Darkness Descending

Lately I have become even darker than my usual cranky old man demeanor.  Partly, I guess, it is a function of aging. The closer to an ending, the darker is my hue. Partly, obviously, our absurd political situation is to blame. To observe this destructive clown (apologies to clowns everywhere) wreaking havoc on a daily basis, because he is both too stupid to understand what he is doing, and also because he simply doesn’t care about the effects of his actions on others, including on the Nation as a whole, is frankly more than disheartening.

And then, of course, one need only look abroad at the continued carnage in that place formerly called the Middle East, and now called Murderers' Row, to see that much of the rest of the world is an absurdity.  People there kill partly out of religious absurdity and partly just because they get off on killing.—sort of like the NRA here.

I have been thinking about our very own home-grown idiocies, and I have difficulty understanding how the moron’s support continues. He carries out some ridiculous action via his 3-4 AM Tweets, and the rest of us just gasp in disbelief. He appoints people to high level positions who are, purposefully, opposed to the very idea of the agency’s they now run.  He appoints people who seemingly know nothing, and we are expected to applaud.  And his supporters do just that.

How? How can they? Are they simply residents in Hillary’s infamous “Basket of Deplorables”? How could that be?

And then, upon ruminating a bit more, I finally conclude that his supporters are like him in attitude. They no longer care. Every time he does something terminally stupid, and his opponents gasp in anger and disbelief, his supporters smile, and perhaps even cheer him on. Because, they are now like bomb-throwers. They are getting someone else to do what they really want to do themselves—burn the place down, blow it up, and whatever comes as a result, let it come, because it couldn’t be worse than what they have been observing with the so-called rational folks in charge.  Many of his supporters are racists who hated the thought of Obama, and the idea of Hillary made them want to throw up.  Hillary and the Dems never really understood the level of hostility generated by Hillary every time she opened her mouth.  So, when the Trump yelled “Lock her up” they cheered in response.  Partly, they were being given an outlet for their rage about Obama, and partly, Hillary just provided a convenient target for their abuse.

And now, they seemingly just don’t care what happens.

So observing this mess that is now our country is dispiriting at best.  

Partly, too, the fact of the ending, now coming into view, pulls me into a worldview that is no longer optimistic and filled with possibilities. I see the missed opportunities more than I see the possible openings, because the openings seem fewer and less plausible. I watched a film the other day with Ben Stiller about Life’s missed opportunities called  Brad’s Status. As I watched, I began thinking back to all the career life mistakes I had made, and the missed opportunities that lay therein. Would’a, could’a should’a wandered through my head all night. Guaranteed to make your day.

But then we return to the wonderful world of Today.  Between The Donald-Doofus-in-Charge, the NRA death-mongrels, and the Facebook thieves of Cambridge Analytica (needs to be shut down) we have a real mess here in Amurrica. Enough to make one wonder just when we plan on descending into some other Hell-hole—the Middle East anyone?

Well, enough Richard. You will die soon enough, so try to enjoy your remaining time here on this spinning globe (take that Flat-Earthers).  And speaking of Flat-Earthers, I wonder whether they are all related to the Donald, who is, as far as we know, the stupidest person on the planet.

Meanwhile, the sun just came out today. So, perhaps my mood will lighten. Ignore all the crap in the world if you can, and there is much there. There are bright angels all around you, people smiling despite the idiot-savants of the world.  When they smile at you, smile back. Pretend you're an elephant and Carol is feeding you Cheerios. See, you can smile after all.

Ta ta.

Suicide Ideation

Suicide Ideation: I heard this term today from someone. It caused me to think about the end of life thing. Suicide means that you end your own life prematurely.  Life, actually, eventually ends your life, whether you like it or not.  And there is no meaning to any of it, life . . . death . . . unless you personally attach your own values or meaning to it.

I suppose there is this point about being deeply religious. It gives you an explanation for death, and even, sometimes, for life.  Religion often informs people of why they are here, and, also, what happens after life ends.  Mostly, such folks have great expectations for the “what happens after” thing.  You know, you climb into a bus, and the bus driver takes you to the gates . . . you know, those pearly gates thingie. And then the big guy formally decides whether you are staying there, and he (always a “he”) opens those gates, allowing you to enter, or he shakes his head and says, um, no, you are going to take the down elevator to Hell. Sorry, but you really didn’t pass muster down there on Earth.  And if you used to be good enough, you get assigned to a cloud, a harp and a friendly group of family and friends. Then you also get to oversee the folks not yet dead (remember at many funerals, the dude in charge often comments that, “he is in a better place and is looking down upon you now”. To be honest, that never seemed much fun, looking down on all the dudes and dudettes down below doing their thing and having fun, or not, while you just float up there observing.

