The Tokyo Olympic Games have provided a pastime for many of us recently. We’ve watched with feelings of awe and pride as our nation’s athletes have competed for gold and glory. The hype surrounding this quadrennial event makes it understandable if some of you have become distracted from alternate international competitions. This little piece should help bring you up to speed
There’s more to international competition than the Olympics
Dan Rather, former news anchor and author, Tweeted recently that Canada has surpassed Israel as the country with the highest vaccination rates among its eligible population. This achievement is worthy of note. It reveals the care that Canadians obviously feel for one another. All the empathetic Canadians deserve their own gold medals. They have valued social responsibility on par with individual liberty. Israel is running a close second, with its citizens poised to take silver. That competition is not yet concluded.
Canada’s national accomplishment is at least on par with America’s most recent one. Namely, providing a home country to billionaire private citizens rich enough to slingshot themselves into space for a few minutes riding personal rocket ships—funded at least partly by avoiding taxes.
What’s a gold medal, a healthier population, combatting starvation, or providing housing security to fellow humans compared to custom-made Astronaut wings, I ask ya?
As a result of it’s love affair with monopolists, America is poised for continued success in the billionaire rocket ride competition. Could a dynasty be in the offing? Who cares that we have never performed that well in luge? What’s a sled compare to a hulking rocket? And rockets can be outfitted for paying customers, too—unlike a bobsled.
Consequently, America’s billionaire class are undoubtedly hard at work spending money to build or do other things no one has ever thought to do. A dubious achievement that used to meet with little fanfare and perhaps even a stint in either a corrections or mental health facility. Who says America isn’t Progressive?
Where America really shines
No country is close to surpassing the United States in this epic struggle for national prestige.
“America, home of the highest number of self-proclaimed Astronauts!”
(At least we can be #1 in something. It sure won’t be caring for our fellow man.)
One can, however, argue Canada’s achievement wins on points for total beneficial impact. I could be wrong.
Some Americans may feel better from watching the most outrageous display of “I got mine” in the history of humankind. I can’t speak for everyone. If you’re one of them, comment below. Let us all know how your life has improved.
A proposed new individual event
I’d like to propose a new event. One that allows betting. I would pit anyone with the social intelligence of the typical junior-high student against our illustrious newest Astronauts — Commanders Branson and Bezos — in one competition (and wager everything I own on the student).
The competition I have in mind? It will be called: Reading The Room.
These first two Tone Deaf Billionaire Bs would not be the only eligible competitors. Anyone who purchases their Astronaut wings (albeit from a very, very expensive box of Cracker Jacks) would automatically qualify for the competition.
Some of us feel apologetic
We do owe a national apology to all the other Astronauts in America’s history. In fact, for what it’s worth, I’d like to extend that apology to all genuine Astronauts, everywhere.They became so after an arduous and rigorous process requiring more than the highly refined skill of vacuuming up other people’s money the way a black hole vacuums up light.
Though I will concede that skill does deserve its own title.
A medals podium? How about a village stocks instead?
That these astronauts weren’t immediately arrested upon landing, placed in stocks at the town center and pelted with rotted cabbages and tomatoes for days—says as much about modern, tolerant, demure, money-whipped America as anyone needs to know.
Come to think of it, that could lead to a whole new event? Hmmm… this has possibilities.
I hope this quick scan of alternate international competitions has increased your familiarity with these unique pathways to national prestige, inspiring you to the appreciation of truly important greatness when you see it.
Some Christians believe there is a biblical mandate to be involved in politics because they are to be the salt of the earth. They have not well considered the meaning of the verse or the phrase as used historically.
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
~ Jesus Christ, Matt. 5:13
Poor fishermen and village folk comprised Jesus’ audience. His words affirmed their worth based upon their virtue. Itself based on the fact they were in the audience faithfully listening to him as a Prophet of God.
Salt wasn’t always a seasoning
Salt, in olden days, was a valuable commodity. Sometimes it was currency. It was far too valuable to be used as a mere seasoning to add taste to food. Perhaps you are familiar with the adage which speaks of a hard worker being “worth their salt.”
Salt was also a preservative in pre-refrigeration days. The verse does not imply that Christians are to “season” the world, its culture, or its politics. Christianity doesn’t transfer effects by mere presence or proximity. Nor is the aim of a Christian to “preserve” the world’s culture, or politics. For what, to a true Christian, is worth preservation of either worldly culture or worldly politics? Neither impress God.
Rather, Christians derive value—to God, to one another, and to the world by virtue of their faith.
“Saltiness” comes as the result of a life lived by faith in the power of an indwelling Christ. It doesn’t come from infiltrating, influencing, and subverting politics for so-called Christian purposes. As if that could ever be a thing…
Which of your laws can impart life and righteousness?
It is unfortunate that Christians engaged in the effort to drag Jesus into politics forget the admonition of Galatians 3:21.
“For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.”
What policy, ideology, or law will instill spiritual life and righteousness when the 613 commandments enshrined in the Old Testament failed to do so?
What do Christians (whether preachers, politicians, or parishioners) propose to enact (or strike down) that will grant eternal life or right standing with God?
When a greater than Moses appears once more, it will be on the last day. He won’t come seeking political office, or permission from a majority to act. He will not be carrying a party flag, nor running for any office. The King of Kings will bring his title (and His reward) with Him.
The Declaration of Independence, first published on this day in 1776, unanimously approved by the Continental Congress 2 days prior, on July 2nd, 1776, did not create laws, rights, a government, or a United States of America.
It declared 13 Colonies’ unity in opposition to continued British rule, and their united determination to declare themselves Free and Independent States.
The representatives who met, debated, resolved to break political ties, and who drafted and edited the document giving their reasons declared themselves at the end of that document to be representatives of the united States of America (lowercase united). Representatives of 13 Free and Independent States, united in the declaration of their freedom and independence.
13 years of war
The import of this is to note that it was some 13 years before a Continental Congress again met to “institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” to quote from the Declaration. That founding document is the US Constitution. Its Preamble enlarges upon ideas inherent in the Declaration laying out the purpose of Government envisioned by the framers.
Those 13 intervening years between the Declaration and the Constitution were ones of war and privation on the citizens, property, and countryside of those 13 Independent States. Declaring themselves independent would have secured nothing without the blood that was shed to support the right they claimed to have, indeed the duty they claimed to have, to do so. The Revolutionary war put lead and steel in place of ink and parchment to win the rights ink and parchment asserted.
