The title of tonight’s blog came from a movie that was before my time. I know, I’m getting older but there are still things out there that are older than me. The speech was from the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke. I remember the speech as the opening from the great Guns N’ Roses song, “Civil War”. I jammed to some of my classic songs the other day and it prompted thoughts on things I felt it was time to get off my chest. Sit back, relax, and maybe, just maybe I will provoke a little thought.
What in the hell are we doing these days. Communication has gone the way of common sense in my humble opinion. I am the first to admit that I am stubborn, full of opinions, and willing to share them with people that I am around. The one thing I am not is belligerent. Actually, most of society isn’t belligerent. There are small groups who scream and everyone turns to see. We live in a society where everything is accessible 24 hours a day and the news cycle is judged in minutes and not days any more. We hear terms like click bait, likes, shares, and viral. The funny thing is for the vast majority of us if our friends know what we are doing and they like to be around us all is well in the world.
This past weekend there was an incident that occurred and has now launched lunacy around the country. Why, because it was given attention. Please do not misconstrue this as a lack of compassion or intelligence toward the modern world. The biggest issue I have is why in the hell is this even going on and why do we give it credence. Okay, many years ago the civil rights of minority groups were legally brought to the same level of those in the majority. A lot of people weren’t happy and wore bland costumes to show their displeasure. Go back even further and a war was fought and the losing side now calls the flag a piece of heritage and not hate. I am from the South and have never thought about that flag as anything other than a piece of history that represented a change in society. If you really look around, really look around the history cloth is not as prominent as those looking for views would lead us to believe. Most of us just want to lead our lives, be successful, find someone to love, and see other places that we have studied.
Seriously though, there are things that we all disagree with. How many times have you been able to affect change on those issues by destroying someone else? I don’t really care how you feel about race, sex, religion, and on and on. The old ways have sailed. Live life, go out and enjoy the wonderful things there are to do, and for God sakes, stop being mean to people that really don’t have any bearing on your life. You may not like them, you may not want to associate with them, they may make you sick to your stomach but they too are going to exist and honestly, they probably feel the same way about you. When you go on with your life you are existing as a mature adult should and are acting like there is some common sense packed in that 8lbs between your ears. The sad thing is there appears to be many people plundering through life that cannot let go of the losing lifestyle. This losing lifestyle is the one where wars were fought, regimes were toppled, laws were changed, and society evolved but they still want to harken back to the way it was in the old days. Why do you want to be on the losing side? Most people want to be winners. Oh yeah, just my opinion but I do not believe we are going to go backwards. It’s not really how the world works. There are more people with the prevailing opinion than there are with these hating few.
I guess all of this is very hard for me to digest because for so much of my life I have been in the world of college. Talk about freaks; college athletes, dancers, academic minded, partiers, multi-sexual, political activist, and on and on. The diverse cultures from around the world and from the magnificent home country astounded me. I’ve heard things that would blow your mind. For some of you, you would probably want to march on their houses. For the rest of us they become friendly conversation pieces that allow us to understand the other ways. Did I like all of it? Of course not. Did some of the opinions and thoughts piss me off? Of course, it did. Did I want to harm them physically or emotionally? No, I wanted to understand why they thought that way and then decide to either stay near them or distant myself from them due to their rhetoric or belief system. Why is this so hard? Why do we give these people a platform? Well, for one it is one or our rights by living in this great country. But what I really mean is this; let them march, espouse their diatribe of beliefs, and if we are not there to see it who gets hurt. Think about this example: You are pissed and vent to your best friend. You are sitting on your couch just fussing to your bestie. You feel better and head to dinner. How many people hear about it? Two! So, let’s expand that example to many of these situations that keep exploding around the country. A group that has beliefs that are outside the norm wants to protest. Okay, they have a right to protest. Let them. They walk the empty streets, carrying their signs, espousing their beliefs, and doing what protesters do. The tree-lined streets are filled with nothing but these people. Guess who knows about these beliefs? Them and only them. Guess who doesn’t get angry because they are hearing these words that grate on their thoughts and soul? The people who are opposed. The reason the event ends in silence is because no one is there to listen. They walk and talk to themselves. We just let them. We then move on with our lives and keep doing what we do. If there was less coverage of these events, heck even no coverage, there would be much less anger permeating through others. It is hard to stay strong and silent when you too believe what they are saying violates the space in which you feel you have a right to be.
I truly don’t understand all the anger towards others in such a public display of stupidity. Yep, I said it. Of course, I have things that I hate and that make me angry but as I have stated multiple times in this little piece I just won’t stoop to the level of display that I am seeing these days. You want to know what makes me mad? Here you go: The guy who tried to hit the Sandhill Cranes the other day. He missed but he made no attempt to move or slow down. The people who cannot put their shopping carts away. For goodness sake, you just walked around an entire grocery store but that extra 20 feet is just too much. What about all of these people that steal? Why is it okay that you have something from someone’s front porch that you didn’t earn? I could go on for hours but the last one is you stupid people that text and drive. Put the damn phone down. You are not hiding it. You are all over the road and I don’t understand how you think that you are so damned important that you can risk my life and those that I love to update your status or even worse watch videos as you are cruising down the road at 65 miles per hour. That’s a post for another day.
People will read this and say that I don’t understand and that we have all these rights to do what is happening. They are correct. I will never argue that. What I will argue is we have fought the wars, changed the laws, and grown as a society so why are there still people who want to go backwards. I will never understand their plight or beliefs because I cannot. I am not wired that way and neither is the majority of society. See that word majority, that is a word that we should think about before we give credit to any of these groups who spew their venomous hate. The majority of people do not feel this way. I know, it takes a majority for things to happen. Most of us straddle the center and lean one way or the other for each issue that is brought up. That is how the majority is formed. These groups are so far one way or the other that a majority can never be established. Stop giving them credence and their rhetoric will be washed away like a lot of our history. We cannot change the history of events but we can dang sure try not to repeat them. Learn from it, don’t destroy it. We need to learn that a “Failure to Communicate” is what got us to the television viewing we have now.
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