Whereas those of the non-religious persuasion believe that life simply ceases, and nothing follows . . . nothing.  I have observed this belief several times in these pages, about my best understanding of the end of life.  You simply stop “being”. And you don’t know it, because your brain ceases to function.  All awareness just stops, and nothing follows. Again . . . and you don’t know it.  So, at one level, my concept is scary . . . that not knowing it thing. What will it be like, no longer seeing anything, because your brain stops working? At another level, though, it simply is, not scary or not wonderful. Neither emotion fits. But, because there is no Hell in my view, there is no longer anything to scare you about the end.

But my view also precludes any serious thoughts of suicide. Because, I guess, my life has been a mixed bag, but has been on average way better than it might have been, given my beginnings—great family, lots of exciting happenings throughout, beauty aplenty. Sure, down times too. But I think that’s the definition of life, some good, some bad, on average at least interesting.  I was created during the Great Depression (why would anyone create a kid during the Great Depression, you might wonder). So, early life was spare. Since daddy refused to do his job (be a father) my mom had to pick up the pieces. So, we survived, because she insisted we survive. And then came that Great War thingie, the war to end all wars, or WW II for short.  That was clearly a mixed bag. Scarcity, folks elsewhere being killed routinely, a relative or two going off to foreign climes, and then that happened. And I grew up, thanks to my caring mom. Several trips to the hospital to correct street happenings, but I survived.  We all mostly survived, despite the mental and physical bruises . . . leaving scars you never quite forget.  But life continues, and that is the definition of life after all. You get to kick the crap aside and just get on with it, to extract all the good juices you can.

So, when anyone talks about suicide, I have to believe they haven’t been thinking straight. I guess it is possible to focus all the time on the bad stuff in life. And almost everyone has some bad stuff to remember. But life really is a balancing act. And you, each and every one of us, has to do the balancing. If you understand that bad stuff will happen, but that you just need to get on, so as to grab the golden rings of life, you will survive the bad and the good. And then at some point, it all ends anyway. But, you really don’t want it to end until you really have sucked life dry. You need to get all the good stuff, ignoring the crap as much as possible (that includes the Trumps of the world) and live it to its fullest end point. That is what life is really all about. Life is all about beauty and laughter. Yeah, it includes ugly and crying (see Trump), but that’s just crap to be kicked aside. You cannot let the uglies dictate your life. Instead, let the beauty and the laughter be your life. Let you dictate your life.  There really are evil people in the world (see Nazi’s) and they really do screw up many lives. But if you’re lucky, you can maneuver around the ugly people and head to the light. When it ends and everything turns dark, you want to be smiling if at all possible.

So, should suicide cross your mental map, walk right on, ignore it. Only you can decide how you want life to proceed. And proceed it will. Let the sun shine in. And smile.

Emperor Butthead

Emperor for Life

So, the Chinese premier/President, or whatever he is, has now proposed that he be allowed to serve for the rest of his life, creating a new form of Emperor-dynasty system in China. It is not as though they haven’t been there before, but we all had imagined that China had graduated from the emperor system to something approximating a democratic governmental system.  I guess the temptation to retreat to a system that eliminates the need for thinking is just too great. Still, it kind of surprises me.

And then, President Doofus allowed as how he liked the Chinese emperor-wannabe, and thought perhaps we might try the same system.  And I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. See, if Borowitz proposed something like that, I would know to laugh, cuz Andy is a satirist and writes stuff like that all the time. But when Stupidhead says that, well maybe he’s just being stupidly comedic, or maybe the thought just entered his head . . . “hey, president (emperor??) for life. Hell, if the Chinese are thinking that, why not me and here?” Then, when he is criticized, he can just have one of his dumbass spokespeople (Sarah huckleberry) tell us that he was just joking . . . haha, she will say with her dark face scowling at us.

This all makes me wonder, mainly about us. See, we know President Doofus really doesn’t know anything, mainly because he can’t/won’t read.  I assume it’s the untreated ADHD thing. He apparently can’t sit still and focus long enough to read anything beyond a dinner menu.  Even there, I’ll bet he can’t stay focused beyond the triple cheeseburger and fries whopper. So, imagine him trying the read the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution, or any history book, or much of anything that explains our government. See, we know he doesn’t even understand his own business, since he has failed so many times. He starts a fake university and then when he gets called out because it’s fake, he just bumbles along and gets out of the way.  But it seems the same with almost anything he has begun. He seems to think if he’s in charge of something, it means he can do anything he wants. And if it fails, then someone else will come along and pick up the pieces.