That the representatives of those newly begotten States anchored themselves upon bedrock ideas predating any form of Government, party, or political system is noteworthy.
George F. Will, a notable political historian holding a doctorate in political philosophy, and well established as a Conservative thinker, says in his book The Conservative Sensibility, that America is the first country in world history founded upon an Idea. Geography did not establish it. Nor did ethnicity, nor genealogy, nor annexation by war. A political party or system did not create America. The inspirational coalescing power of an idea did.
That all men are created equal, with rights that Government does not confer upon them, but they consent to enact and institute Government to secure and protect those rights.
The word right or rights appears 5 times in the Declaration’s preamble. We may safely assert that the conception of rights, and the misuse or abuse of them by government, was preeminent in the representative’s minds.
The Preamble
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
The Declaration enumerates what it calls Unalienable rights having come to all men from their Creator. The document declares all men are created equal with an equal share of, and claim to, the endowment of these rights.
Declaring this to be so, did not, unfortunately, make it so for all people then living in the 13 Colonial States, approximately 50% of whom were slaves or indentured servants.
This is simple, verifiable, provable fact. To pretend it isn’t a fact is a disgrace to the name American and a slap in the face to history and history’s God.
Many drafters of the Declaration, and most notably Jefferson himself, the document’s principal author, were slave owners. Their livelihoods and fortunes derived from slave labor. In declaring all men to be created equal, Jefferson penned a truth that preexisted his writing. In enumerating 3 specific rights as among those which are endowed to equal men, Jefferson names these: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, clearly and indubitably denied to slaves.
to secure these rights
The revered document then states the most Revolutionary of ideas. That Government exists not to confer rights, but to secure rights that do not derive from government but from laws of human nature.
This is the most radical political statement in history.
Lest anyone use the word “radical” as an insult to hurl at a political opponent, remember these founders as the proud radicals they were. They would have worn the label as a badge of honor.
Once again, the Declaration rests upon an idea for its legitimacy before the court of public opinion, of history, and of history’s God.
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it
The Declaration asserts the absolute right of a people to overthrow any government that usurps individual rights or does not protect them; or that refuses to recognize that the only legitimate form of government for men who are created equal and endowed with equal rights must come from the consent of those equal men. This assertion, again based upon an idea, had to be tested on the battlefield, and proved with blood and treasure.
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed
Here Jefferson admits the willingness of people to suffer long with injustices to which they grow accustomed. Neither the willingness to do so, nor the duration of the season during which that willingness to suffer lasts, negates the right of the people to right themselves when they see fit to do so.
It is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government
Indeed, in this bold last use of the word right in the preamble, Jefferson and the adopters elevate radical Revolution to overthrow illegitimate government from a right to a duty. At the end of the document, they again invoke their solemn duty to publish the document that officially signaled the dissolution of the political bonds between the 13 Colonies and British rule.
In Conclusion
I offer this very brief examination of the Declaration and some of its ideas and propositions for this reason: America, of all nations, was born of an idea. That idea is that all men are created equal. They have equal rights issuing from Nature and Nature’s God. Government does not create rights. Just government cannot take them away. Equal citizens with equal rights are free to their own lives, their own liberty, and to their own pursuit of happiness.
This idea, this America is the one I love. The possibility for these things to be actualized exists only in this place, so far as I’m aware. That these ideals did not exist equally for all men (and women) from the nation’s inception is beyond dispute to honest students of history.
That the seeds of possibility and potential for a full flowering of freedom, liberty and equality for all were sown in the founding document, the Declaration of Independence, is likewise beyond dispute.
That we as a nation, on our 245th birthday, still struggle to see these principles and ideas of equal rights and equal justice fully enacted for all our citizens, all the time, contradicts the very principles that first gave it birth.
So, I celebrate America, the idea, more than America, the present reality. The present reality is the crucible in which to forge the idea, but the Idea, set forth on this day 245 years ago, is the America I love and pledge allegiance to on this 4th of July 2021. I celebrate the idea of America in acknowledgement that she has yet to live fully to the standards the framers set so high. And I celebrate with absolute determination to do my part to see the idea become the reality.
As a former minister, and still a Christian, I can’t think of anything more damaging to the model and message of Biblical Christianity than a professional ministry relying on tax breaks from the government. The professional ministry killed Jesus in His day, and it hasn’t stopped, especially when in bed with politics (which it was then, too).
Tax Benefits to Ministry Organizations
Allowing organizations to register as 501(c)(3) non-profits does a few things for them, none of which are essential to promoting their ”message”.
First, they are allowed numerous tax exemptions, including exemptions on real estate holdings.
That’s right. A church in the US can buy prime real estate, erect large buildings on it, conduct business on that land, and pay no property tax, corporate income tax, and usually no state or local sales tax.
Second, they can hire and pay a ”ministry” class granting them FICA tax exemptions on ministerial earnings.
What, you ask? A minister can elect to pay no payroll taxes on ministerial income into the Social Security system. This election also means they cannot draw Social Security Administration benefits at retirement age on income elected for this deferral. But the tax savings in the present puts more money on the minister’s ”bring home” check.
Remember, these FICA payroll taxes are matching funds. The employer and the employee both pay a share of the gross pay towards satisfaction of these amounts all non-minister workers and their employers pay. So the ministry benefits in real money saved from ministers making this election to defer.
Third, ministries can also pay ministers a ”housing allowance” as part of their salary package. Ministers do not have to report this ”allowance” as ”earned income” in tax filings. Yet, if they are purchasing the home for which they receive an ”allowance”, they are allowed to deduct the interest. This is one of a hand-full of ”double-dips” in the IRS tax code.
It is this benefit that allows the Joel Osteen’s of the world to own mansions and pay no taxes on the income earned to pay the payments. And if the church is on the mortgage, no property taxes are paid either.
Jesus had no housing allowance…He had no house
Astute Bible readers will remember that Jesus said of himself,
”Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
The fourth advantage ministries have from the IRS tax code is the ability to grant tax deductions to donors for their gifts of cash and property.
There is no way to know, but I am curious how long ministries could stay open for business if this benefit was rescinded. To be sure, some church goers give for reasons other than a tax deduction, but what about the largest donors? Would they still give so ”charitably” if they couldn’t take a write-off?
