Badtux, the Penguin cuts to the center of the herring with his post on fear. Fear is the greatest motivator of all. And Americans are quite full of it. Read: In the Kingdom of Fear, Only the Dead Are Free.
"Waiter, more herring over here!"
I've been quietly stewing over my compassionate-gone-wrong missive to Jeff Goldstein the other day, when I caught up with Sadly, No's character assassination of aforementioned blogger. The sheer volume of quoted bile was overwhelming, and this is only Part 1. And I apologized to this wretch? It's the gesture that counts, I tell myself. It's not like I ever read Jeff's blog.
Today, I happen across perhaps the best example of the value of Grain-Of-Salt thinking regarding bloggers. After all, anyone can blog these days ( I'm living proof.) Here's a heartfelt anti-abortion posting. I'm dumbfounded (pun intended) that this guy is serious. Read the comments, they're great! It must suck to be him right now…
UPDATE:
The Instigator
The Response
"What comes around, goes around." or, "You reap what you sow." Two famous expressions we in the West have, which sums up the Eastern concept of Karma. The Matrix films called it "Causality," while interlacing Jewish and Biblical imagery, but I digress.
Most people would agree with the concept, whatever expression one prefers. This morning, as I fire up one of my favorite blog-watching sites, Blogsnow, I see karma in action.
Righty blogger of repute, Jeff Goldstein, was trolled by a "progressive blogger" who has some very nasty things to say. Details can be found in his post: More from the tolerant left. Black Five harps on it: BLACKFIVE: A New Low, deservedly. And the Wicked Witch of the Right fairly bubbles with vitriol. No doubt her army of salivating lap-dog pit bulls are Googling the perp’s address…
Even Liberal bloggers are flaming her comment pages in disgust.
The blogger in the cross-hairs, Dr. Debbie Frisch, a psyche professor at the University of Arizona until this blew up, deserves what she is getting. Ill intentions, beget ill deeds, resulting in unwanted consequences: It’s Karma, folks. Although I don’t wish her ill, and although I understand this is a learning experience that likely will change her demeanor and help her work out whatever issues caused this, I can’t help being amused by the whole thing. Can any Buddhist ask for a better Dharma lesson than this?
She has since recanted - South(west)paw: white flag - but words, once issued, cannot be retracted. As many from either side of the political fence extend the flame war by contacting her employer, she was forced to resign. As she puts it:
Jeff - I lost my job. You won. Could you call off the troops?
She hasn’t yet realized that the "troops" also consist of her readership and like-minded philosophers - like myself - who lost a great deal of credibility thanks to her lack of mindfulness. To be sure, the right suffers from it’s share of whackjobs, but that’s their mystique. They benefit from that, feed on it as Ms. Malkin frequently demonstrates. The progressives, however, by their self-chosen title and the label "Liberal," must hold to a higher standard of behavior at all times. Dr. Frisch blew it. And by doing so, took all of us lefties down with her, by the karmic convergence of ideological association.
This illustrates another Buddhist teaching of Interdependence: All things are connected. By shamelessly spouting her vile thoughts, Liberals and their ideas nationwide are discredited. I’ve never met the women, and likely never will, but I am affected by her senseless tirade, as much as any.
To Jeff Goldstein, to all conservative Americans, I extend a heartfelt apology from the Liberal sphere for Dr. Frisch’s words. Please refrain from the very human tendency to generalize all progressives by her actions. The vast majority of us know better. May you and your family live in peace.
Namaste.
I just found an old article (end of May) at rawstory.com about apes, presidents, and decorum. Interested? Read: "George, ya big Ape!" As a further teaser. this snippet:
It’s my husband," that female silverback told those that tried to deny her entry to the operating room in Dallas. "His blood, his brains are all over me."
Meanwhile, my polar friend, Badtux is looking into his Crystal Herring and seeing the future of America in the today’s Louisiana. Warning: not for the progressively-impaired.
Where I turn my car into and out of the parking lot at work there is a large double billboard. Raised only seven feet off the ground, the larger-than-necessary message has been working is subliminal magic. Mostly the message is uninteresting. I not sure what the left half is promoting; some radio station, I think… The right half is promoting the new Coca Cola Blak coffee drink. For the past two seeks I’ve been looking at the five foot lettering remembering a snippet of my wife’s conversation shortly after returning from New York last month (yes, I actually listen to her). She tasted the stuff and liked it. I’m quite the coffee guy, and never have I enjoyed Pepsi, so my subliminals were primed.
As I turn into the lot at the grocery, I park next to a blue Escort with four whip antennas stuck onto the trunk, each one a different length of curlicue. The steering wheel was covered with a faux leatherette cover with embossed and colored dragons on the sides; the rearview mirror suspended a pair of goggles like you would swim with but looking like it had been injected with steroids, upon which was clipped a CB-like handset microphone. What clinched the image for me was the lone bumper sticker: A white band with the symbol of the US Marines beside this caption – “When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight.” I thought “what kinds of sociopaths are being bred in the military?” leading me to ponder how these people try to re-assimilate themselves into society or if they ever can fit in again.
