Crisis! Bombshell! Devastating! Atrocity!
There is so much heavy stuff going on in the world today. Turning on the news is like eating a plate full of Spaghetti with a full bag of bread sticks, then ordering some eggs over easy with biscuits and cream gravy for dessert. One can barely stand up from the table when finished without feeling regret and remorse. The serious regret comes from the choices you made in the desserts and the weighty remorse comes from your inability to keep your eyes from overloading your ass, no pun intended.
Seriously, it happens to all of us, my favorite place to eat is the Golden Corral so I am not throwing stones. Let me tell you a secret if you haven’t been there, that chocolate fountain at that dessert bar is mesmerizing, inviting, and irresistible. I can’t tell you how many times I have to push kids out of the way just to get my own chance at sticking my finger in that liquid delight. If you can’t throw your size and weight around at an all you can eat buffet then where else can you, or should you?
I watch the news and learn that a diminutive man from Russia just invaded a neighboring country for reasons that can’t clearly be explained at the moment, but if you listen to the news, right or left, both sides have the answer. From the left news, it is because Trump was a Russian Spy and he is secretly commanding the tanks and missiles from his home in Mar Lago. From the Right, it is because Biden is a pussy and doesn’t know what time of day it is or what country he is living in, he just wants to know if “Corn pop” is still mad at him and could someone make sure Hunter brings the “good stuff” tonight.
It is all a super heavy feast of drivel that is being shoveled at us every day, and we happily eat it but never digest it. We just keep packing it away until you can see our stretch marks from the space station.
I don’t have the answers, I wish I did. What I know is it is difficult to watch a boy cry because he had to take a train to leave is father who he said “stayed behind to fight” or to see chest compressions being done on the lifeless body of a 6-year-old girl covered in blood to no avail. That kind of visual is scaring, those are the serious stretch marks that no matter how much we work out or diet thereafter, we can never get rid of. It’s sensational stuff and it fits the narrative of blame, guilt chaos and destruction on both sides.
As I type this, I worry and wonder what I am allowed to talk about, I stop myself and think…do I still live in a free country? It has come to the point where a few social media giants can describe a difference of opinion, even if your opinion is based on fact, as mis-information and therefore slam the door shut on any other discussion by closing your social media platforms down, forever. Call me stupid but that sure doesn’t sound free to me.
Vladimir Putin’s social media machine was still posting its propaganda messages on some media platforms just days after it had already crossed the border into Ukraine and what should be known as the point of no return. Yet, a sitting president of a free country can be removed from social media during an election year because he is a big meanie? Just from a visual standpoint and with the mute button on, it looks like the real big meanie just blew up a 6-year-old girl and separated a tearful little boy from his father, but I should unmute the tv so I can be told what really happened.
And while it’s fresh on my mind, how come we can’t have a difference of opinion anymore? How come it has come to be, “my way of thinking” or I will crush you? Just to be clear and not create any more stretch marks for anyone, the leader of Saudi Arabia, who rules the country under Sharia law, the law that has serious consequences for all kinds of stuff like, public flogging for unmarried men for participating in sex before marriage and death for married men for participating sex outside of marriage… can have social media pages, but a president, past or present can’t? Let’s be serious, those kind of strict laws about sex in this country could destroy our great nation and rob it of its youth after just one prom night…
My research into Sharia Law was fascinating but also scary. There are no gay rights advocate groups in SR, nor are there LGBTQ rights groups over there either. The consequences for that type of life style are quite dire I’m afraid. Personally, I don’t care what your persuasion is, I just prefer you just be a good person and treat people decent. I figure God will sort it all out later on but I would appreciate it if the news would stop telling me that we live in the worst country ever created and we need to scrap its founding documents and start over. No, we don’t. Our country is flawed, every country is flawed but you have to see beyond your TV in order to see it.
Our country is flawed because it was built by flawed men, (there was only one perfect dude) however they were smart enough to give us a map and plan that allow us to recognize and fix those flaws as we go. The map is called the constitution and within that constitution is the Bill of Rights. These are remarkable documents that were so forward thinking that they have lasted for almost 250 years.
It’s not easy but the work gets done when needed, and the necessary changes do happen, hello women’s suffrage, hello civil rights act. What’s fascinating is that the very first bill of rights combined the following… The freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and the right to petition government. I find it ironic that all that was jammed into the very FIRST amendment as if to say, “we know things will get screwed up with some of these very quickly, so the second amendment simply says we have “The right to bear arms”.
Now I am not a gun lover, they kind of scare me and with grandchildren around, guns are always way out of reach, in fact they are so far out of reach that I can’t remember where I put them so don’t infer into the conversation that I am ready to take up arms and fend off Vladimir Putin or Justin Trudeau. What fascinated me is that each one of those rights granted in the first amendment could have easily been their own instead of jammed into the first one. They are giant all by themselves.
It was if the founding fathers were saying that “hey man, we know some folks are gonna come along and eventually get a little too big for their britches and try to tell you that you have to do things you don’t want to (mask up) or take things you don’t think you need (shots) or keep you from worshiping in the church of your choice (isolate) when you need to, and when that happens, we’d like the press to be able to notify you honestly and accurately that it is happening, not codify it or close down the avenues to discuss it. If, and only if, all that fails… then grab your musket and powder up. It’s all probably more complicated than that but its intriguing how the right to bear arms was jammed in between freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion, petition and not letting Soldiers forcibly take up residence in your home for a reason (right number 3 just to be clear). Seems like a genius approach by a bunch of flawed men.
I may be getting too constitutional, but man I can’t take the heavily slanted news from both the right and left, and I can’t handle the exacerbated way in which it is delivered. Crisis, Bombshell, Devastating, and Atrocity are the lead words of every story. Has no one figured out yet why “feel good” movies do so well? Why they break box office records? They haven’t figured out that there is a “Rudy” or “Rocky” or Sheriff Brody (Jaws) inside of all of us if we would just stop letting people tell us how to think, breath, eat and sleep. I know we’d sure reduce the stretch marks from the grimy news buffet and perhaps we could pull our finger out of the chocolate fountain for a little bit. Or not.