The reason I’m writing about this
Ministers who receive these tax benefits from the government are forbidden by law to use their position as ministers to influence the government from whom they are receiving the benefits. Put simply, they are forbidden by the IRS tax code to intermeddle in politics. Neither they, nor their ministry organizations are to support or promote a political candidate or party…as a minister.
Unscrupulous ministers skirt this law by claiming their political pronouncements are their ”personal” views. They expect us to believe they are taking off the collar and ministerial frock when they stump for their favorite politician. Yet, these same ministers would have no platform, no name recognition, and no voice except for their ministry. This is disingenuous, at best.
Please don’t associate Jesus with corrupt politicians, or unscrupulous“ministers”
And the danger of this practice is that a listener will naturally associate Jesus, or God, with the politician being endorsed by the unscrupulous, wannabe politician minister. This is a mistake. It kills the truth about who Jesus is. He endorsed no political leaders during His brief tenure on Earth, and I don’t believe there is a politician in the history of mankind that Jesus would have endorsed.
Once, when asked about paying taxes, Jesus said,
”Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give God what belongs to God.”
I agree with Him, and I believe Congress should take Him at his Word, too, by immediately revoking 501(c)(3) status for all ministries, and/or by immediately prosecuting every so-called minister who steps into the political arena for IRS tax code violations.
Well known, well-funded minsters are alienating half of the national demographic by their politically or financially motivated endorsements. In so doing, they are breaking the laws of God and man. Jesus’ message concerns a different Kingdom entirely. For these reasons, I say professional ministry killed Jesus in his day, and hasn’t stopped.
These political ministers could not be doing the work of satan more effectively if they tried. Even if ol’ Scratch gave them better tax breaks.
Misinformation Is A Toxic Poison – And Its Being Used As A Weapon
There are unwritten norms that in the past have governed and united us as Americans. But, these have proven too weak for the job in the face of modern stresses, and given the existence of weapons of mass misinformation (WMM’s). Especially since it is so easy to present alternate ”facts” using these channels, and do so with impunity. Sadly, the most basic assumptions we once shared about reality itself, and our agreed upon notions of it, are no longer a “given”. Even empirical, mathematical facts are not able to withstand politicized assaults in highly-charged racially or socially coded language, specifically intended to divide us into alternate worlds, with alternate facts, and alternate versions of ”reality”.
Destroy Consensus and Kill Consensus Reality
Consensus reality is that which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view. If so, is there a doctor in the house? This piece from Post Carbon Institute claims 2020 is the year that our shared reality finally cracked. We don’t seem to have any shared objective reality anymore. Nor, it seems, do we any longer enjoy a shared cultural reality. Seth Godin’s treatment of this concept is brilliant.
The consensus reality defining America and what it means to be an American may already be dead. Ironically, a reality-TV con man killed it. While ironic, I guess it is fitting. Give the devil his due. Modern American politics in the age of Twitter and Facebook is more like fake tv than we knew. Reality television, even though it is not real, doesn’t work, generate enough profit to stay on the air, and provide entertainment value unless enough people believe it’s real. Consensus reality doesn’t work without a consensus. It evaporates when enough people believe a different narrative. Destroy consensus with incendiary and divisive language, and kill the shared reality that was the by-product of that consensus. Done and done. Facts be damned.
Social Contract Theory
In some respects, it is miraculous that it has taken this long for the fabric of the country to fray and tear. Social Contract Theory has been around a long, long time. It arose in a time before printing presses and certainly before the internet or social media platforms. This entry at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests the idea has been around as long as philosophy itself. Check it out if you’re not familiar with the idea.
This is a short article on social contract theory from the University of Texas school of business. Members of society live together under certain pre-arranged and agreed upon rules of engagement. These ideas are deeply interwoven into social, economic, and political life. So much so that we have been able to assume their strength and take them for granted. Democratic, Representative governments, exist both as the result of, and for the protection of, this bedrock social contract. As such, they operate best behind the scenes of everyday, normal civic life.
I wrote this essay back in January in remembrance of the days when our government was virtually invisible except for rare, highly unusual, high visibility occurrences. Reliable assumptions about the underlying, invisible social contract are the foundation of a national reality. In combination with shared language and art, the result is stable, flourishing culture and civilization.
Who Wields Weaponized Misinformation?
To destabilize a society, attack the shared ideas that bond the members together in a mutually beneficial reality. Nothing does this more effectively than weaponized misinformation. Historically, only totalitarian, dictatorial governments (whether right-wing fascists, or left-wing communists), have turned their citizens against one another by means of misinformation and propaganda. Russia, or China, or fill-in-the-blank state actors have wanted to undermine the US with these tactics for half a century, having used them with success against their own citizens.
Now an ex-President and the political party he controls do the job for them. Only an autocrat wishing to use you for his own power willfully, repeatedly misinforms you to think of your neighbor and fellow citizen as an enemy. And to base that belief on some factor like race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or in the past year, misinformation about mask wearing, or getting a vaccine.
Obviously, the fissures in American society didn’t start overnight. They didn’t start with a dangerous, deranged, anti-democratic demagogue. In some ways, there have been two or three different Americas from the nation’s inception. Your version of America depended upon which race and economic class you were born into. But a large portion of the country has been unwilling or unable to see a clownish buffoon for what he was and is. Failing this, they have joined him and his puppets in the effort to turn us against one another, denying even basic human decency, medical science, the rule of law, and the democratic process. These are enough combined straws to break the back of the national consensus reality camel.
Misinformation Has Created A Separate World With Its Own Reality
Didn’t we used to be better than this? We used to have cherished words, national words, that we treasured for their inspiration. They urged us towards a common, shared vision of a more perfect union and a general welfare. But words are not reality. They are mere approximations of reality. And the same language that had the power to unite us in agreement and solidarity, has been used to foment hate, mistrust, and derision. Powerful, pervasive platforms of language dissemination have been used to craft alternate, disparate, separate versions of reality. Versions of reality believed in regardless of the presence of objective facts.
The Only World That Exists Is The One In Your Mind
In short, purveyors of malignant, malicious fiction have broadcast descriptions of an alternate reality in which many believe. I cannot argue against the truth that the only world that exists is the one that is in your mind as far as you are concerned. But, unless there is some return to consensus reality, based on verifiable, objective facts, and unless we hold those who traffic in lies and disinformation as culpable, dangerous criminals, this American experiment will soon be over.