So, when he achieved the Presidency (Emperorhood??) he had no idea what that actually meant. Only that, he was in charge of something called the United States Government.  Which meant, of course, that he now could really do anything he wanted with, to and about the thing called The Government.  So, when he appoints Jared to “fix” the Middle East mess, and “reorganize” the Federal Government, he has no idea what that means, only that it seems like it’s something that might be fun to do. And surely Jared can handle that, along with managing his own businesses.  Since he doesn’t actually do anything, aside from telling other folks what he wants done, he doesn’t know how anything works.  Telling Jared to fix the Middle East is not unlike me telling my 6-year old grandkid to fix the fucked up global banking system. It would be funny if not so tragic and so dangerous.

That’s the problem. President Doofus doesn’t really understand anything. So when he says, tariff wars are a good thing and easy to win, he really has no idea what he is saying.  It’s just words tumbling out of his mouth in some vaguely understandable order. But he might as well be speaking in Icelandic, for all he understands what he just said.

See, then the real problem begins. Because people begin to treat what he says seriously. And at least a few of the people who are within his neighborhood (e.g., the White House) have an understanding that what he just said has potential consequences and that those consequences might not be all that great for America.  If people abroad find what he said threatening, they will begin to utter threatening words in response. And then he will begin twittering in response, as any annoyed two-year old would do.

You might imagine, even in this less than perfect world in which we live, that there might be some actual adults in the room who could step in to address his inanities.  But if they did, he would just fire them and/or insult them so that they would quit.

And what about Congress you might ask? Won’t they step in and tell him that his latest idea is less than wonderful? Well, no, there is nobody left in Congress with a functioning brain. Paul Ryan is too busy trying to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So he has a Do Not Disturb sign on his office that is permanently affixed.  And Mitch? Yeah, Mitch . . . hahahahahahahaha. He actually has no functioning brain, but you knew that.

And the Dems mainly sit on the sidelines sucking their thumbs and asking for $5.00. Ivanka anyone?

So, meanwhile, back at the ranch, we folks called citizens are just watching the latest TV utterances and pouring ourselves another drink. Maybe we can stay drunk long enough not to notice when President Doofus decides to nuke San Francisco . . . just cuz he can, don’t you know.

Happy hour every hour. Drink on me hearties.

Gun Control

It is hard to know what to say. Were I to be standing in front of a classroom of students, what could I say to them?

“We adults apparently do not care about you or your future lives. We seem to care more about the presumed rights of adult males to own automatic weapons intended solely to kill enemy forces in wartime. Although those adult males will never in fact use those automatic weapons for that purpose, they seem to feel inadequate without their automatic weapons.  And we wouldn’t want them to feel inadequate, would we? So we are exchanging your rights to full lives to accommodate the needs of these inadequate males. Poor souls. You understand, don’t you?”

And then, I might have to leave the classroom very quickly, so as to avoid being hit by blackboard erasers, or to listen to the children screaming at me. What would they be yelling about? Well, I assume they might be pissed because I was acting like a total idiot, a true enfant terrible, like most of our Congress persons, at least the ones on the payroll of the NRA.

We know the President is a true idiot, because he acts like one 75% of the time, you know, when he isn’t actually sleeping.   Apparently, we can now also conclude that the Congress persons on the payroll of the NRA are also idiots – From Wiki,

“Idiot is a word derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs ("person lacking professional skill", "a private citizen", "individual"), from ἴδιος, idios ("private", "one's own").^[1] In ancient Greece, people who were not capable of engaging in the public sphere were considered "idiotes. An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs.^[7] Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education.^[7] In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education”

Many of the postings on Facebook and other social media expressing the need for “gun control”, seem to evoke from the gunners in the land, the notion that we do not have a gun problem, because,

“Guns do not kill people. People kill people.”

One man even went on to describe how his gun could be placed on a table, and it would never operate on its own. Therefore, he asserted, gun control is not the issue, but rather, people control.

