause of these fractured friendships?
Why political differences, naturally.
Do you recall the poll done about eight or ten months ago (Pew, Gallup? I don’t recall which firm did it, but it was a real polling firm and the results are believable), which showed 39% of self-identified liberals can and will live with a conservative, versus nearly double that for conservatives willing to live with liberals?
That poll showed what many of us have observed personally for some time, and increasingly over the past year: Political correctness has destroyed liberals’ ability to live up to the qualities they claim ownership of, like being tolerant, open-minded, and accepting of differences.
PC has become so intense that now simply belonging to the wrong political party, driving the wrong vehicle, or EVEN HAVING THE WRONG SKIN COLOR is grounds for heaps of burning hatred and criticism. Nothing about this behavior is open-minded. It is not tolerant. And watching people walk around with a burden of hate for all kinds of classes of people makes them look and feel a lot like the other side, the KKK or neo-Nazi side, who are ALSO intolerant and violently hateful.
While the few decades-long friends I and others I know have lost through FakeBook were not violent people, their visceral hatred still burned bright.
Where someone’s burning hate becomes physical violence is a subject for philosophy books, because gut instinct tells you that one naturally follows the other. Seemingly uncharacteristic behavior for the loving and gentle relationship we had enjoyed lo these many years, even decades, suddenly there was the hatred, the intolerance, the violent words, and then the break.
Not one conservative I know of has broken off with the liberals in their lives (because they are liberals), via FakeBook or any other way, but the number of liberals who have broken off with people who are not liberals is legion and legendary.
These liberals’ behavior is the very definition of intolerance.
Do you ever wonder why there is no ‘world peace’?
I do wonder now, and I always have wondered since I was a kid, when the Vietnam War was going strong.
Well, part of the answer to why there is no world peace is that those people who most assiduously claim ownership of being peaceful are those who in personal practice are the least peaceful.
During the Vietnam War, being pro-peace meant being against American war-making in Asia; but those same anti-war people were not against Asians making war against other Asians, or against America. So they were not really, truly pro peace. They were simply anti-America, despite living in and enjoying America.
One test of being peaceful is your ability and willingness to accept differences between one’s self and other people without getting angry, hateful, judgmental, accusatory, or violent. When that inability to accept others turns to intolerance, why then…there is an absence of peace. And you are not a peaceful person. And it is self-evident to those around you.
And no, demanding that people adopt your way of thinking is not being tolerant. Humans have been doing things a few certain ways for thousands of years, and if you want to deviate from that, then asking for tolerance is fair. Demanding acceptance, acquiescence etc at the cost of breaking off (a form of coercion and violence) is unreasonable.
I am crying over all this spilt milk, because to not cry is to lie to myself, and to make pretend that certain unhealthy dynamics are not happening.
I am sad at the lost friendships, whether mine or those of friends of mine, for sure. I am also sad about an America that has everything, certainly more than any other country, and yet is being torn apart by violence and hate in the name of “peace” and “tolerance.”
The relationships between fellow Americans are being torn apart, over what?
This is spilt milk, and I prefer to cry over this now and have a positive, healing, peaceful conversation with someone about this, rather than later cry over something else being spilt as a result of no attempts at healing having been made and the logical outcome of hate and intolerance come to fruition.