Being discriminating is not a bad thing. It’s the only way to decide which world you’re going to live in
I appreciate fiction as much as the next person. I love that Stephen King, or Ernest Hemingway, or Daniel Silva can create world’s from words. To your mind, these elaborate worlds that are real and engaging.
In like manner, the world you woke up in today, and interact with from the driver’s seat of your own perspective, while not quite as fictitious as the one’s constructed so skillfully by a great author, is still fundamentally a fiction. It is also created with words. Yours. The ones you tell yourself, and the ones you listen to. It is fiction because it is limited and relative to your experience of life alone. It is however, very real to you. You don’t live in my head, nor I in yours, so our realities are unique to us. But if you’re reading this, you’ve given me, sitting here, at a particular juncture in space and time, access to your mind. And my words are shaping it.
Never in American history, have the unscrupulous, power-hungry, selfishly motivated, or willfully and negligently ignorant had so much access to such powerful tools to shape our minds with the fiction of misinformation. They do so via social and mainstream media platforms, wielding them as weapons of mass misinformation. The fact that they have gained such an allegiance among the non-discriminating is astonishing. And, that they have successfully created a completely different world with its own ”reality” is equally shocking. Perhaps, in the final analysis, we only have ourselves to blame.
Obviously, things like microscopic airborne viruses don’t give a damn what kind of lies you believe in. The truth will always prevail in the end. But for some, it will be too late. It may be too late already for the country. The disparate, divided realities may never reach consensus again.
Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, delivers the rebuttal to Joe Biden’s speech. Photograph: AP
Does anyone besides me find ironic the speech of Republican Senator Tim Scott, the only black Senator of 100, in his rebuttal to President Biden’s address to Congress on Wednesday night, in which he emphatically stated that America is not racist? Amazingly, he said this after listing several ways he has been discriminated against (which is the very definition of ”racism”).
Undeterred by the contradiction in his claim, and not content to stop there, he asserted that now some white children are suffering oppression for the color of their skin. And…wait for it…He said these things not on SNL, but on the national networks. It would have made a great parody skit. But Senator Scott spoke as if he was serious; as if he’d convinced himself it was true.
This would be laughable if it wasn’t so bizarrely, shamefully, unequivocally absurd; along with being patently false. The fact that the Republicans paraded out the lone black Senator to make the anti-racism case smacks of tokenism, propagandism, and cynicism that reaches a new low, even for the Nazi-Sympathizing, White-Supremacist-Hugging Insurrectionist Party.
If there were zero black Senators, instead of only 1, would that be evidence of systemic racism?
If neither of those statistical anomalies are evidence, then where do we look for something empirical and demonstrable?
Incarceration rates?
Income levels?
Percentage of college degrees?
I think the GOP has taken all those off the table too.
I’m curious to know how this denial helps a political party? Of course, it seems shockingly obvious that the GOP panders to white bigots. That demographic is the Trump base. (Republican Tim Scott, the literal one-percenter), notwithstanding.
But why? What does this gain for them? Do they really think there are that many racist white voters to keep them in power? I know they are going for voter suppression, but you can’t suppress all the votes.
Conversations In Vain
I have tried (in vain) to have conversations with people about what it must be like to be born into this country as a member of a traditionally non-privileged (read oppressed) race. I can’t speak directly to that experience. I’ve never faced a system with a history of holding me down, or holding me back, or holding me in contempt or derision. And my efforts have proved vain because many people either lack the capacity or the willingness to use their imaginations and put themselves into someone else’s world. They seem to fear admitting the reality of institutional, systemic racism as an admission of personal guilt for being born white. Which is simply not the case.
I wasn’t born into a race whose ancestors were enslaved (at least not in this country), or whose ancestors had tribal lands stolen from them for trinkets like beads, tobacco, and alcohol. I’ve never had a great-grandparent tell me about a cross being burned in his yard. No grandparent has ever told me they were denied the opportunity to vote.
But I can imagine these things happening. I can empathize with it. I can believe it when someone from a different race with a different experience tells me what has befallen them. And I certainly find it ironic when someone from that race against which all these atrocities have been systematically committed, denies that reality, for some hoped for political benefit.
A Statesman, or a Puppet? The First Step Is Admitting The Problem
That’s not true. I don’t find it ironic. I find it shameful. It is a denial of humanity. I’d respect Tim Scott if he had embraced his humanity and used his political platform to call America to a higher, purer version of our National selves. That’s what a Statesman does. Instead, we were served up an ironic speech by a party puppet, one who talked about suffering racial indignities, but who nonetheless refused to label that treatment the true, but politically unsavory term, ”racism”.
Admitting systemic racism doesn’t mean we have to stay this way. It’s like overcoming addiction…the first step is admitting there is a problem.
How many of my white friends ever received a talk about how to interact with police from your parents?
I sure didn’t. My parents weren’t afraid that if I faced a cop, I may be facing a cog in a system with an ingrained history of bias against our race, and that the ingrained bias may affect how the cop viewed me as a person.
What does white America lose to admit the obvious about systemic racism? What are we desperately trying to hide and deny and cover up here? This one is a clear-cut, no brainer. I don’t see any neutral ground. I don’t see but one right side. This issue really is black and white.
So, I’ve had Covid for a week now. I caught it from my girlfriend. We believe we know where she got it but we cannot know for certain. We now have firsthand knowledge of and experience with Covid we did not want. I am sharing some of our experience and some of my thoughts about it for your consideration, and in the hope you can avoid it. I am not a doctor. This story is not any attempt to give medical advice or even offering a medical opinion. Nor am I suggesting that either my own experience, or that of my girlfriend is normative. This is just a personal, anecdotal account of our firsthand experience with Covid.
For over a year, we have followed every protocol. We have always masked up in public. My girlfriend has been masked around her 90 year-old mom this entire time. She has not entered her home for more than 5 minutes, and has not ridden in a car with her. With the exception of an Extreme Experience driving event at Charlotte Motor Speedway on March 28th, we have engaged in no public activities not necessary for life. (The event did an outstanding job of implementing and enforcing mask requirements, distancing provisions, and sanitization between each driving session).
Climbing in to that sweet Ferrari. Notice the masks and sanitizers.