Yet, it we examine the globe, we can observe that, the United States is alone in the number and extent of mass shootings. In fact, all countries that have enacted serious gun control no longer have mass shootings.  Only in the US, are these shootings continuing and even increasing.  And it is not the case that Britain, or Australia, or Canada, et al, do not have at least some mentally unbalanced citizens. Folks with serious mental diseases seem to exist almost everywhere, but only in the US does that manifest itself in the form of multiple murders.  Often these atrocities take form within a school destroying our more vulnerable citizens, young students engaged in trying to learn to become citizens.   The mass shootings do not seem to occur with a crazed person armed with a single shot rifle, or pistol. No, that would be too difficult for the crazy person.  Instead, the weapon of choice seems to be that old standby, the AR-15.  The original AR-15 was manufactured by Colt and had a five round magazine. But Colt’s patent expired and other gun manufacturers began making AR-15 type semi-automatic rifles with some up to 30-round magazines.  The Orlando club shooting massacre was described as an AR-15 gun, but it was one of the many variants, the SIG Sauer MCX.

These weapons are often referred to as “assault” weapons. Why? Because that is their stated military purpose. See, they have no civilian purpose, certainly not hunting.  So, why the outcry against banning such obviously military style weapons?  All we can conclude is that their owners know no bounds to their view of the so-called Second Amendment rights to own guns. That amendment asserts:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The arguments about this amendment have continued off and on for several centuries, and include arguments about the right of kings to disarm the citizens, especially citizens of a certain religious persuasion, in the days when Catholics and Protestants battled for control of the English land. It seems clear that a state militia was an important element in the early arguments about this right to bear arms, as was the right to hunt on their own lands.  Our Supreme Court decided that the individual right to bear arms was paramount and that the Second Amendment protected that right.

Still, arguments can and will continue over whether assault rifles can and should fall within this right, the Supreme Court notwithstanding. But it will take a serious Congressional debate, perhaps up to and including a debate about the need for a replacement Second Amendment. And that may not happen within my lifetime, mainly because we no longer have serious-minded persons within our Congress. 

The need for a Second Amendment debate seems clear, but it is and will continue to be impeded because our legislators are elected partly/perhaps mainly by virtue of private money from interests bent on protecting their own commercial interests.  In this case, the NRA, representing armaments manufacturers, has been able to convince (stress on “con”) its members to support their arguments that the government wants to take away their right to bear arms, any arms.  So, the NRA has multiple millions of dollars to essentially bribe Congress persons to avoid any and all serious debates on the issue of armaments control.  So, until such money is removed from the political system, this form of political bribery will continue and Congress persons will continue to be bought by private monied interests. So long as that exists, no serious gun control can occur. And as long as no serious gun control exists, continued mass shootings will continue in this country.  

We are and will be the laughing stock of the world in this respect. We are, simply, not serious people. And we will continue to value private commercial interests, over the lives of our children. Try explaining that to a classroom of students.

Taxes: The Glue of a Civilized Society

Taxes: Every quarter, we make out a check for the Feds and a check to the State of North Carolina for our quarterly income tax estimates. Then, of course, annually, we calculate our taxes due to each, and send in our tax filings for the year past.  Do we love this annual ritual? No, of course not. Do we think it is necessary, vital even? Of course we do. What’s not to hate about paying taxes? Well, for one, I regard taxes as a kind of glue of a civilized society.  It’s almost literally the thing that binds us together as civilized human beings.  What do we “buy” through our taxes? Well, things like roads and bridges, allowing us to move about in things called automobiles and trucks.  And then there’s those police forces that protect us from the ne’er-do-wells of the world.  Yes, we need quality policing to protect all of us.

Oh, and then we have one of the biggies—public education—that system republicans of the Trump stripe really hate.  Public education literally educates the vast bulk of our population. Yes, I know, the Trumpies, people like Betsy Devos have never attended a public school in their fortunate lives. But, as a result, Betsy missed something important, vital even. She missed out on an understanding of who Americans really are. Yes, in addition to learning the ABCs, and the 1,2,3’s, Betsy missed out on associating with real people, the ones who constitute America. She missed meeting and understanding what makes the vast middle class tick.  Because it is the public education system that created the middle class and it is the middle class that created America.  But Betsy doesn’t know that. She thinks it’s all the private forces in education that made us what we are. She’s wrong. But Betsy, apparently dumb as a pet rock, wants to slowly destroy our public education system and channel all that public money into private, even for-profit schools.  Again. Betsy is wrong, but we all know that.

