Double Dog Dare Ya

"The problem with believing things that aren't true, or thinking they are just because you want to usually ends up in a mess that could have been avoided if we were not a species so convinced that our collective and individual sense of self importance provides us with some sort of immunity to behaving like total assholes."

T. Quidd, 1968,  P. 631: Convincing Ourselves That a Little Citrus Spray Makes a Bathroom Smell Great Right After Making a Big Poopie.  Shawsville Publishing and Detention Center.

            A  political ad played on TV this morning.  It warned that voting for any Democrat would spell doom. It’s probably safe to assume the Democrats have similar airing around the country.  These are bitter ads hyping fear, provoking discord and inciting anger. So we now live in a nation so split that we see half of ourselves as actual enemies posing an genuine personal threats to us.  We have effectively stirred ourselves up to  what until the pipe bombs started showing up, might have been described as an undeclared unarmed civil war.  And no one is making us do this.  We are choosing it. 

            At the rate we are going, in a few years many of you are likely to find yourselves living in some of the darkest years the United States has known since the mid to late eighteen hundreds.  The hypocrites who hate, the racist who lurk in the shadows, the greedy who fear the poorer and the ones who now find lies to be as moral as truth will be the ones responsible.  To bear false witness seems no longer to be wrong, and to love thy neighbor seems no longer to be right.  Why are we choosing to go down this path?  

If you are over eighteen today and still alive thirty years from now the armed, angry, suspicious and defensive culture you’ll be struggling to survive in will exist because not enough were willing to stand up to stop it.  You don’t believe this of course, but put this letter in a personal time capsule and read it again in the year 2050.  I dare you to.  If you’re still alive; and America still exists.