How It Started
My girlfriend started showing symptoms, notably a dry cough, on Saturday, April 3rd. We were driving home from a family gathering to celebrate her mother’s 92nd birthday. The weather was beautiful and mild. We ate a pot-luck picnic lunch outdoors on the back deck of her sister’s home. Of the 18 attendees, we were part of a small group of 5 or 6, not yet vaccinated. 2 of those had already received their first vaccination shots. My girlfriend and I wore masks, even outdoors, out of abundance of precaution. (This turned out to be wise. I can report that everyone present is fine.) When her cough started, accompanied by a pretty severe headache, we chalked it up to having been outdoors, in pollen, in a breeze, in dropping temperatures for more than five hours. It had to be some sort of allergy, right?
But the next day, and especially Sunday night, she knew something wasn’t ”right”. She lay curled on the couch, coughing frequently into her pillow, suffering with a headache she couldn’t quite get to fade even after 24 hours and the normal headache meds. Because of our precautions, we did not consider that it was Covid. After a decent night’s sleep, she went on to work on Monday. She has a separate office where she was able to remain distanced from co-workers.
The test and result
When her cough was persistent and more frequent on Tuesday, April 6th, she went in for a test. The positive result surprised us both. While waiting for results from the test, the doctor who saw her also ordered a chest x-ray. He wanted to rule out bronchitis or pneumonia due to her cough and the difficulty he observed in her breathing. Thankfully, her lungs were clear.
I’m sure we aren’t the only ones to feel surprise and dismay at a positive result during their Covid experience. The fact is, there are many like us, who have followed every protocol. Like us, they never wanted an experience with Covid. The news, and the side effects of social disruption were more than compensatory for the effort to avoid any firsthand experience with Covid infection.
Still, our lives are now impacted by those who did not take the virus seriously, did not take precautions, and who could not be bothered to inconvenience themselves. To some degree, we are all victims of all the far-reaching effects of this pandemic. There’s no sense whining about it. But, when you believe the science, try hard, act consistently, and persevere in the effort to stay healthy and to keep from making others sick, you feel surprised and angry when you get this damn virus anyway. It’s a kick in the guts. A Covid experience was definitely not on my bucket list.
We followed all these measures, and yet…It only takes one infected person not following every measure, all the time to give the virus a transmission point.
When the test confirmed Covid, she left work to begin the doctor and CDC recommended home care and the 10 day quarantine (from the onset of symptoms). Which should technically end today or tomorrow. But, she has not had a straight line recovery. The first couple of days looked very good. On Wednesday, she was wracked by coughing fits, a bad sore throat, muscle aches, and malaise that kept her in bed until 4:30 pm that afternoon. She only got up for a couple of hours to eat a light snack and then went back to bed. It was well past noon on Thursday before she felt like getting out of bed again. Over-the-counter TheraFlu or DayQuil helped suppress her cough, though these undoubtedly contributed to her fatigue.
How it’s going and what we’re doing
From Friday through bedtime last night (Sunday), she is improving. But we have arrived at the 10th day since the onset of symptoms, and she is not symptom free. She is still sick. I can hear her coughing in bed as I write this. The coughing isn’t as frequent or violent as the worst days, but a 10 day quarantine is clearly not applicable to her. Day 10 is not a magic threshold. She would have no business driving a commute to sit in an office for full day. So, our Covid experience reveals some potential discrepancies in the official advice. To be fair, the CDC guideline of a 10-day period is given as a minimum in the absence of a fever for at least 24 hours and when exhibiting improvement in symptoms. So, there is some flexibility. And, thankfully, her office is not pressuring her yet.
My girlfriend’s youngest daughter is a nurse who has served and treated hospitalized Covid patients, and has seen some die. And her own Covid experience wasn’t limited to her role a a front-line health-care worker. Early this year, she lost her grandfather to complications from Covid infection.
She encouraged us to use a cocktail of vitamins C and D along with Zinc to help boost and support our natural immune responses. Emergen C Immune + is a product ready-made with those components, so we take two packets each daily. We are taking a low-dose aspirin every day to counter-act Covid’s blood-thickening effects. Other than that, as I mentioned my girlfriend has used a cough suppressant. Two nights ago, I took 2 Alleve before bed for relief of what felt like swallowing shards of broken glass. So far, the sharp pain of that sore throat has been the worst of the experience symptomatically for me.
This could have been much, much worse
Thankfully, even though my girlfriend has lingering symptoms 10 days in, both our cases are on the mild side of the scale. In comparison to millions who have been hospitalized and the nearly 600,000 in the US whom Covid has thus far killed, we are lucky! We don’t need a hospital. We won’t need funeral arrangements. But we most certainly could have. And this virus that is still in both our bodies, if transferred from us to other unwitting hosts, could produce drastically different symptoms and drastically different outcomes. My symptoms this morning are the same as I’d usually have in mid-April since I battle seasonal allergies. I’ve been able to keep up a walking regimen of a couple miles a day for most days.
If I didn’t know I had Covid, and if I worked in an office, I would have been there. I’ve coughed maybe 30 times total during the week. In contrast, my girlfriend has had multiple coughing-fit episodes. She may rattle off 30 or more coughs per event. Thankfully, her breathing has remained steady and unimpeded (if you don’t count the times she can’t stop coughing for a minute or two). But her energy level is a 3 on a 10 point scale. 3 days ago, she didn’t want to get out of bed at all. So a 3 is improvement. As I write this, every few minutes, she coughs a few times to try to clear her throat and the top of her chest.
Asymptomatic spread still a thing
As I mentioned above, if I didn’t know for a fact that the mild scratchy throat, rare cough, and barely noticeable muscle aches I’ve experienced were from Covid, I would not think twice about it. That’s the insidious thing. This study shows that almost 6 in 10 Covid cases are coming from spreaders who are themselves asymptomatic. Like me, those asymptomatic spreaders would have no cues to either be tested or quarantined.
Masks make sense in a shared environment when 6 of 10 cases is transmitted by an asymptomatic carrier. Since certainty is that elusive, is a mask too much to ask?
I’ve spoken to one doctor who believes these asymptomatic spreaders represent millions more Covid cases that will never show up on any database. Hearing this in the beginning, and believing it, I acted as if I was a carrier. As mentioned above, my girlfriend and I both did. We didn’t act that way because we were afraid we would get Covid, we acted that way because we were afraid to ”give” it, unknowingly. The safest, least intrusive, most humane, and most loving thing we could do for our families, neighbors, front-line workers, and strangers was to act like we could infect them, and behave and distance accordingly. Now, unfortunately, our Covid-induced behavior is not an act.