Then we have health care. We really do seem all steamed up about health care. Heaven forfend that people should have access to quality health care. They might actually remain healthy and live long lives. And wouldn’t that be terrible?  We seem to be the only vaguely civilized nation on earth that fails to guarantee our entire population with access to quality health care.  Yeah, Trump loves those white Norwegians. He welcomes them to migrate to America. But Norwegians just laugh at this proclamation. Why would they do that, they ask? They have a profoundly better system of government that makes their lives profoundly better than they might have here. For one thing, they all have guaranteed health care. So, they laugh at his dumb idea.  

And as they laugh, Trump looks at ways to reduce the Federal commitments to providing even our elderly with quality health care. See, he can buy his own health care, so he doesn’t need Federal systems, like Medicare and Medicaid.

And within that vast arena called health care, we have or used to have an array of programs intended to enhance our systems.  Programs intended to assure a more effective distribution of health care practitioners around the country. Programs intended to deliver the numbers and quality of the many different kinds of health care practitioners needed by our population.  And within that vast arena are also programs intended to carry out research—research on human ailments at NIH, research on drugs at FDA, research on new and better ways to deliver health care.  But our bozo president doesn’t understand any of that, because he can’t read.  So, it’s no use giving him copies of reports on any of these programs, because he won’t understand any of those reports.

So, apparently, mainly because he doesn’t understand anything, he wants to zero fund a whole host of programs and agencies.  We all know, the five-time draft dodger loves his military and, especially his generals and his tanks and planes. So, he wants to give them a lot of money. But all dictators everywhere first and foremost love their military. It’s how they remain in power, or so they reckon.  It’s why he wants his parade, so his military can pass by and salute him—honor him he thinks.  He fails to understand that the Nazi’s he salutes and speaks favorably about, are the very ones our military fought to defeat, and that our military people actually despise Nazi’s and others of their ilk.  Although Trump has managed to surround himself with some generals who never knew a bad wife-beater, most generals frown on such things.  But Trump doers love blowing up things, so he wants even more money, our public tax money, for the toys used to blow things up.

But on the agencies that don’t specialize in blowing things up, our President wants to eliminate their funding. Not just, marginally reduce their funding, but eliminate it altogether.  I guess his budget choices should come as no surprise to any of us. He has been routinely appointing folks to head these agencies who seem to fundamentally disagree with the basic premise of the agency.  So, he places in charge of public education, someone who has zero experience of public education and who actively opposes public education. He puts in charge of EPA someone who does not understand climate change and who thinks the polluting industries (the Koch brothers come to mind here) are just fine and dandy for America.  Similarly, because he finds all Federal regulations burdensome, he puts people in charge of those regulations who are fundamentally opposed to their purposes.  Even St. Ronald of Reagan didn’t do that for heaven’s sake.

And then he pretends to sponsor a vast array of infrastructure development ideas, to improve our crumbling infrastructure, you know, bridges falling down, roads falling apart, and rail systems crumbling. But then he tosses out another of his wishful thinking proposals, like his Mexico Wall that Mexico will pay for. In this instance, he wants the infrastructure all restored by tossing a minor amount of Federal money at it, but then the States and locales, like Mexico, will really finance the bulk of it.

Oh, and never forget his disdain for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and its agents like the National Public Radio. Because Trump has been bought by Murdoch and the Faux News Network, he thinks PBS and all those folks are out to get him, because they try really hard to practice even-handed journalism, and he really cannot stand such broadcasting.  See, "even-handed" does not mean slavish fawning over the Drumpf, and he can't stand that. So, zero-funding it is.

And his republican colleagues and partners don’t break out in laughter at his proposals.  There are a few republicans who find his proposals absurd, but their voices seem drowned out by the chorus of approval from the Paul Ryan crowd and the 30 odd percent in the land who still approve this absurdist, masquerading as our president.  Republicans have now shifted from being conservative to being anarchists, like Paul Ryan.  They really don’t want any government, except for the shoot’m-up variety.

And so that glue that binds us together as a civilized society becomes slowly but surely undone.  And, at the same rate, our nation gradually becomes less civilized.

There is no hope for any of this, save one—VOTING. Yes, this insanity called the Trump Federal Government, is reversible, but only if rational people get out to vote. Regardless of the Republican efforts to devise ways to deny people the right to vote, it is still possible to get out, get registered, and VOTE. I would say, Vote Out the Rascals. But these people are not rascals. They are dangerous, ignorant tyrants. The entire Republican Party has gone off the rails of sanity.  They no longer deserve the support of ordinary, thinking Americans.  

So, consider our future, Americans. And do your duty as patriotic citizens. Restore our democracy.  