Inside the store, I gasped at the six dollars being demanded for four (count ‘em) little 8-ounce bottles of this mysterious nectar. I buy them anyway, satisfied that if I don’t like them, my wife does. I shake my head at the car with ‘tude and continue.
Two miles later, I notice two motorcyclists behind me, an overweight black man of about thirty one a rice rocket, and a skinny white guy of slightly less years – or so I guessed, his helmet with its jaw guard obscured his features - riding a vintage Honda. The black guy didn’t wear a helmet, a sight that causes my brain to label him an FOD (future organ donor). The light we awaited changed and the two cyclists abused the gaps between the four-wheeled machines to their advantage. Sometimes I forget that commuting is a sport of daring-do. This heavily traveled road cuts a swath through a forest preserve. At this point, and the helmet-head looks over his shoulder and pops a wheelie at about 55 MPH in thick traffic. He’s showing off to FOD, who wisely refuses the bait. Two more wheelies ensue, the last while he sits on the gas tank with legs splayed, all within a one mile stretch. Four lanes posted at 40 MPH – just a suggestion, as you know – with no dividing curb. A wipe out then would kill him, helmet or no. I’ll let you guess what crossed my mind then.
For those few aware people, there’s plenty of evidence of Devolution exhibited by humanity: My theory? For thousands of years, humanity became stronger through the natural process of survival against odds. For the past ten millennia or so, we have devolved because we’ve mastered our environment, slaughtered the species that occasionally fed on our young, and remade our world in our image. As time progressed traits that would have been culled in a harsher context are instead passed on, sometimes strengthened or mutated into newer quirks and conditions. The cumulative effect is easily discerned through the multiplicity of the modern human experience. In short – we’re doomed!
I swear this planet has somehow slipped into the Twilight Zone, or something. The Washington Post reports Prince George the Destructive is prepping his brainwashed legions for – are you sitting down? - For Jeb Bush to make a run at the presidency.
I’ll let that sink in a bit…
We need this, don’t we? Somehow, we need another Bush in the White House to complete the destruction started by his father, and accelerated by George the Second. In Christian terms, we must be atoning for one helluva mongo sin to be inflicted with a third Bush presidency. I can’t begin to think what we did to deserve that!
To take a different tack, our Karmic debt must be so huge as to require cataclysmic (dare I say Apocalyptic) amounts of suffering to occur to cleanse us. If that is the case, I doubt humanity will survive.
I am not exaggerating!
How can four or (shudder) eight more years of astronomical debts, needless wars, testosterone-inspired foreign policy (Bring ‘Em On!), and rewards for the richest – damn the poor economic theories be good for America? “Let’s just cut education and force unemployable young people to be soldiers, dissolve social security so the old ones die off quick. There’s still lots of targets out there. God Bless Planet America!”
Does anyone comprehend the enormous amounts of money involved in the federal government? Specific program price tags measured in millions, deficit numbers measured in billions, wartime spending measured in trillions… The other day I heard that our national debt is reaching $100,000,000,000,000. That’s 14 zeros, folks: one hundred trillion dollars. Can you wrap your mind around that number?
Today’s Washington Post has the lowdown on the new federal budget as well as graphics for the budget conscious: Spending Categories; Receipts and Outlays; Deficit Projections; and Budget Cuts. Predictable, I am drawn to the budget cuts, as this is easier for my under-educated mind to grasp. As a former victim of Chicago Public Schools, I understand intimately how under-funding public schools can predispose a life for decades. True to course, Education is again trimmed, to the tune of over $4 billion. Hardest hit is the High School program which stands to loose just under half the total educational funding cuts this time around. It’s interesting to note that all of the 2005 fiscal money is being eliminated for the High Schools. Higher education programs have been hit, too.
Here I refrain from a quip about teenagers without either college or employment prospects being eminently suitable for the military. But I didn’t say that…
In the Major Reductions category, the Agriculture Department is taking a pounding. Programs like Rural Business Investments and Rural Firefighter Grants get trimmed. This puts in mind a recent complaint from my rural republican friends about how too much state money is going to projects in Chicago instead of “downstate” (which in Illinois means anywhere else). Looking at the agriculture numbers, I see a Reagan-esque trickle down effect in action. Food is just not in the priorities of our government these days.
Scrolling down the list of DoA reductions, I note the Renewable Energy category is loosing all of 2005’s $23 million. Conservation options get skimmed. The EPA, along with specific programs such as Farmland Protection, Conservation Operations, Wildlife Habitat Incentives, and Forest Service Fire Management get hit.
I could go on all night. The list is incontrovertible evidence of the priorities of an embattled presidency and a nervous congress. The real question is: How much do these numbers reflect your priorities. Lest we forget, the Washington Elite Society is supposed to be invested with our interests in the forefront of their decision making. As the voting season approaches, ask yourself if your interests are being served, or if a change is in the political climate.