Next for us, vaccines
I see this as a moral imperative: I’d rather die trying to save other’s lives, than live and risk inadvertently killing them.
Still if there was a guarantee that our experience is the worst Covid can do, getting vaccinated would be a foolish and unnecessary risk. Almost any reasonably healthy person can tolerate a week of aggravating cold symptoms. But there are no guarantees. This same virus, or some variant of it, has killed millions around the globe and 600K here at home. In my view, that makes vaccination a moral imperative. Not because I’m worried about what it may do to me, but because I don’t want to be the nexus point in a contact tracing sequence that eventuates in someone else’s death. Being an accomplice in the death of another human being is not a firsthand experience I ever want to have.
Without a doubt, there are millions of asymptomatic carriers in the United States who are implicated in tens of thousands of deaths. They just don’t know it for certain, or don’t want to admit it. The lack of anything more than circumstantial evidence is not an acquittal.
”Don’t put that on me!” you say. Where should I put it? And if you don’t want that “put on you”, get vaccinated. Simple.
The takeaway
Now that I have violated my girlfriend’s HIPA privacy and given way too much information about my own health status, what, you may ask, is my point? Am I just trying to elicit sympathy over a tickling cough and a sore throat?
These are fair questions. I’m sharing our Covid experience with you, in the hope you will to think about what it feels like to have an experience forced upon you that you not only did not want, but tried your best to avoid. That feeling is not a good one. It feels like a violation. I want to blame someone, even though I know that won’t roll back the clock and it won’t make me or my girlfriend recover faster.
I am angry and concerned, or maybe angry because concerned, about the potential long-term effects this bout with Covid may be setting us up for down the road. What other future firsthand experience might some careless person have seeded into us that won’t bloom for months or years down the road? This study from London’s Oxford University raises concerns about neurological and psychological effects. Our Covid experience may extend well past the CDC quarantine period. The Covid experience for some is already of an indeterminate duration.
Long term effects of COVID 19 brochure template. These are what have been identified as potential threats down the road. Fun, huh?
I’m guessing if you’ve made it this far in my account, you’re at least somewhat concerned about Covid yourself. You probably wear a mask. Social distancing feels normal to you now. You may already be vaccinated or you’re leaning that way. I hope all of that is true. I also hope you will use your influence and your example of good and loving decisions to help instruct, guide, and persuade the unconvinced. This pandemic can still be a catalyst for positive, constructive change.
Covid changed my political views
It has certainly changed me, most notably my political views, in some very good ways. (Although now it has changed my medical chart for the rest of my life, in a very bad way). For me, the pandemic moved fuzzy ideas about the shared, inter-connected aspects of health and sickness, (and therefore of health care,) out of the abstract, and into sharp-edged, practical reality. Politics gets very real and very personal when your own life is on the line. Politics is the crucible where the ideal meets the practical and the necessary.
Here in the real world, where 99% of us don’t have a private Island or a floating city where we can retreat and hide out away from the great unwashed, teeming masses, we share air. We share spaces intimate enough, compact enough to make each other sick. Some of those shared spaces and experiences are voluntary acts of will. At other times, proximity to other humans is part of a job description, the income of which cannot be forfeited just because symptoms appear. And that person who cannot afford to stay home when they might be coming down with something, might be patient zero for the next viral assault that makes Covid-19 look like a trip to Disneyland.
Starting to see Health Care as a different kind of right…
I had unsuccessfully tried to get my head around the notion of health care as a right before the pandemic. I had always thought of rights as those entitlements to which we are born, simply for being born. Thinking this way, I could not see how the right to health care is something one is born with. Most of the rights we typically consider inalienable are those we believe to be ”ours,” possessed by the individual, and not to be taken from them. Liberty, for instance, is much easier to take from a person, than to give to them. It is impossible to give someone the pursuit of happiness, as any parent knows. You want your child to be happy. You give your child opportunities. Good parents encourage their children’s interests and pursuits. But no one can give another the pursuit of happiness. That pursuit can be taken away, however.
So, I thought of rights in this way, as possessions. And thus thinking, I reasoned that while health can be taken from a person, health care is not something a person is born possessing, and therefore not a right that can be taken away. I thought of it as a privilege – a useful one, a humanitarian one, even a desirable one – but a privilege, nonetheless, and not a right. And from the standpoint of the individual, that may still be an accurate way to look at it. However, if considering the question from the view of the public good, the entire equation changes.
…One with a different primary beneficiary
My experience with Covid, began as a witness and observer. Now, I’m numbered among the human flotsam swept up in its flood. The watching, and now, the experiencing, have produced a new conviction. I now believe Universal Health Care is primarily for the public, social, and national good.
It is not primarily for the individual at all. Of course, the individual benefits. But that is a proximate end to the ultimate goal of protecting society. I am now a born-again advocate for immediate, universal, mandatory health coverage (to the extent allowable – while maintaining personal and privacy protections). Every member of society deserves protection from whatever sickness any one member may contract, thereby endangering all. A single, uncovered member places society’s health at risk, through lack of access to care, treatment options, or at-home, out-of-work, sick pay. If we are willing to pay taxes to a government that buys state-of-the-art weapons to defend us from military enemies as a social good, then we should be willing to pay taxes for the government to defend us from biological, viral, molecular enemies.
A common objection, the product of bad thinking
Many are opposed to universal health care, or socialized-medicine, or single-payer systems (or whatever politically charged label can be slapped on) because they believe a person is being freely given something of value (health care) that is not free to provide. They feel the common and understandable disdain that many of us share over handing out goodies to people who won’t or can’t earn the goodies for themselves. And not content to stop there, paying for those goodies by taking the costs from the people who are working and earning the same goodies for themselves, but are involuntarily forced to pay for someone else’s too. It doesn’t seem fair. That view, once entrenched is hard to dislodge.
We should be able to talk about this so we can prepare for the future
But is it fair to subject workers and earners (and therefore taxpayers) to sickness or death, because one person cannot afford health care to treat a sickness that exposes all the taxpayers, who together, could have afforded to pay for the treatments, thereby protecting not just that individual, but all of themselves? What is fair about that?
We will botch our way through this pandemic…limping all the way to the finish line. Although, according to our last President, we’ve been ”rounding the turn” for what amounts to the world’s longest-running, continual Nascar race in the effort. But, what happens when the next pandemic hits? Wouldn’t you rather some of your taxes go to protect you from an uninsured person coming to work sick and killing you or a loved one? These are at least issues to talk about without accusing each other of wanting to turn the country into the Soviet Union, for God’s sake.