Bring back thoughtfulness. 

Reintroduce the Enlightenment. 

Growing Funny

Retirement Home Calendar The Contilia  Retirement Group in Essen, Germany, made what is  probably the best calendar ever with a few of their seniors. According  to German press, 5000 calendars were printed.  And they were given out to  residents of the Senior Centre, along with relatives and staff. The calendar models were interviewed about the project and said it was a ton of fun to dress up as their favorite actors. The  shoot was done with professional stylists and photographers to make sure everything looked as cool as possible. The  oldest senior involved with the calendar was 98 years OLD! JANUARY James  Bond Wilhelm Buiting, 89   FEBRUARY Breakfast  at Tiffany's Marianne Brunsbach, 86 MARCH Titanic Erna Rütt, 86, and Alfred Kelbch, 81 APRIL Rocky Erwin J von der Heiden, 80 MAY Mary  Poppins Erna Schenk, 78 JUNE The  Seven Year Itch Ingeborg Giolbass, 84, and Erich Endlein, 88 JULY Blues  Brothers Lothar Wischnewski, 76 and Margarete Schmidt, 77 AUGUST Cabaret Martha Bajohr, 77 SEPTEMBER Giant Joanna Trachenberg, 81 and Horst Krischat, 78 OCTOBER Saturday Night Fever Irmgard Alt, 79 and Siegfried Gallasch, 87 NOVEMBER Dirty  Dancing Johann Liedtke, 92 and Marianne Pape, 79 DECEMBER Easy  Rider Walter Loeser, 98 and Kurt Neuhaus, 90 'Growing old' is Mandatory, 'Growing up' is Optional!! AND AS THEY SAY IN THE CLASSICS ... If you haven't grown up by the time you are FIFTY Well then you don't have to!!!!

Stealing Lives

We have been watching another of our host of British mysteries, this one, The Fall. It is all about a sadist who murders young women. In the afterworld, where I actually think, I have been thinking about what someone is doing when they take another person’s life, especially a young person. What are we, after all, but a body of human experience potential? Someone who is, say, 30, has stored within 50, 60, even 70 years of potential experiences, many pleasant, even beautiful ones.  So, taking that person’s life is robbing them of those experiences. At one level, the act of murder is an act of the moment. It arguably gives the perpetrator a moment of pleasure at the act. But, it is really stealing a lifetime of experiences from the person so deprived. But the perpetrator doesn’t even think of the act in those terms—as taking away years of experiences in exchange for a single moment of . . .  of what . . . pleasure?

And then I thought, but what about acts we commit that alter a person’s life in some unpleasant way? We decide to define the world into castes, in which some folks are at the top and some are at the bottom—the throw-aways of our world. What are we doing by such an act? Well, we are forcing the folks so defined as the bottom-dwellers to a lifetime of misery, instead of a lifetime of happiness.  See we actually know that, but we mostly don’t think of our acts in such terms—stealing a person’s lifetime of happy experiences so that we can live better today. That is the actual price of our chosen path.

Similarly, when we embarked on a campaign to enslave people, we were stealing from those people their future lives, some of which would be filled with happy experiences. We stole their lives, much as if we had just killed them.

And then, today, when we smugly deride whole groups of people labeling them as desirable or undesirable, because of the color of their skin, or because they believe in a god different than our God, or because they are of a different gender, we are changing their lives in ways we cannot even predict, but ways likely to be less happy, and more stressful. So, again, we are stealing from those people, something we actually do not own, but can control—the future experiences of those other people.

But do we commit such acts of theft knowing the grotesque effects of the acts we are committing? Not likely. Mainly, we choose not to think, because thinking is difficult, and involves making choices we may not be comfortable making.

Life is but a balancing act. Life requires us to think so as to maintain a balance between good and harm. Some, perhaps many, folks prefer not to think overly much, because thinking requires mental agility, and acting on rote convictions is often more convincing and, just, easier.

So, acts of racism, or bigotry, or misogyny, or simple cruelty can become our preferred lifestyle—thereby defining our own lifetime of experiences.

Kindness could arguably also become a lifestyle. Kindness is less certain than emotional violence (racism), but it might actually spread, because an act of kindness could become contagious. Others might also begin to choose kindness rather than violence, but only those who actually think about life and the consequences of our individual acts.

Would it not be a better world, if we all tried to eliminate hate and inserted kindness instead?

Wow, what a concept . . . kindness instead of hate. What a wonderful world it might be . . .