The Cults of the True Believers

One of the more militant Face Book people posted a piece decrying the lack truth about the Newtown slaughter. The mainstream news media, he said, finally had to print the truth that the -- that the demented shooter who slaughtered 20 children and six adults used pistols instead of an AR-15 rifle.

Let me address a couple of points here:

  (1)There is no mainstream news media; it is a fantasy in the minds of people who get all their so-called news from the Fox News Network or Rush Limbaugh --just as others solely watch MSNBC, which is the left-wing version of Fox News. I watch and read everything I can fit in during a day, from the BBC to English language Chinese newspapers. That is how you come closest to the truth.

(2) It was announced early in the investigation, while near-panic still ruled at Sandy Hook Elementary School that a rifle was used. It took a while for the real facts to come out of the confusion, but as a member of the so-called mainstream news media, I kept track of the story and knew the shooting was with handguns. Any journalist who didn’t know the facts in a couple of days, was too lazy to do research.

(3) I doubt very seriously if the people who lost loved ones in that massacre feel would feel any differently because an insane person committed mass murder with handguns rather than an AR-15.

Play it again, Paul

On a daily television news show, I recently saw House Member Paul Ryan (R. Wis.), who was also Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate. He had a bound copy of  legislation he was about introduce. The cover page said: “A Responsible, Balanced Budget.” It looked really simple. 

Unfortunately, he admitted upfront to members of the press that it was pretty much a repeat of his plans for turning Medicare into a voucher system, cutting taxes and eliminating the Health Care For America Plan (Obamacare) as a means of reducing the deficit. However, he also told the gathered reporters something to the effect that the new version focused on the debate points he and Romney had won. 

Sorry Mr. Ryan, but who won the debates wasn’t based on personal assesments; the  merits of the debates were decided by the winner of the last presidential election.  A majority of Americans rejected your ideas.  You can say, “Most Americans don’t want Obamacare” until the cows come home and it still won’t be true  -- unless, of course, you qualify it with “real Americans” to exclude those pesky minorities who keep growing more numerous every year. 

That particular boat has sailed, Mr. Ryan, but the longer you keep deluding yourself that nothing has changed, the better it will be for the real majority.

 

Disagreement Doesn't Make One a Hypocrite

 

Ignorance is bliss. We’ve all been told this.  Most of us have areas where it is true.  How difficult would life be if we had full knowledge of the day of our death or the death of a loved one? How would most of us deal with the knowledge that we had an incurable disease in our future? 

In such cases, ignorance really is bliss.  There’s another kind of ignorance, though.  Willful ignorance is a condition in which the truth is available and people choose not to seek out the facts because they are more comfortable with a lie.  This type of ignorance is unforgivable. 

Religion is the most common area in which the majority of worshippers choose not to question the tenets of faith that we have accepted all our lives. For most, it gives comfort. Generally, this type of blind ignorance is harmless as long as it deals with the afterlife.  You can sell spots in Heaven, but go to jail if you sell Earthly property you don’t own. 

Blind faith does become harmful if we believe everyone else is less than human if they differ from us.

Climate change is another good example of willful ignorance, of people believing what they are told by political ideologues.  It is getting warmer and there are changes in the weather because of the warming. I know, because the polar ice is melting and the glaciers are retreating in Greenland. These are facts. 

Personally, I see a pattern of warming and cooling that has happened over and over again.  I am not convinced that human beings have as much to do with it as some believe, nor do I know if it is necessarily a bad thing. The last big warming allowed Northern Europeans to raise enough crops to survive.

 Human beings are here because we have adapted to changes over and over again. 

That having been said, I believe what I believe by research and evaluation.  It is utter stupidity to look  around and try to deny what is happening as it is to swallow whole the arguments of the other side – especially if ideology is coloring your opinion.  If things can be done to fend off what is happening, they should be done, but not because of hysterical propaganda on either side. 

Maybe the best example of ideology over logic is the so-called issue of gun control. One side says all weapons should be rounded up and destroyed because they are evil.  That side ignores the Supreme Court ruling that says guns are a matter on which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled as an individual right under the 2^nd Amendment. 

The opposite side of the argument is that some gun rights advocates are trying to say that unlike all other rights, conditions can’t be placed on the on gun owners. This is nonsense because all other constitutional rights have exceptions. The 1^st, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th all have exceptions and so does the 2^nd Amendment.  Public safety trumps them all. 

Society has a responsibility to keep lethal weapons away from the mentally ill and convicted felons. Once large source of such weapons can be stemmed by ending the unrecorded sales between individuals at organized gun shows. 

Of course, at present, the Bureau of Alcohol , Tobacco and Firearms isn’t allowed to force dealers to produce an and annual inventory – because of meddling by gun rights lobbyists. 

There’s a lot ignorance out there, but for most it is not blissful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No hall of fame for anonymous critics

Through the years I’ve often said, “You can tell as much about a person by his enemies as by the friends who gather around him.”  As with many other statements, however, I’ve come to understand that I was not entirely correct.

You can tell much more about people by those who personally despise them, than by those who love them. Friends usually have little to say because they know those close to them and don’t think they need defending, but enemies of a decent person are relentless and vocal in their efforts to take their target down because they have only conjecture and rumors.

This is universally true, but those in the public eye draw more attention than others by virtue of being heard and seen more often than most.  Had I been guilty of  even one of the things of which I have been accused at times, I wouldn’t have survived more than 30 years in a fishbowl environment.

Fortunately, it takes more than an unsubstantiated accusation to convict a person of a crime, or even get him fired. Rumors won’t do the job, nor will guilt by association -- and that’s fortunate for those of us who regularly irritate people by expressing opinions that run contrary to what the majority believes.

My earliest avowed enemies – those who used to regularly send vicious letters on paper -- have generally dropped away for one reason or another. At least, I think they have.  When newspapers  began to give readers space to post anonymous opinions, I picked up a lotof  determined critics, and I’m not alone.  Some of them write hundreds of comments a year, not sparing anyone who appears in print.

In the beginning, I was indignant, refusing to read comments unless someone e-mailed them to me.  My criticism of the policy and my editors was harsh at times.

Eventually, I realized I was wrong and I now view the comments as  a part of the landscape and do read them, but I don’t dwell on the nasty stuff.  I have learned that the things of which I am accused say more about the character of the commenter than they do about me.  Besides, I take comfort in knowing there will never be a hall of fame for anonymous, spiteful commentators.