How it’s going…and what’s ahead for many of us
Our firsthand experience with Covid is soon to involve the battle my girlfriend is going to face with her work over the timetable for her return. She’s coughing now. She’s still sick. She is certainly still symptomatic from the same viral murderer that is going to kill as many of us as we allow to do so. Thankfully, she has work provided health insurance. But she has no mechanism to appeal to paid sick-leave, or an allowance for full-time work-from-home until there is a complete cessation of symptoms and production of a negative test. She has hit the 10 day mark, and she is still coughing. Hers is an individual case, but is not likely to be unique in those terms. Her duplicate could be the cough you’ve been hearing in the cubicle next to yours all morning.
These are usually meant to be filled in by the wearer, correct? …Thought so.
People who are all one thing may exist. I cannot prove they don’t. I am not one of them. Those I’ve known beyond the level of acquaintance have all seemed composed of a blend of interests and beliefs, like me. Their bundle of contradictions and idiosyncrasies may be a different size than mine, but I’ve yet to meet the human version of a concrete monolith.
A feature – or is it a bug? – of Western culture is the inclination to categorize and to classify: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Thank you, Mr. Aristotle. These main categories are fine as far as they go. The broader the category, the more members. Within each main Classification are sub-classes for further sorting and refining. As the concentric circles of inclusion tighten for each subset, the smaller the pool of members. Inclusion in one grouping down the hierarchy happens simultaneously with exclusion and separation from the others.
The 7 broad brush categories (and their nested sub-categories) are useful for some things, but be honest, prior to reading the category names, how long had it been since you’d thought of them? The classifications aren’t helpful at all in pursuit of self-realization (unless self is broadly defined as that which everything else is not). One doesn’t discover the concept, Species, and cry ”Eureka!, my quest to know myself and my purpose on this planet is over!”, ”I belong to a species!”, ”Glory, Hallelujah!”
Deeper levels of categorization create problems. ”I’m a homo sapiens,” you declare, satisfied with the sub-division distinguishing yours from other species. Is additional fine-tuning necessary? Knowing your species and behaving as such will answer many questions: who can I successfully mate with? Is this why my body isn’t covered with feathers? So, my brain is larger than a lion’s, but I’m slower, so that means I’m supposed to out-think and not outrun them, right? Seems to be refinement enough, because traverse one level down and you’re at the edge of quicksand.
There are several subspecies of homo sapiens, of which Homo Erectus is our home base. At this, the Homo Erectus level, we are one big, happy family of Man (pardon, ladies). And now comes the fun. We divide into Sexes. Used to be no biggie, but now we further divide into Gender (and its definitions – including whether or not one is Cis-Gendered) and Sexual Preference (with its accompanying divisions). We divide into Races. Always a biggie because it includes not only the amount of an individual’s melanin, but also National identity as well as historical atrocities and grievances . We divide by Culture. This one makes us feel threatened because of differences of language and art and world view. (Some of us even take shelter within a subculture.) We divide by Religion. Not content to rest in the security we find in our own, we must discredit, disgrace, and disavow all others, as well as belittle and exile those who neither share our preferred Faith, nor claim any Faith at all. We divide by Socio-Economic class. Because Capitalism, Yo! And…we divide by Political ideas, which is not exactly true, is it? We divide over politicized words, the common person having little to no real understanding of what the emotionally charged ”isms” even mean.
The average person doesn’t know the difference between Communism, Democracy, or Socialism, much less the variants. If pressed to define those terms, could you do so without resorting to a dictionary? Can you confidently say what Conservatism is? Progressivism? What are the rules for inclusion? What you do know is how you feel when you see or hear political labels. You know some people you like, and you want them to like you; and you listen to what they say to believe, and that’s good enough for you. No further thinking required. Peel off the adhesive backing and apply the label.
But what do you call a guy who spent years as a cross-country, touring DeadHead (and who still loves their music), a former drug addict turned street evangelist and full-time minister (who loves Jesus), a father of seven kids (all birthed at home and subsequently home-schooled), a gun owner and concealed carry permittee (who once even had an AR-15), an entrepreneurial small-business owner of an S-Corp LLC, who hasn’t worked in an office in 18 years, a lifetime Republican voter (until Trump v Clinton forced a decision to vote Libertarian, and then Trump v Biden forced a decision to vote Democrat)? What do you label a guy who would rather read than sleep (and often does), and who has accumulated more mostly useless knowledge on such a wide variety of topics that even he doesn’t know what he’s most interested in, but who could therefore convincingly debate either side of almost any topic, and enjoys doing just that? What do you call someone who has only strong opinions, but who is equally convinced that he could be wrong about any or all of them?
Go ahead, pigeon-hole me.
However, the paragraph above notwithstanding, this essay is not about me. This is about the foolishness of labeling and of dividing over minutiae. I offered my details to illustrate the absurdity of slapping a too-granular, one-word label on another person. If pressed, there is no single label that comes to mind that I would be agreeably comfortable to wear. Your mileage may vary, but is that not also true for you? If yes, then what can we do about it?
We have two choices. One, we can stop focusing so much on the smallest circle of belonging, and widen our aperture of inclusion to the next circle out, or if that’s still too tight, the next. Unity lives in the big circles. It shares quarters there with Understanding, and Humanity, and Love. I know this sounds like idealistic, utopian, liberal-speak, but it’s true. If it’s not, then our second option is to keep digging smaller and smaller circles for our like-minded tribe until we’re down to a foxhole. That’s a tight fit to be shared with one, and only one, other person. I cannot speak for you, but I would be hard pressed to find anyone with whom I am in agreement on all things, 100% of the time…not even myself.
You may need that level of agreement and uniformity of compliance in order to feel good about yourself and your life. For your sake, I hope that’s not the case. That’s a hefty burden of insecurity to lug around. I don’t want any ideas or beliefs that are so fragile that I have to defend them against all opposition lest they die. The more compulsion I feel to defend a position, the less certain I am of its correctness. Truth and Good Ideas far outlive both their proponents and their opponents. Who wants to live in a carefully detailed, perfectly classified, scrubbed, and homogenized world? That seems more like a taxidermist’s shop, or a Nature museum than the messy Real World we’re in. It’s not that hard to see that each of us is more than a slogan on our bumper stickers. One rung up the classification ladder, we’re a helluva lot more alike than we are different.
