I don't know if kids still use pocket magnifying glasses to set leaves on fire. We did. Capturing the enormous heat of the distant sun, and focusing it on our selected targets. It worked then, and it still works now. Only now we've got the Internet to do it...!
Picture the enormous heat of a population of haters. Then use the magnification of the Internet to capture this heat-without-light. Instantly, haters can dispatch their firey venom to a million million sites. Better yet, YouTube can capture some hateful event to quickly ignite every digital leaf it touches.
Now it's the "birthers" (AKA, Obama haters who question his citizenship). As fast as Susan Boyle's gifted voice went around the world, now a birther's outburst at a single event can do the same. If kids like us had magnifers like the Internet, we could have set fire to entire forests!
Which is the point here. Haters have existed ever since Cain hated Abel. In America, presidents are favorite targets, so Obama is hardly the first victim. And while our US History texts taught love-of-country, they often skipped over haters-of-presidents. On the top ten list of hated chief executives were some of our most celebrated. Including Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR.
We're told by the interpreters of the First Amendment that hatred is one of the prices we pay for the freedoms of democracy. So while you can't randomly yell fire in a crowded theatre, you can systematically savage your political enemies with whatever crazy hatred you can find in your heart. And admit it now -- there's so much repressed hatred inside all our hearts.
"Democracy is messy," is the way some of its advoctes argue. Winston Churchill added, "It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else we've got." Their rhetoric is exactly right....! The only problem is that exercising so powerful a right without responsibility is where the rubber of political principle hits the road of everyday practice. Where the haters have to ask themselves if the heat of their hatred on this ship-of-state will end up burning not floating the vessel as it struggles here on the high seas of history?
Whence must come their answer? From somewhere inside the same heart whence comes their hatred....
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Sometimes it seems, Jack, that your writings reveal you as a latter-day Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden Caulfield you want to prevent humanity from descending into total ignominy. A noble but perhaps futile aspiration. I put these words into Google – “Those who do not learn from history...” It came back with more than 160 MILLION references. Apparently some people through the ages have been aware of the consequence of not learning – but they have not been nearly enough to redirect humanity. Perhaps Aldous Huxley comes close to an insight. He said “The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.”
ReplyDelete"Where the haters have to ask themselves if the heat of their hatred on this ship-of-state will end up burning not floating the vessel as it struggles here on the high seas of history?"
ReplyDeleteYou ask a very intelligent question...however, I don't believe the "haters" are intelligent enough to know that the ship is burning, sinking and being destroyed by their hatred.
I guess we have to depend on the somewhat small population that is left that haven't given in to the haters of the world. God help us!
Jay suggests I'm hoping against hope...in a way so does Janis...and I can't argue with either one of you. Hatred often crowds out love in the hearts of our species..so chances for a better world are always dicey...sometimes, though, we can build our own better world inside the bigger world...using what we've learned to build up our best personal defenses...saints & poets are good at that...but anyone can try!
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