How do you know what you know? Did you discover it by thinking, or were you simply told?
As I work my way through the excellent essay, Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, I am experiencing anew a particular delight , common in my grade school years, of registering how the critical, skeptical, rational mind approaches a question. I am thrilled (which is exactly the correct word) to observe and follow Berlin thinking his way through complex questions about the nature of liberty, more than I am by any conclusions drawn.
I distinctly remember this feeling when very young; when I was first learning how to think, and not merely what to think. So much of my formal education, even at the college level, consisted in being told what, and not how, to think. (But that’s another topic).
It is a rare treat to discover a writer or speaker with the mental and psychological discipline to use his mind when approaching a question, and not be used by it. One who employs his mental faculties to see a problem the way one utilizes a magnifying glass, or a microscope, or an MRI machine. Neither the glass, the scope, nor the imaging machine impose preference upon the subject matter. They simply observe it, (but at increasingly higher resolution, depth, and granularity of detail).
Too often, presuppositional prejudices in the mind are a blinding filter, canceling some of the information needed for the fullest view. When the search for evidence supporting a pet theory or ideological point of view usurps the place of pure truth as the ultimate pursuit of inquiry, the resulting conclusions are always suspect. Berlin’s treatment of the subject of Liberty doesn’t fall prey to petty bias. It is an exemplary reminder of how bifurcated issues should be approached by the intellectually honest.
Here is a particularly thought-provoking quote from the essay:
”[From the standpoint of Liberty,] ‘Pagan self-assertion’ is as worthy as ‘Christian self-denial’ All errors which [a man] is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.”
Some statements are worth reading at least twice. (The bracketed words are mine, for context). Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Can you deduce what Berlin is asserting? He is not saying that Paganism is as worthy as Christianity. He is making no comparative argument about their respective virtues at all. He is referencing the respective practitioners solely in terms of their equal use of liberty in choosing to act for themselves without outside interference or coercion. Their respective liberty to choose their own path is equal. He is making no claims regarding the comparative value of what they choose.
For many readers, seeing the terms ‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ in such proximal juxtaposition, will cloud the mind with prejudice so that the the point being addressed is missed entirely. And for some readers, the juxtaposition may reveal a different type of prejudice. That only those practicing socially, culturally, religiously approved liberties, should be allowed to do so; while those believing or acting contrary to the mainstream view must have their choices curtailed by restrictive laws to protect them from harming themselves, or polluting the mainstream.
What do you think about the following questions? Remember – What you think is determined by How you think – so try to imagine your mind as a magnifying glass looking at each question afresh just to see all that is there to be discovered.
Is it better to A) erect a barricade of laws – out of benevolence – to prevent a man from committing errors that my harm himself, thus prohibiting him the liberty to do so, or B) allow the man liberty to commit errors and suffer the natural consequences?
Which is the greater evil to the man in question?
What are the ramifications of either course?
What if the potential self-harm has the possibility of becoming public harm?
Is this the most clearly revealed dividing line between private and public acts?
How far-reaching might the ripples of consequence extend for either choice?
How large – or how intrusive – a barricade of restriction might be needed if A is selected?
These questions and their answers are central to freedom. They form the heart, not only of Libertarian political philosophy, but circulate throughout both Conservative and Liberal ideologies. We all seem to share the idea that there is something wrong with allowing another to determine what is good for us, and then by force of law to constrain us to their, and not our own, ”choice”. Such an enforced ”choice” is no choice at all, in any normal sense of the word. Stop to think how many laws and policies have just this element of intrusive interference as their foundation.
These are things to think about, Dear Reader. These ideas make up the substance of the great questions of morality; and as politics is merely a branch, or social outworking of moral philosophy, we owe it to ourselves to get it right. And to do so, we will need to stop listening so intently to those voices on either side telling us what to think, rediscover the inward joys of how to think, and then get busy with it.
If you are regularly (perhaps even daily), buffeted by contrary winds, whether they be social, cultural, religious, or political, can you say of yourself that you are free? If your emotional state is impacted every time you turn on the News, every time you read an article, every time you see a Twitter or Facebook post, are you not voluntarily giving power, real power to forces outside yourself?
These voices aren’t making me happy! Can’t they just leave me alone?
Each of us faces opposition to our preferences. When the opposition is internal, we recognize the working of reason putting up a bulwark or providing reinforcements so that we don’t succumb to baser desires. But when the opposition to personal preference is external, and beyond direct control, how then do we deal?
Friend, exactly what is happening when you get upset over opinions that are different than yours? Why does a different viewpoint elicit irrational behavior? Are we not each entitled to our own opinions. To what degree does a complete stranger’s beliefs have an existential impact on you? What is the cause so dear, that results in you slinging zingers at the opposition? Do you suppose that deriding or defeating political opponents will create lasting happiness within you?
This you???
Does everything in your external world, things over which you have no control, have to be perfected aligned with your preferences in order for you to experience internal peace? Do you feel it your duty to verbally hack away at every perceived threat to your personal perspective? That does not make you smarter. It reveals your ignorance. It reveals the contradictions in the things you claim to believe.
If your state of mind as an individual human is impacted over and over again by the willful statements and actions of politicians, celebrities, the group to which you claim membership, or social media strangers (regardless of whether their names are on your ”friends” or ”followers” lists), then you are living under the domination of a form of heteronomy.
Who has you surrounded? Who is controlling you? Who gets to determine the “real” you?
Your mental and emotional states are shaped, dominated, and ruled by outside factors that are non-responsive to your own will. And you may well be deceiving yourself that you are autonomous, self-directed, free, and impacted in life only by the things you will and choose. In Reality, you are just a bi-pedal version of Pavlov’s dog, and just about as free.
As they say, “If the collar fits…”
You have allowed yourself to be classically conditioned to respond to all sorts of stimuli that you have No. Power. To. Change. Instead, those external things are changing you.
For me, not a single thing either Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Kim Kardashian or Matt Gaetz or Bob Weir or Mitch McConnell or Major League Baseball says or does today will add or detract from my actual life. My hunch is that is equally true for you, Dear Reader, if you would allow yourself to take off your ”Angry glasses” or your ”Victim glasses” or your ”Righteous glasses” and just look with your own eyes and reason, at the measurable impact on your life these people (you either feel so allied with or so opposed to) actually have on your day.
